Cleaner Company Controls Guide

Cleaner Company is a first-person sci-fi cleaning sim with online co-op for one to four players, built by Wildflame Studio and published by Mythwright for a 2026 Steam and Epic launch. Steam lists full controller support alongside mouse and keyboard play. Exact default keybinds can shift between playtest, the Flying Canteen demo, and launch patches—so this page teaches control habits and setup checks you should verify in the in-game Settings menu rather than treating any fan table as immutable scripture.

Use this guide with Cleaning Equipment, Getting Started, and the Co-op Guide. If a bind feels wrong on day one, remap it before you blame the mop.

Before you launch: settings pass

1. Open Settings and find keyboard, mouse, and gamepad tabs if present.
2. Confirm look sensitivity is low enough for precise stain edges; cleaning sims punish twitchy cameras.
3. Check invert look, vibration, and dead zones on controllers—Steam’s full controller support is useless if stick drift eats your aim.
4. Bind interact, use tool, secondary mode, swap/previous tool, and drop to keys you can hit without looking down.
5. Set push-to-talk or party chat in your overlay (Steam, Discord) so callouts do not fight game audio.
6. Revisit binds after the first Flying Canteen run; muscle memory from other FPS titles may collide with cleaning actions.

Never assume a YouTube overlay matches your build. When in doubt, the pause menu wins.

Core action groups

Treat the control scheme as five families:

Movement and camera

Expect standard first-person locomotion: move, sprint, jump/crouch if available, and freelook. In zero-g flavored spaces or gravity shifts called out in marketing, move slower until you understand how momentum interacts with wet floors. Sliding through a blood pool is funny once and expensive every time after.

Primary clean action

Your main tool trigger—mop stroke, vacuum pull, washer blast, or grinder feed—should sit on the most comfortable mouse button or trigger. Practice short controlled bursts. Holding a blast forever often creates splashback or wastes resources depending on the tool fantasy.

Secondary / aim / alternate mode

Many cleaning and combat games place an alternate mode on the opposite mouse button or left trigger (focus spray, aim down sights, charged wash). Learn what your build does in a quiet corner of the Flying Canteen before a Screamer teaches you mid-fight.

Interact, pickup, drop

Physics chaos means props, limbs, and tools end up everywhere. Dedicate comfortable binds to pick up, carry, place, and drop. Dropping a dirty tool on a clean floor is a classic friendslop own-goal.

Combat and panic buttons

When monsters are enabled, you need instant access to weapon fire, reload if applicable, and a quick swap back to cleaning tools after the threat dies—because corpses and splatters become new work orders. Difficulty can disable monsters entirely; agree as a lobby before you practice combat binds.

Mouse and keyboard habits

• Keep tool swap on scroll wheel or number keys, not both fighting each other.
• Separate interact from fire so you do not shoot a teammate while trying to pick up a bucket.
• Use a slightly lower horizontal sensitivity than your competitive FPS main; stain edges need precision.
• Bind a “stop sprint” mental rule near wet rooms—sprint is how physics lawsuits start.
• If the demo offers a radial tool wheel, practice opening it without freezing in doorways.

Controller habits

Steam advertises full controller support, including Xbox controllers in the store feature set. On pad:

• Put clean/fire on triggers you can feather.
• Use bumpers for swap or interact if face buttons are crowded.
• Raise inner dead zones if micro-aim jitters smear mop lines.
• Enable any aim assist options only after testing on a small stain—over-assist can overshoot corners.
• Play seated with a clear thumb path; marathon cleaning sessions punish bad posture as much as bad binds.

Co-op control culture

Hardware binds do not fix bad communication. Before a 2–4 player session:

• Decide who watches doors while others clean.
• Call “wet floor,” “grinder blocked,” and “threat left” as short phrases.
• Avoid four people powerwashing the same tile.
• If someone remaps mid-mission, say so—shared muscle-memory callouts break silently.

Party links and official Discord access are collected on the Links Hub. For threat-specific habits, read Survive Threats.

Accessibility and comfort

• Remap anything that hurts your hands; cleaning loops are repetitive by design.
• Toggle subtitles and language options (Steam lists many interface languages) if you rely on audio cues less.
• Cap frame rate if high FPS makes look feel too light on your mousepad.
• Take breaks—orbital janitorial work is an endurance sport.

Practice drill (ten minutes)

1. Enter a quiet demo room.
2. Sweep the camera along baseboards without swinging the tool.
3. Clean one stain with short taps, then one with a long hold; note the difference.
4. Swap tools twice under a self-imposed five-second timer.
5. Pick up and place three props without knocking a fourth.
6. If monsters are on, clear one encounter, then immediately swap back to mop and finish the leftover mess.

Complete that drill once per patch week and your Flying Canteen times will drop without needing secret tech.

Related pages

• Tools Hub — parent index.
• Cleaning Equipment — what each tool is for.
• System Requirements — PC readiness.
• Demo Walkthrough — apply binds on the Flying Canteen route.
• Updates Hub — patch notes that might reshuffle defaults.

Confirm every bind in your build’s Settings screen, then build habits that keep floors clean and friends un-splattered. That is the Star Wipers way.