Developer/publisher Thunderful (Image & Form)

Format PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series

Origin Sweden

Release December

A s he guides us into another alien cavern stained with black goo, oozing like sentient tar, we find ourselves wondering about the state of game director Ulf Hartelius’s living room. “This game is perfect for anyone who doesn’t enjoy cleaning, but enjoys having cleaned,” he says, sucking up a phlegmy deposit with player-character Rani’s wrist-mounted hoover. “Which is me. I don’t like the act of cleaning, but I love just after it’s been done.” He pulls one last gobbet loose. “And that’s kind of what you get in this game. Because the cleaning itself is done in hyper-speed – it takes a couple of seconds and you’re instantly rewarded.”

He’s not wrong. With all that gunk shifted, the cavern blooms into life. As plants spring up from rock, it does indeed tickle the same part of us that takes satisfaction from surveying a freshly sparkling home. This tidy-up has in-game benefits, too, a plant bridge unfurling like some enormous tongue and granting access to the next area.

This is The Gunk’s core mechanic: a spin on the vacuum-cleaning antics of Luigi’s Mansion, where your targets aren’t ghosts but clouds of muck. As you’d expect from the maker of the SteamWorld games, though, Image & Form is ready to squeeze this simple idea for everything it’s worth. Rani’s huge power-fist gadget can also be used to grab bits of friendly alien flora: seeds that can be planted to grow into platforms, or explosive fruits that can be launched at loose areas of wall.