Undusted: Letters From the Past Review (PC): Cleaning Up Never Felt This Satisfying

The cozy genre is a newly acquired taste of mine, giving enough interaction to keep my gaming mind engaged, but with lower stakes and a chill vibe to relax and enjoy. It’s those types of hooks that drew me into titles like PowerWash Simulator, a game that I enjoyed slowly cleaning massive structures and vintage vehicles for hours on end. Undusted: Letters From The Past provides a bite-sized version of that experience, tasking you with cleaning objects in a lo-fi aesthetic, but presenting a deeply personal story to pull you along to its conclusion. This mixture of cozy gameplay, laced with a devastating but heartfelt narrative, left me with one of the better short games to release this year.

Lo-Fi Beats To Clean To

Simple and satisfying, the most effective way to describe the feel of playing Undusted, and a formula that had me wanting to clean just one more item continuously. The tools provided give a great moment-to-moment feeling, and require switching between them to make everything spotless. Starting with a sponge to remove large swaths of grime, picking up the cloth to clean glass in a way other tools simply can’t, and finally switching to a toothbrush to get in all the nooks and crannies was a process that never got old for me. 

That final moment of accomplishment was a feeling I longed for time and again, along with the additional tools like a vacuum for plushies covered in filth, or the air blower that cleans everything in its path as long as it has a charge. Playing alongside these missions is an original soundtrack that’s as relaxing as the rest of the game, and it helped make one of the more memorable short experiences I have had in a game in recent memory.

A Family Affair

The biggest shock Undusted: Letters From the Past left me with was how invested in the story I became. Most of the time, when games go for emotion, it rarely lands for me, but Undusted gives moments between the action that I actually wanted to follow along with. 

The game tells the story of Adora, a young woman tasked with going back to her family home to find something for her aunt. Once each item is cleaned, we get a look into what significance that item holds in Adora’s past, from being a small child listening to a cassette player her dad gifted her, all the way to memories of her difficult time with her mom as a college student. Not going to spoil the twists and turns here, but as a parent myself, it was intriguing to see the perspective and understanding of how that family dynamic plays out over a long period of time, and it’s a good carrot on the stick to keep completing the cleaning missions, seeing where it takes you next.

Final Verdict

Undusted: Letters from the Past is a satisfying mix of what it presents to the player, a lo-fi cozy cleaning game that leaves me wanting to clean things perfectly over and over, while also presenting a narrative about family that pulls at the heart. I enjoyed myself so much that I played it entirely in one session, about two hours in total, finding myself enraptured in the art, music, story, and gameplay of this fantastic game about cleaning up old things.

Undusted: Letters from the Past was reviewed on PC with a code provided by Toge Productions. It is also available on Nintendo Switch.

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