Sean E. Britten

Hey folks!! Welcome to my walkthrough for Sewer Sweeper – the 1991 sidescroller from Rlyeh Games. This game is super, super addictive, but beating it is going to take a lot of dedication and a little bit of sacrifice!!

– doggboyy420

Trigger Warning: Self-Harm

======

***************************

SEWER SWEEPER WALKTHROUGH VER 1.1

by doggboyy420 – “No one carries the doggboyy!”

***************************

***************************

From what I can find online Sewer Sweeper is a 1991 sidescroller from Rlyeh Games – but there’s not a lot of info out there about it, folks!

There was an arcade version and I guess a home version that came out on some system called a Tindalos Box but I can’t find much info on that either.

I found an arcade with this game where my family went on holiday one time and I was pretty obssessed. I played it all afternoon but I couldn’t even beat the first lvl!! I couldnt forget about it – but when we went back to the same place next year the whole arcade had burned down so I didn’t get to play it again until I found this online emulator.  You might be able to fnd an original arcade version or an emulator like I did.

Sewer Sweeper is a pretty unqiue game I think becaue unlike other games which give you powerups as you play or whatever to help you this game like gives you power-downs or it like depowers your character more and more and makes it harder even as the actual lvls get more challenging.

You play as the Sewer Sweeper, a character in a green biohazard suit or whatever with a toolbelt and gasmask. Your meant to be cleaning up the sewers under the city I guess it isnt really clear but it still sucks you in a lot.

CONTROLS

Joystick / Arrow Keys – Movement

A Button – Use Weapon

B Button – lay Trap

Z Button – Jump

LVL 1.

You’re main enemy in this level are the purple rats. You don’t start with any weapons so all you can do is avoid them and lay traps but it’s pretty easy – but you gots to lay the traps every few steps or the rats will come up behind you pretty fast. Avoid the sewage water that drops from above too because that will hurt you but its pretty straightforward..

If you take the tunnel on the right you’ll just find a room full of rats and youve got to be pretty quick or they’ll kill you even if you have a weapon. Go into the tunnel on the left – in there you’ll find your First weapon – The Plunger. You need that for what happens next. Then take the middle tunnel and go down the ladder and that’s where you find the First Boss = THE RAT-KING.

The RAT-KING is a huge mutant blob of a rat that looks like a bunch of rats all mashed together. He’s too fat to move and just spits more rats at you. Lay some traps if you can right away that will help. I couldn’t get past this bit when I played the arcade verion – it takes really good timing. The key is to attack one head at a time – wait until it spits a rat at you, avoid the rat, and then use the plunger to attack. Leave the head with the tiny crown until last.

When the Rat-King dies that’s when the first anti-powerup happens. It goes flat and a bunch of rats swarm out of its corpse and attack the Sewer Sweeper’s legs. There’s no way to avoid this. They eat all the meat off the bones of his lower legs and permanently reduce your speed by half for the rest of the game. What I found best here is to have a really sharp knife next to you or like a pair of those garden shears – but really sharp. You don’t need to tke all the meat off your legs but if you just find your Achilles Tendon – its like the hard thing you can feel at the back of your ankle that connects your foot to the muscles and if you can sever that it will reduce your movement speed as well so you can keep playing. Have some towels with you too for the blood??

LVL 2.

This lvl works pretty mich the same as the first one except there is water at the bottom of the screen and your facing little white alligatorss instead of rats. Keep moving forward and laying traps but you dont have to lay as many but your also slower than you were so get used to that. Avoid the sewage. There’s a couple of dead ends but you can always go back. (Correct tunnels are bottom-right-right-up.)

Second BOSS is the MUTANT ALLIGATOR!! It’s a pretty tough fight as you can’t always avoid it snapping you when it comes out of the water. Lay traps whenever you get a chance to catch the baby alligaotr’s it spawns and throw the plunger into its open jaws to take down it’s health. When it dies it does the second power-down by jumping back out of the water one last time and biting off the Sewer sweeper’s right arm. That permanently reduces the character’s attack speed and strength for the rest of the game.

Even though its the Sewer Sweeper’s right arm that getss bitten off it doesn’t really matter which one you remove so I recommend taking your left or your right whichever is your non-dominatrix hand and you don’t have to take off the whole arm you can just cut it at the wrist. Use whatever you like but obvs a normal kitchen knife isnt going to cut it (ha ha) so a chainsaw would be best or you can use an axe or something but but have a belt clamped tight around it before you begin and then you can burn it or wrap another towel around it to stop the bleeding. If your using an emulator you can change the keyboard controls so it’s easier to play with one hand but playing an arcade machine would be way harder – unless I guess you hit the buttons with you’re stump

LEVL 33.

This lvl is abit different as it is time sensitive and there is no single Boss. You have to keep climbing ahead of the water and the sewer pirahhanas to stop dying.. First tho go to the left tunnel to collect the WREnch you will need.. Press attack on thr turning things at all the sewage flows you come across to turn them off THen you have to keep climbing to  stay ahead of the rising water and the sewer pirrahnas. Go right-middle-left-right-middle as you climb.. if you pick wrong you might have time to double back but you wont have time to beat the last  part of the lvll.

in the last part of the level instead of a bss you have to use the wrench to turn off the pipes but the pirnhas keep attacking you and every time you get attacked your progress gets reset so your timing has to be perfect. when you finish the water keeps rising and the Sewer SWeper strugles for a little while, reducing your health bar permanently in half but then the water flushes you awwaay to the nexxt lvl.

Its hard to get this next bit right but if you have a bathtub you want to fill it up and then stickkk your head under the surface until your forced to take a breath but you dont want to leave it to long and you want it to be just enough that ypur chest has that weird rattly sound and feelss kind of heavyy you might not have a lot of time left to finish the game after that..
 

LV4

/these tunnels are the same just rock and insted of sewage theres – stallagtites? stallactights?  There are spikes as you move forward. The bats are super annoying becase they swop you from nowhere and are very hard to hit when youre attack is slow now and traps dont work on the ground so you have to time it justt right.

3rd boss is the big red  DEVIL BAT that breaths fire at you but its actuslly not so bad once you get used to its pattern,m Get inside its range when it breaths fire and then duck its swoop and attackk it from behind it just takes a while.. when it dies it explodes and coivers you in hot guts and this knocks your health down to a single bar so only one hit can kill you so make sure youre clothes are dryt and get some lighter fluid on youre chest and set it on fire and then you can jjump in the bath just watch out for you ankles because then you will fLL BUT YOU BURN and then you put it oit.

LLVV 55.

keep moving keep moving theres no enemies jusyt the lava and you can jump thar or it will kill you.. threres a red haze on the screen and the sewer sweepers eyes are bleeding so i think it represemts thst

the last boss is GOD in the middle of the eaerth and he throws fireballs and I guess his weakspot is the big flashing heart on his chest but you cant fight him because the sewer sweepers eyes explode as sooon as yoy see him and you cant control it anymore but i think if you copy it you can learn to see wihut seeing and you can beat it so you can learn to beat it or you can you know what it wants so ive got a screewdriver and i will update…

And I can SEE. Without eyes I can SEE HIM. He is in tunnels deep below the Earth and we do not need legs to WALK HIS PATH and we do not need hands to TOUCH HIM and we do not need lungs to SING HIS PRAISES and we do not need eyes to SEE HIM and we are HIS DREAM and our world is no more than HIS DREAM and we are less than pixels on a screen we are less than imaginings we are a DREAM and HE IS WAKING – HE IS WAKING.

***************************

Insert Coin to Continue

***************************

doggboy420 – “No one carries the doggboyy!”

======

Sean: A few months ago I went through a phase where I played a bunch of retro games I remembered from when I was a kid, Commander Keen, Crystal Caves, both of those I had on the first computer my family ever had which I think would’ve been one of the original Ataris, and Caveman Ninja: Joe & Mac. That last one in particular inspired this story. I still remember playing it for the first time in an arcade when I would’ve been just a kid and then I must have had a home version or something because I remember playing and playing it but I could rarely get past the giant Venus flytrap in the second level. I should point out I’m not actually very good at video games, although I got a hell of a lot further a few months back. Past the mammoth all the way to that fucking brontosaurus skeleton.

It’s been a while since I wrote anything playing around with narrative structure. I should do more epistolary stuff, I tend to err on the side of a standard narrative form but I find the weird ones a lot of fun. Here’s a few that play around with it if you’re interested:

Bunker (Epistolary)

Escape From AllMart (Second Person / Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Style)

Unseen (Second Person)

Invasion (All Dialogue)

Don’t They Know It’s Christmas? ((Almost) No Dialogue)

Oh, here is some very dumb trivia – obviously the escalating typos and bad grammar were a part of the narrative in this story and to make them feel natural I largely just typed very quickly and avoided correcting myself. From the point where ‘doggboyy420’ takes off their left hand, I also typed the rest of the story using only my right hand to make the typos feel more real. A mate of mine thought that sounded ridiculous but I think of that as method writing.

Thanks for reading! For more updates, you can find me on Facebook and Twitter, Reddit, and check out mostly pictures of my cat on Instagram.