History VideoGame / VisceraCleanupDetail

''Viscera Cleanup Detail'' is an indie first-person simulator game, developed by Runestorm. It entered UsefulNotes/{{Steam}} Early Access in April 2014 and was [[https://store.steampowered.com/app/246900/Viscera_Cleanup_Detail/ fully released in October 2015.]]

* TheLastOfTheseIsNotLikeTheOthers: The cloning labs in ''The Vulcan Affair'' contain all the different models of aliens/mutants from previous levels (technically making these their first appearances, since the mission is set in 1975), and then Hitler's head and spine.

[[quoteright:320:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/440c00b8a19d882fb95b1d1d3b7fb478.png]][[caption-width-right:320:"Oh, it's a dirty job but someone's gotta do it!"]]

You enter each level with four tools: A mop for cleaning up blood, soot, and other fluids; a "sniffer" that can detect nearby messes; a [=PDA=] for taking notes; and your hands for picking up trash. Additional tools such as brooms, shovels, and welding lasers can be found within the level. Vending machines produce buckets for cleaning mops, bins for collecting trash, and other useful items while incinerators dispose of any trash. At the end of your shift, the Company will [[GameplayGrading evaluate your performance]] based on how thoroughly the site was cleaned. Bonus points can be earned by stowing cargo properly, filling out paperwork, and performing other menial tasks.

* AntiFrustrationFeatures

* FinaglesLaw: If you neglect to leave your workspace totally spotless, a news article will appear detailing how it caused something to go improbably wrong. Left a bucket sitting around? Someone trips over it and breaks their neck. Missed a bullet hole? Some poor sap's going to have a [=PTSD=] flashback and go on a rampage. Leave the incinerator door open? Somebody ''will'' fall into it. [[NiceJobBreakingItHero Nice job breaking it, janitor.]]

** Possibly justified if real life is anything to go by, since you ''are'' dealing with blood, dead bodies, and other biohazards in this game. In schools and workplaces, even a simple nosebleed is a huge biological hazard and must be treated with concern due to the possibility of transmitting bloodborne illnesses, so it’s understandable that leaving behind a few blood smears would provoke such a response.
* UnintentionallyUnwinnable: There's nothing stopping smaller items (gibs, etc) from wedging themselves outside of the map geometry. You get in trouble for it making a mess on the other side too.

* WouldHurtAChild: Since among the randomized ages your character is assigned can be as young as 16-17, Aerospace Sanitation could fall into this trope, as it shows that they’re not above sending out ''teenagers'' to handle dead bodies and other biological hazards, not to mention the fact that it’s possible to be killed in certain maps. There’s also the other employees that send you death threats if you do a good enough job.

** Briefings usually warn that the location is most likely safe but there are no guarantees. The J-HARM malfunctions frequently as do the vending machines, the furnace apparently emits toxic gases, and any on-site deaths merely result in another employee being sent in with no delay.

* SuperOCD: You will probably develop this if you want to get a good score in this game.

*** The map Athena's Wrath took this UpToEleven; there are several very high windows holding rubbish, blood splatters, giblets, and a Plasma Welder. The map would have been a BreatherLevel had the player had the proper tool to easily reach the window ledges; missing them causes you to miss out on a massive amount of cleaning and fixable bullet holes.

* UnintentionallyUnwinnable: There's nothing stopping smaller items (gibs, etc) from wedging themselves outside of the map geometry. [[UpToEleven You get in trouble for it making a mess on the other side too.]]

The year is 2183 and you are a janitor working for Aerospace Sanitation Inc. The Company takes contract work from other space-faring corporations and as a result you are sent to clean up various space stations, colonies, and ships. No problem, you say? Not when these locations have been the sites of major catastrophes, leaving them one giant mess of body parts, gore, blood, shell casings, bullet holes, [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking and rubbish]]. Your job is to take out the trash and leave the place sparkling.

You enter each level with four tools: A mop for cleaning up blood, soot, and other fluids; a "sniffer" that can detect nearby messes; a [=PDA=] for taking notes; and your hands for picking up trash. Additional tools such as brooms, shovels, and welding lasers can be found within the level. Vending machines produce buckets for cleaning mops, bins for collecting trash, and other useful items while incinerators dispose of any trash. At the end of your shift the Company will [[GameplayGrading evaluate your performance]] based on how thoroughly the site was cleaned. Bonus points can be earned by stowing cargo properly, filling out paperwork, and performing other menial tasks.

* AccentuateTheNegative: Leave a single piece of rubbish, bullet hole or drop of blood uncleaned and your co-workers will give you feedback that makes you look like the worst employee in the world.

** While nothing you can do will result in a GameOver, doing a poor job will result in memos detailing your demotion, pay cuts, reduced office size, and lost spot on the requisition wait list. The worst that can happen is being fired, which destroys any items collected in your Office. Contrarily, doing a good job will result in a notification of these things getting improved and an "Employee of the Month" picture to hang on their wall. Notably despite all the memos about gaining or losing privileges, nothing actually changes about your office.
** Many mission briefings shows signs of the disconnect between the administration and janitors. This ranges from casually dismissing potential safety hazards and hostile aliens to casually dismissing the ''death'' of the previous janitor assigned to the job.

* AllThereInTheManual: There is no hint in-game to how to complete the Bob storyline. [[spoiler:The player must collect all of Bob's notes from other levels, then place them on the altar in "Unearthly Excavation". Complicating this is that if the player simply follows the levels as they appear in order in the game, at least one Bob note appears ''after'' Unearthly Excavation, meaning that if you complete all the levels in order, to find Bob you then have to go back and do Unearthly Excavation again.]]

** Spilled buckets don't make stains in zero-gravity.

* CouldntFindAPen: Messages written in human blood are common, left by either the victims or killers depending on situation. They get cleaned up like the rest of the blood.
* CrapsackWorld: Let's not beat around the bush, life in this universe ''sucks''. Even ignoring the monsters and {{Gorn}}-inducing catastrophes, this is a universe packed full of corrupt [[MegaCorp mega corporations]] who are unapologetic about putting their workers in harm's way and squeezing every last cent out of normal people. And Aerospace Sanitation is no better, being a company that treats its workers like crap, views them all as expendable and doesn't take kindly to any kind of insubordination or protest, as the Uprinsing level demonstrates. Worse is that it's packed full of spiteful [[JerkAss jerkasses]] at best and [[EntitledBastard entitled]], AxCrazy psychos at worst. Do well? They send you jealous death threats. Do badly? They KickTheDog by sending you letters cheering your firing. [[spoiler:Even worse is that according to Bob's notes, the company itself has ties to several illegal operations throughout the galaxy]]. Honestly, it's enough to make you want to ''try'' to get the company shut down with a horrible performance sometimes.
* CrateExpectations: Crates and barrels of varying design are scattered around every level. Stowing them in marked cargo areas rewards bonus points, which requires careful stacking due to limited space.
* {{Crawl}}: The News Ticker machine appears in some maps and streams a number of stories. The stories largely focus on the "heroes" who created the messes you're cleaning up and the various antics of their new celebrity status.

* FakeLongevity: On larger maps vending machines and incinerators located in out of the way spots significantly increase the game length solely due to increasing the amount of time you spend walking back and forth. Even worse are maps where the machines are not grouped together but scattered around.

* GaleForceSound: "The Bigbanger Supernova Edition" in-game radio. While the regular Bigbangs won a contest by having "Earth-shattering" loudness, they only produce enough sound to be heard throughout the level and bounce around a bit. The "Supernova" edition on the other hand will automatically default to its loudest setting, which is louder than any other effect in the game. At the same time it will shake nearby objects, send smaller objects flying, and even shake the bucket machines and bin machines in to producing buckets and bins. Oh, and it also ignites any nearby flares or explosives. The radio is only encountered in the Unearthly Excavation level which coincidentally has a large amount of explosives.

** The player works for a company contracted to maintain various space stations and colonies. Memos the player can read in their office implies that janitors are expected to do poor jobs. The union covers for janitors who do incomplete jobs, though it's not competent enough to ensure properly functioning equipment or job safety. Your office is located on a space station which is home to many of the other maps, all of which have suffered some catastrophe unrelated to one another within the same year.

* KillItWithFire: The main way of getting rid of giblets, shell casings and rubbish; you can either throw them into an incinerator, or in certain maps, burn them away with the Plasma Welder.

** In the Office there are three locked doors hiding [[spoiler:Bob's "collection", Bob's special collection, and Dave's corpse]]. They have security codes which can be determined based on the panel flickering when a correct number is entered. (In fact, all keypad codes behave this way, making it possible to brute force the combinations in the event the code clue is cleaned up before the door is unlocked.) A fourth door requires a keycard.

* MyGodWhatHaveIDone: [[spoiler:For all of Bob's further descent into madness over the course of the story he does display genuine remorse for killing Dave. In his final note he pleads for forgiveness and asks whoever reads the note that if he doesn't make it out of the excavation site alive to give Dave a proper burial, revealing where his body is. Of course you've already discovered Dave by this point and, tragically, likely disposed of his remains.]]

* NonActionSnarker: The janitor of the ''Shadow Warrior''-themed stand-alone level is far more talkative than the others, making small body-part related quips to himself and making frustrations with things falling over known.

** Gravity Drive has two open shafts with no guardrails which lead to thirty foot plunges, one of them directly onto the titular spiky, rotating engine.

** Athena's Wrath was home to research on sentient alien plantlife, specifically breeding to create variants capable of guard duty. Things went predictably sour.

* PunnyName: While most name tags are randomly generated, some are pre-determined and obvious puns. For example, in the underwater Paintenance Tunnel level there are names such as Dr. Pescador[[labelnote:*]]fisherman[[/labelnote]], George Seaman, and Keel Ovaar.

* SceneryPorn: Some of the levels are surprisingly breath-taking once cleaned and the stackables are moved to their zones.

* TestosteronePoisoning: The game pokes fun at the over-the-top violence of video game protagonists with their mission orders and various news stories. The orders include secondary objectives such as "Kick alien ass!" while news stories involve them being hyper violent and one giving a near-incomprehensible speech at an academy which boiled down to "Those bastards gotta pay! THEY GOTTA PAY!!"

** Gravity Drive has a two-door airlock system which ''will'' kill any janitor inside if depressurized. It's also the only way to get rid of trash for the level.

* TwentyMinutesIntoThePast: While most of the game is set in the 2180s, ''The Vulcan Affair'' is set in 1975, still using the same cloned janitors and bucket/bin producing appliances.

* SchmuckBait: Do ''not'' put a lantern into a bucket of water.

* WouldHurtAChild: Since among the randomized ages your character is assigned can be as young as 16-17, Aerospace Sanitation Inc. could fall into this trope, as it shows that they’re not above sending out ''teenagers'' to handle dead bodies and other biological hazards, not to mention the fact that it’s possible to be killed in certain maps. There’s also the other janitors that send you death threats if you do a good enough job.

* UnwinnablebyMistake: There's nothing stopping smaller items (gibs, etc) from wedging themselves outside of the map geometry. [[UpToEleven You get in trouble for it making a mess on the other side too.]]

* CrapsackWorld: Let's not beat around the bush, life in this universe ''sucks''. Even ignoring the monsters and {{Gorn}}-inducing catastrophes, this is a universe packed full of corrupt [[MegaCorp mega corporations]] who are unapologetic about putting their workers in harm's way and squeezing every last cent out of normal people. And Aerospace Sanitation is no better, being a company that treats its workers like crap, views them all as expendable and doesn't take kindly to any kind of insubordination or protest, as the Uprinsing level demonstrates. Worse is that it's packed full of spiteful [[JerkAss jerkasses]] at best and [[EntitledBastard entitled]], AxCrazy psychos at worst. Do well? They send you jealous death threats. Do badly? They KickTheDog by sending you letters cheering your firing. [[spoiler:Worse is that according to Bob's notes, the company itself has ties to several illegal operations throughout the galaxy]]. Honestly, it's enough to make you want to ''try'' to get the company shut down with a horrible performance sometimes.

*** The map Athena's Wrath took this UpToEleven; there are several very high windows holding rubbish, blood splatters, giblets, and a Plasma Welder. The map would have been a BreatherLevel had the player had the proper tool to easily reach the window ledges; without them a massive amount of cleaning cannot be done and the bullet holes cannot be repaired.

Have you ever played through a FirstPersonShooter or watched an action-packed sci-fi movie with {{Gorn}}, seen somebody be reduced to LudicrousGibs and thought "Boy, I feel sorry for the poor schmuck has to clean ''that'' up"?

Have you ever played through a FirstPersonShooter or watched a sci-fi movie, seen somebody be reduced to LudicrousGibs and thought "Boy, I feel sorry for whoever has to clean ''that'' up"?

In ''Viscera Cleanup Detail'', that "whoever" is ''you''.

[[IncrediblyLameFun Trust us]], [[SugarWiki/BetterThanItSounds it's more fun than it sounds]].

''Viscera Cleanup Detail'' is an indie first-person simulator game, developed by Runestorm. It entered UsefulNotes/{{Steam}} Early Access in April 2014 and was fully released in October 2015.