I used to volunteer to clean up the beaches where I lived during my childhood, but since I moved to a suburban city, they have a group that cleans up. It is important to understand how important humans play in destroying and preserving aquatic life and their environment. This week I am a janitor tasked with cleaning an ocean. This week is Loddlenaut.

Loddlenaut is a cozy, ocean cleanup adventure from Moon Lagoon published by Secret Mode. The game was released for the PC in November 2023 and retails for $20.

Players take the role of a space janitor tasked with cleaning up pollution and a bunch of trash after a mega-giga corporation up and left. You explore ruins, befriending aquatic life named loddles, and unearth how and why Guppi left the ocean floor in such a bad place.

Loddlenaut’s story is solely carried on the arms of the gameplay. Everything is radioed over to you from your friend, who gives you the history of Guppi Inc. when you clean something relatively important. It is nice to have that silence broken every once in a while to get to lore, not forgetting that you are cleaning a world that has quite a rough past.

Along your journey of discovery and cleanliness, the player will clean, feed, and nurture a race of axolotls named Loddles. Some number of them are located within each area crying out to be cleaned housed fed and nurtured until the player makes their home more habitable.

Saving these creatures and the bits and pieces of lore are the driving forces to clean the entire ocean area and it works.

Players have a home base where items can be recycled into currency, a 3D printer in which to print more useful equipment and upgrades, and stuff to keep orphan loddles happy while they wait for you to clean their home.

Players start out with the standard bubble gun during the tutorial level in which they will be taught how to clean (holding down the left mouse button) jettison around the area and spot and collect garbage and food for loddles. There are a total of five different areas for the player to clean: a site of a sunken tanker now home to loddles, a highly polluted factory grounds, and the main campus for the mega-corporation. Each area is designed differently and offers up little bits and pieces of visual storytelling alongside little snippets from your coworker.

Loddlenaut is such a colorful game. The ocean blues really make the other colors pop. Every item has so much color to it, even the litter and grime. The Loddles are absolutely the cutest things. They come in so many different colors and the little frowns on their faces when you find them covered in grime is sad but when you clean them off and feed them you feel instantly rewarded because Loddles love you. It is just a great-looking game I love it.

The sound design really adds to the experience. A nice aquatic-themed OST is playing in the background, and the sound of moving through the water is great. Cleaning sounds are good, especially the scrubbing sounds of the scrubber. To note, I love the sounds that loddles make when you attempt to try to communicate with them.

Loddlenaut is a great cozy game. My wife sat next to me while I played just over four hours of a cleaning game. She loved that the loddles could grow up and transform into a totally different animal. The cleaning gameplay is so intuitive that it makes it so enjoyable to do. Each environment is varied and equipment progression is enough to keep anyone interested in cleaning for over four hours and the Loddles are super cute and saving them is enjoyable all on its own.

Loddlenaut is such a great cozy game.