Hoarder is just a beautiful Polish cleaning sim from a former Darkwood dev, until you find the staircase to the very different game beneath

Also featuring contributions from makers of Superhot and Smile Guide

The co-creator of extremely good horror game Darkwood is making a cleaning simulator, comparable to PowerWash Simulator and Viscera Cleanup Detail. Or at least, something that starts out as a cleaning simulator, and may even end as a cleaning simulator, if you choose, but which harbours sunken secrets that unlock an entirely different species of game. A bit like Inscryption, yes. They're calling it Hoarder.

The development team are Byzel (Polish for mess or clutter, apparently), who are part of boardgame company Awaken Realms. They're led by Acid Wizard co-founder Gustaw Stachaszewski, and include a few of the people behind time management FPS Superhot and Youtube horror show Poradnik Uśmiechu, or Smile Guide. I have a Hoarder announcement trailer for you, and it is quite the thing, though I encourage you to stop at the staircase part if you don't want to spoil certain discoveries.

This is one of the rare occasions when I'm reluctant to share details from the press release, because I feel like it's giving far too much away. "This is an adventure game with horror elements, not tied to a single genre," the developers explain. "It begins as an atmospheric take on the cleaning simulator formula. The player is tasked with decluttering the house of a hoarder couple.

"As the cleaning progresses, they uncover details about the previous inhabitants and what happened to them," the release goes on. "A mystery slowly takes shape, but it’s up to the player whether they want to follow it. If they earn enough cash through cleaning, they can simply end the game there by buying a ticket for a dream vacation."

The house looks like a joy to pick through. This is some of the prettiest detritus and bricabrac I've seen in a game, a wonder cabinet of mussed bedclothes, tracked grime, dusty bottles, canted vinyls and skinned lampshades. There are tickbox objectives to help you sift valuables from the quagmire, and a magic dumpster where you can sell it all off.

The art balances strong, nostalgic colours against a welter of scuffs and stains: it's like the Jalopy edition of Blue Prince. Many blissful hours might be spent here, I suspect, thinning the pile back to the walls and having irate phone conversations with your grumpy employer Darek. But there is also an altar tapestry depicting some rubbery Messianic figures, with eyes like screwed-in icicles. There is a door, and there is a staircase.

"If [players] choose to venture further, they will find themselves in an environment in stark contrast to everything they’ve experienced so far," the press release continues. "The established rules of gameplay begin to break down. Quest descriptions and markers become corrupted. The familiar mechanics of the cleaning simulator are gone."

If you've watched the trailer in full, you'll already know broadly what to expect from the game beneath the game. I'm assuming there are only two kinds of game in play - perhaps the reason Awaken Realms are so willing to share so much in advance is that this is really just the overture to something even more confounding. Who knew the amygdala-coddling medium of the cleaning sim could be a portal to such adventures. The cleaning sim layer doesn't evaporate once you've walked down that fateful staircase; rather, it becomes a way of fuelling and furthering the enigma beneath.

You can find out more about Hoarder on Steam. There is, sadly, no release date yet. I'll just have to settle for decluttering my own apartment for the moment. I don't have a creepy altar but I do have a bunch of old ponchos that look like serial killers, in the right conditions.

Spinning back to the Darkwood connection, Acid Wizard recently handed the series over to Pathologic devs Ice Pick Lodge, in a truly nightmarish display of birds of a feather flocking together. Pathologic's Darkwood 2 retains the original's putrid top-down perspective but transports the proceedings to the dregs of the Aral Sea. I'm looking forward to it, but I'm sad that Acid Wizard are no longer in charge, so it's great to see one of Darkwood's original devs getting up to a wholly different kind of deeply unnerving nonsense.