I was originally supposed to review Creature Kitchen next, but I've already spent a fair amount of energy on my day off writing about mad hamburger games.
So I'll finish today with something a little simpler.
NO DOUBT.
Steam lists the developers as Te Sam and ICT@SU, with ICT@SU also listed as the publisher. ICT@SU looks more like the publishing side of things to me, so Te Sam seems to be the main developer behind the game.
And as far as I can tell from Steam, NO DOUBT may also be their first game on the platform.
NO DOUBT is a simple cleaning simulator released for free.
Except, of course, they've added horror to it.
Rather than being particularly frightening, though, it stars a cute young employee and some rather lovely ghosts.
I'm not being deadpan here.
They're actually kind and sweet.
So if you're expecting terrifying horror from this game, you probably won't find much of it.
What you will find is the pressure of knowing that you might get fired if you fail to finish cleaning within the time limit.
That can become exhausting surprisingly quickly.
Oh, and there are corpses with their upper and lower bodies torn apart and their guts spilling out.
The protagonist simply scrubs it all away as though it's another day at work.
Her mental fortitude is quite impressive.
There is also a fairly strong yuri element.
Except the women she's flirting with are ghosts.
I probably shouldn't say much more about that because of spoilers.
What I can say is that the game tells a rather nice, innocent and sweet little story.
The gameplay is well designed too.
There are four different ways to clean, each requiring a different tool. You can only carry two cleaning tools at once, so a little planning and swapping is required.
The difficulty also increases gradually, with new penalties and variations appearing as you progress.
It's a well-constructed system.
There is one problem, though.
When cleaning Smoky's office, colliding with the Smoke Ghosts can occasionally leave you stuck in a permanent stun state.
It isn't a devastating bug. You can simply avoid touching them altogether.
Still, in a game built around a time limit, it can suddenly make an already difficult job considerably harder.
I'm also slightly disappointed that the items you receive from the ghosts don't seem to have any separate practical use.
It would be nice if they somehow made repeated cleaning runs a little easier.
Because there is a reason to repeat levels you've already completed.
Affection.
As far as I can tell, you need to clean a level perfectly to reach maximum affection with each ghost. Otherwise, no matter how much I flirt with them, I can't unlock the bonus scene.
Fortunately, some players have already shared screenshots of those scenes, so seeing them isn't particularly difficult.
Still, the game also doesn't seem to give you a clear way to check exactly how much affection you've accumulated.
That's another small thing I wish were easier to track.
Put less kindly, the game doesn't give you a particularly strong reason to keep replaying it.
You could also describe that as a short playtime, but I don't think that's much of a problem by itself.
What I do miss are Steam achievements.
Achievements could work particularly well here as indicators for unlocking the bonus scenes.
Something as simple as:
Complete a perfect cleaning.
Reach maximum affection with Sui.
Reach maximum affection with Ms. Drown.
Goals like those could give players a much clearer idea of what they still need to do before a bonus scene becomes available.
And separate from that, achievements themselves can be a fun and useful part of a Steam game.
So in the end, NO DOUBT isn't perfect.
For what appears to be a first game, that's hardly surprising.
But Earia and the ghosts are lovely and adorable.
And the game is free.
Why wouldn't you keep it in your library?
https://store.steampowered.com/app/4826160/NO_DOUBT/?curator_clanid=46578905