Diaries of a Spaceport Janitor Review

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In Diaries of a Spaceport Janitor, you play as a janitor. The game is quite simple: incinerate trash today and get paid for the volume of trash you’ve disposed of tomorrow, keep yourself decently full on food, sleep, and every once in a while, you’ll need to do a gendershift to keep your character from getting sick and dizzy. You’ll have to keep all this in mind while trying to remove a cursed skull that shouts as you throughout the game.

While trying out the game, I ran into a few minor bugs that didn’t really affect my gameplay, and one major one that did. I’m unable to progress right now because I’m doing a quest to requires me to prove my devotion to the goddesses, but the girl I’m supposed to turn the quest in to is not appearing. I’ve since written to the developers at Sundae Month, and they’ve been updating their community that they’re working on fixing this on Twitter and Steam.

I really enjoyed my time in the world of Ealdeira 9, finding little treasures and weird junk while doing my job. I thought it’d be fitting to write a diary of my own, and share what goes on in the typical day of a spaceport janitor.

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I materialize into a foreign spaceport and instantly the multicolored citizens and buildings invites me to explore. But there’s litter on the floor and I know it’s my duty to keep our streets clean. I pick up the strange mush in front of me. I see the option to either “incinerate”, “drop”, or “eat” this alien brain. Why someone disposed of a brain in the middle of the street is not a question I dwell on since I’m pretty hungry. One man’s trash is another’s treasure. I eat it. I don’t feel well, but I continue on to the next piece of trash. I incinerate it because they’re not paying me to eat trash. I also start barfing because my body’s rejecting the brains I ate, but you know what? That just means I’ve got more to clean up and I’ll get paid nonetheless. I make my way through the streets puking and cleaning up after myself.

Then I come across a peculiar piece of paper someone left on the floor. It’s a call for adventurers who want to go into the dungeons to seek their fortunes! I mean, the whole janitor gig puts food on the table, but it’s not very exciting. Plus, I didn’t quite like the experience of eating trash, which let’s be honest, was the only perk in the job. Dungeoneering on the other hand? Sign me up! I instantly stop picking up garbage— I’m an adventurer now. I beeline to the dungeon’s entrance and enter.

The place I’m greeted with is very engineered. Metal walls surround me and I see there’s only a few paths I can take. Dungeons are easy, it seems. Come at me treasure, I’m ready to be rich! I’m eager to find my riches and I wander to a door. My curiosity (and greed) gets the best of me and I decide to open it. Bright light blind my eyes and suddenly I’m teleported back outside into the streets of the spaceport.

I check my money balance. No change. Still broke. Wait, something is… screaming at me? It’s a floating skull. Is it a new friend? Doesn’t quite feel that way, because I don’t think friends constantly scream at you. A mysterious fortune teller stops me on the streets. She informs me I’ve been cursed and there’s only one way to get rid of it: I must collect 3 pieces of an ancient tablet so I can banish the floating skull.

Well, I guess some people just aren’t cut out to be dungeoneers. I go back to my janitorial duties, but I’m hungry again so I go to a vendor across my house. I’m soon going to be this guy’s loyal customer and I’ve lovingly named him the Gyro Man. He sells the cheapest gyros in the whole spaceport and that’s really the only reason why I go to him. It’s cheap but I haggle nonetheless. He raises the price from the original. “I’ll take it,” I tell him.

Now my tired body can go to sleep. But not before I write in my diary. I then close my eyes to the lullaby of the shouting, floating skull.

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I continue to live my days, picking up after the residents of this spaceport. I’m confused with some of the things I find, such as dank space weed, and stray appendages, but for the most part I’m content with just incinerating everything. I also stop by areas of worship for the different goddesses in this world, praying for luck so I can get better deal from the Gyro Man amongst other things. The faith I belong to is Beb’s. She’s the goddess of luck, poverty, and random numbers. I’m a pretty religious person so I leave candles at her shrine and also carry a lucky charm I found off the floor on me. I had a lucky necklace, but some guy wanted it for 11 dollars, so I sold it off. Okay, so maybe I’m not that religious.

Every few days, my vision starts to get blurry and I feel woozy. This signals that it’s time for me to gendershift. I’d hurry to a gendershift station and eat one of the dispensed glyphs. I instantly feel great! I get a new gender, a new identity, and the world is no longer fuzzy and confusing!

One day, in a back alley, I run into a guy (well, I use “guy” loosely. He’s more like a pile of sludge with eyes.) who says he’s got a piece of the tablet that can help me get rid of my floating skull friend. I figured I should get on with removing this curse, so I agree. All he needed were some porno mags and he’ll give me what I need. Wonderful.

See, I live in a pretty seedy part of town. The guy who sells smut happens to live basically right behind my apartment, so it’s not that hard to find. The not-so-good part is that porno mags are kind of expensive, so I become more diligent with my trash incinerating. I do sometimes try to bring my found wares to shops in the marketplace, but the shops rarely want what I’m selling. I also never really want what they’re selling, so I guess I don’t blame them. I just don’t have money to buy fancy swords, forks, or bird-shaped candles.

The funny thing about being poor is that muggers don’t care if you’re rich or poor. There’s dudes in red scarves who go around the streets claiming they’re patrolling and if you happen to run into them, they eat your money. They just straight up eat it and then tells you it tastes terrible and you’ll find you’ve lost half your savings. I try to avoid them, but they sometimes pop up out of nowhere. They’re also most prominent in numbers during the night, so on days when I’m too hungry to sleep, I have to try extra hard to keep my head down and avoid going their general direction.

I eventually do save up enough to buy the guy in the alley his porno mag, and true to his word he gave me a piece of the tablet. The skull continues to shout at me, not caring that I was one step closer to banishing him. I walk out of the alley with the fragment of the tablet in hand to a happy little tune being sang and played by a group of street performers. You know what? It’s probably going to turn out alright. My job isn’t the worst, and I’m really starting to enjoy my life on the spaceport! The skull screams in my face again.

Rating 8

REVIEW CODE: A complimentary PC code was provided to Brash Games for this review. Please send all review code enquiries to editor@brashgames.co.uk.

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