The Gunk review – the SteamWorld team masters three dimensions

At the very centre of The Gunk is a neat ecological fable, so it has a sort of moral and ethical sweetness to it from the off. Crucially, though, The Gunk is also a game about tidying up, and so that moral and ethical sweetness is knotted to something else that borders on a compulsion.

The Gunk reviewPublisher: Thunderful GamesDeveloper: Image & Form, Thunderful GamesPlatform: Played on XboxAvailability: Out today on PC and Xbox (Game Pass)

This is the latest release from the team that made the glorious SteamWorld adventures, and despite the shift to 3D, it shares qualities with those games – a certain brightness, a love of layering on the detailing, and a pleasingly compact nature. Everything here is fun, and everything is interesting and clever. Once you’re through with the fun, interesting, clever stuff, the game is over. The Gunk is a treat.

And the gunk is a treat. The game casts you as one of a duo of space haulers. I think that’s the idea anyway: these two jet around the galaxy trying to find anything they can turn into energy and sell. As the game begins they land on a beautiful planet filled with weird, colourful wildlife and the promise of riches. Oh yes, and the gunk.

The gunk is black and grey and brown and deep, bloody red. Ribena from Hades! It bubbles and throbs and gets everywhere. It clogs the game’s beautifully chunky levels. At times, it moves through the air like the murmuration of some hideously infested starlings. Reader: I love the gunk. Just to see it is to know how bad it is, and to know what you want to do with it. You want to clean it up. And in The Gunk you can.