I've talked about my bizarre penchant for RuneStorm's Viscera Cleanup Detail a few times before - most recently while compiling this adjusted 2015 GOTY list that includes all the 2015 games I've played this year and last - but rarely in any great detail. Giant Bomb demonstrated a rough outline of the game via this Unfinished and a brief stint with the alpha build on PK Thunder's Worth Playing series, and while people might be able to glean the "you clean up viscera" part from those videos (and from the title of the game, even), there's actually a great deal more that goes into a proper janitorial decontamination of the game's many movie-reference-laden levels that most are entirely oblivious about. I mean, they're probably happy to be oblivious about the menial and disgusting labor involved with being a one-man sci-fi hazmat crew working on the cheap, but I don't write articles to make people happy consarnit.

Anyhoo, since I spend way too much time on this game already, I thought I'd enumerate what exactly goes into a thorough Viscera Cleanup Detail session. Not just the basics, but everything that the game tracks towards that elusive 100%+ performance review and a shiny new "Employee of the Month" placard with which to decorate your office, along with any weird gross keepsakes you decide to take home with you. I'll do this in the same approximate step-by-step process that I mentally follow while on the job, to give you all some idea of the deceptively in-depth nature of the game's process.

1) Locate the furnace.

The furnace is the linchpin of any clean-up job. You need to dispose of a lot of gooey trash, and only the Flames of Gehenna itself will suffice. Well, mostly, as there are a few stages where the furnace is replaced with something equally final. As the center of the operation, you are beholden to begin your clean-up in the same room as the furnace and continue outwards from there.

Important tip: Open one of the furnace doors first before you start throwing garbage and dead people at it. If you open both doors, don't throw anything directly through out the opposite side. Viscera is difficult enough to clean up when it isn't on fire.

2) Locate the Slosh-O-Matic Bucket Dispenser, the What-A-Load Bin Dispenser, the Punchomatic, the iVend Supply Machine and the Laser Welder.

The tools of the trade. The major ones are the first two: you need a steady supply of buckets and bins while working, the former to clean up blood splashes and other liquid messes (the game draws the line at human waste, fortunately, though you could argue some of these fluids are even worse) and the latter to carry smaller trash items to the furnace in bulk. The Punchomatic computer is required to clock out, and you earn extra by "clocking out" the corpses by running their ID Tags past the device. Each corpse has their own tag, usually lying not so far away from wherever the torso ended up. I'll talk about the other two appliances in steps closer to the end.

The levels can be annoyingly inconsistent about where they put all this stuff. Occasionally, like Hydroponic Hell, the three major facilities are in the same starting room. Other times, they're stretched across the level. In those cases, I tend to grab several buckets/bins at once and stash them somewhere near where I'm working so I'm not always running back and forth.

3) Start the cleaning cycle.

Once you have everything, or at least know where everything is, you can start. I generally go with the floor pools first, since walking through them leads to footprints that need to be cleaned up later. Large trash items, like torsos and alien limbs, get carried directly to the furnace while smaller items like bullet casings and aluminum cans get thrown into a bin for the sake of convenience. Viscera pieces will leave blood splashes if you jostle or drop them, so they're a top priority. After that are wall splashes; depending on how violently those scientists and workers got destroyed by their own hubris via the vaguely defined biological or mechanical threat that ended them, you might have to mop fairly high up on walls, if not the ceiling as well. Some levels have a portable elevator cherry-picker thing to help with those, but that device can be awfully tetchy at times.

This step is definitely the meat of the game, so to speak. Each room tends to be full of carcasses and garbage to collect, and each level presents its own little quandaries and obstacles to figure out. The Unreal Engine has a torrid, tempestuous on-off affair with realistic physics, and so carting around buckets and bins filled with unmentionable human detritus can be an exercise in suspense. Will I hit an invisible bump and send everything flying? Do I really have to take the stairs or is there another way around? Have I ensured that the ground isn't littered with furniture or crates that will cause me to faceplant directly into this pile of severed alien dinguses (or dingii, as the Latin would have it) that I've jammed into this large yellow trash receptacle? Viscera Cleanup Detail doesn't have an antagonist per se but there are several abstract elements that might quality, from the hostile non-human forces that began the fracas and now lie dead alongside their victims to the callous, faceless bureaucracy that sent you on your way to the woefully inadequate and occasionally spiteful tools at your disposal - some of the dispensers just spit out human body parts at random intervals, just because. However, I'd say the game engine's poor attempts at replicating Newton's Laws for its virtual facsimile of real life is routinely the greatest foe a prospective space janitor will face.

Incidentally, if you aren't sure which items are trash, leave them be for step #6. Or burn them, but that requires adding more work to the docket. I generally avoid the latter if I can help it.

4) Everything's better with lasers.

At this time, you'll want to have found the Laser Welder weapon and have it handy nearby. If your level has, let's say, some battle damage to take care of the welder is the only way to fix it. This includes bullet holes and other types of weapon scarring damage to the walls and furniture. Sometimes a level won't have any of this but still have a laser welder somewhere, because a secondary purpose of the welder is to burn trash you don't feel like carting back to the furnace. Incinerating garbage with a laser rifle sure sounds like a fun drunken time with friends, but it's far too easy to set the entire level on fire and have even more ash and soot to mop up. Plus, if you accidentally melt a barrel or something, that turns it into trash that you have to clean up. Best to remember that you're a janitor and not a space marine and leave the superheated plasma to the professionals.

Absolutely destroy the laser welder in the furnace once you're absolutely certain you don't need it any more. You wouldn't want some kid to find it.

5) A supplies attack.

Check the iVend machine, if there is one. All iVend machines distribute lanterns and flares - they're completely useless, except to light up darker parts of the level as a mercy for those who don't know how gamma sliders work. Most of them distribute first aid supplies too: these are for all the empty first aid wall fixtures throughout the level, and restocking them is also part of the performance review. Because first aid wall fixtures keep themselves closed through hope and dreams, you'll want to avoid walking near one if you've restocked it because it'll collapse and vomit out its first aid supplies if you even look at them funny. I generally ensure that they're the last bit of work I need to do.

The iVend machine can often have other items too. These might also be required for restocking parts of the level, as per your vague instructions when you start. This might be seeds to replenish the empty trays in a hydroponics lab, or alien embryos to keep a laboratory running, or replacement ceiling gun turrets for the ones a rampaging ED-209 blew up (maybe don't give those guys ammo though; I found that out the hard/painful way). Usually, if there's a level-unique item in the vending machine, figure out where it needs to go and restock every other instance of same.

6) Whither the Sniffer?

The Sniffer is a handy tool for detecting anything the game registers as "undesirable". It's quite perceptive about this, which sometimes necessitates some searching around to figure out what it's bleeping on about. The bleeps get louder as you near the problem area in question, which can range from usual trash to splashes to bullet holes to really anything that you're there to fix or clean. What complicates matters, which is to say makes it take twice as long as it needs to be like with any of the rest of this game's "half-good" technology, is that the Sniffer has two modes: organic and inorganic. Best to sweep the entire stage for both, making sure that you just get the low-frequency "default" Sniffer noise. This is the step to polish off absolutely anything you might have missed. The Sniffer also works the other way too, helping you determine if some random box is actually garbage or not. Chances are, if it's not broken or bloody you can leave it be.

And don't worry if the Sniffer reacts poorly to your souvenir trunk and the items you've secreted away in there. It doesn't know what you intend to do with those. It's too innocent.

7) Close the damn furnace doors.

An easy step to miss, but an important one nonetheless. The game will dock your performance score if you let Ol' Fumey have at the relatively clean air of the level in the hours and days after you leave and before normal operations resume. At this point, you've hopefully burned everything you wanted to anyway.

8) Stacking the odds.

For some bonus score, you can quickly scan the floors for a yellow demarcation that indicates a barrel or crate enclosure, and then carry every instance of the appropriate cargo type to that zone. It's not essential, but it's an easy way to rack up some extra credit to redress any mistakes or leftovers you might have missed. Usually you just get the one zone for each cargo type, but if there's multiple stories the game will sometimes do you a solid by having a zone for each floor in the level.

You can even make a game out of it: see how many crates you can pile up in an hour, and then try to break that record!

(If you actually do this part, you are truly lost. There are non-profit organizations that can help, however.)

9) Bring up the console and type "KillNearestMess" a few times.

Just to be sure. Think of it as "janitor magic".

10) Clock out.

And there you have a successful cleanup operation. Upon reaching the office, you should get your results and a few extra notices hanging in various spots around this little hub zone. The notices tend to include anonymous death threats from your fellow janitors - those cards! - and a certificate of congratulations from whichever inspector looked over your work. You'll also get news headlines about the disasters caused by your mistakes: cults formed over an errant blood spill; people accidentally choking on a loose bullet casing they mistook for a Cheeto; seeing Space Jesus after inhaling the fumes from a left open furnace. The usual clickbait headlines. You can always load the last auto-save and fix these errors for a last-minute score boost, or just shrug and quit to desktop to resume all those social/professional responsibilities you left on hold.

The office itself is something of a mini-level, if you choose to start exploring behind lockers and figuring out the passcodes to its various locked doors. There's a bit of a meta-plot concerning a former employee turned psychopathic cannibal that you can follow by finding his notes in various levels. The office is also where you can stash your keepsakes, from the goofy Easter eggs from other games like Duke Nukem's shades or Isaac Clarke's distinctive helmet, or the literal Easter eggs the game also has. The office environment stays static throughout the whole game, so you'll always find it just as you left it. There's something cozy and comfortable about that, even if you've begun using the shelving to start a severed head collection. Hey, a guy's gotta have hobbies with a 9-5 grind like this.

I don't think I've adequately illustrated the appeal of this game by explicating deeply upon its far-too-exact standards for success, but it does prove two things: A) the game is far more elaborate than spending a few hours simply picking up paper cups, bags of chips and dismembered extraterrestrial crotches and casting them into the nondiscriminatory flames, and B) if you're going to build a game to ensnare the OCD, you'd better be every bit as anal as they are. It's an instinctive thing among our type, one that can't easily be disguised; we can smell your anal from a mile away, so don't leave us wanting.

A lot of the time you'll play a game and realize that it doesn't really understand you or what you want out of this great hobby of ours, which can suck. Occasionally, though, you'll come across a game that understands you and your foibles far too well, and that's debatably even worse.