Carpet Cleaning Master

You work at a small carpet-cleaning company. People bring you their filthy, stained, dust-caked rugs — well, technically, they just appear at your place, but for some reason that doesn’t bother you — and you make them look new again. That’s the job. It’s slow, it’s quiet, it’s satisfying, and most days that’s enough.

Every carpet comes with its own rules. Some can handle a pressure washer. Some you’ll ruin if you bring one anywhere near them. Some need hot water, some cold, and some can’t stay wet for long. Read the label, pick the right tool, do it properly — or hand back a ruined rug and pay for it yourself.

And the meter is always running. Water and power aren’t free, and the bills come due at the end of the day whether the work paid off or not. So you clean well, clean smart, take the money, take on bigger jobs, and slowly build the workshop into something of your own.

Then there’s the back door that won’t open. The tape someone left in the player. The name on your pay documents — Nethound — and the small, nagging fact that you don’t really remember how you ended up working here. You can leave all of that alone and just clean carpets. Most people do.

In the game:

• Hands-on cleaning with a pressure washer, hose, brush, foam and wet-vac.

• Mix your own water temperature, because some jobs won’t accept anything else.

• Real care rules for every carpet, and real consequences for getting them wrong.

• Daily water and electricity bills to keep an eye on.

• Jobs, money, upgrades, and a workshop to grow.

• And a second, quieter game hidden underneath — for anyone who goes looking.

The carpets won’t clean themselves. Not yet, anyway.