Games Like Sludgineers: Cozy Cleaning and Incremental Picks

Sludgineers runs about 5–6 hours, so “what next?” comes up fast. These pages cover the closest neighbours — other cozy cleaning games, other active incrementals, and JankyBot, the other game by Sludgineers developer Snickerdoodle Games.

Where to go next

Two directions to search in

Sludgineers sits at an intersection, and which half you liked determines what you should play next.

The neighbours at a glance

How we pick what goes on these pages

Recommendation lists for a game as new as Sludgineers are easy to pad. The temptation is to name a dozen vaguely cozy titles, because a longer list looks more useful. We keep these short on purpose and apply three tests before a game is recommended alongside Sludgineers:

1. Is it verifiably real, with confirmable details? Developer, release date, price bracket and review standing must all check out. Three titles that appear in Google's related searches for Sludgineers fail this test today, and we say so rather than quietly dropping them.
2. Does it replace a specific half of Sludgineers? Vague tonal similarity is not enough. Each pick names which part — the cleaning act, the incremental curve, or the developer — it actually stands in for.
3. Would we tell a friend to buy it? On our Sludgineers vs Moldwasher page we conclude Moldwasher is the better choice for several kinds of player. Nothing here is a sponsored placement, and no link on this wiki earns commission.

Why nothing is a clean substitute

It is worth setting expectations. Sludgineers is short, and the instinct after finishing it is to look for “the same thing but longer”. That does not really exist, because the specific combination is rare: a hands-on cleaning verb, a two-currency economy, a refinery converting raw material into upgrade currency, and an automation payoff that changes how the late game plays.

Cleaning games generally stop at tool upgrades. Incrementals generally have no physical act at all. So the honest recommendation is to work out which half you were enjoying and chase that, which is exactly how our full list is organised.

Before you move on

Two things worth checking first. If you finished Sludgineers quickly, you may have finished it inefficiently — a second run with a better upgrade order plays noticeably differently, and most players leave a handful of the 25 achievements on the table. And if length was your complaint, the developers have a prestige system on a ‘consider’ list; that single feature would change the game's runtime completely.

What Sludgineers does that few others do

Worth being honest about: the specific blend is unusual. Most cleaning games are pure cleaning — no compounding economy underneath. Most incremental games are abstract — numbers and buttons, no hands-on act. Sludgineers puts a genuine incremental economy under a genuine cleaning game, with a refinery and a resource loop tying them together.

That means nothing is a perfect substitute. The recommendations on these pages are honest about which half of Sludgineers each one replaces. And if what you actually wanted was co-op, note that Sludgineers is single-player only — that is a real reason to look elsewhere.

Fact-checked against the official Steam store page, the developer FAQ thread and in-game screenshots. Last verified 26 August 2026.