If you think hard enough you may recall a simpler time when developers put easter eggs into games with a certain snarky superiority fueled by the belief that us mere players would be so caught up in the game itself, we would never ever find them. It was a time when inside jokes could remain as such and, if you actually discovered something out of the ordinary in the game, you were well within your rights to feel that you and you alone had found something truly unique.

With the rise of the internet gaming community though, Easter eggs in games last about as long as the candy that Easter eggs hold in real life does, as gamers with seemingly super power like abilities to find things that shouldn’t have been found have proven that your occasional childhood findings were not quite as unique as you may have hoped. While some major games (the “Arkham Asylum” Easter egg and a the apparently undiscovered secret in “Shadow of the Colossus” spring to mind) do a good job keeping their biggest secrets at bay for a long period of time, eventually all secrets fall prey to those dedicated treasure hunters.

Now you can add another somewhat long running secret to the fallen, as a cryptic message in “Surgeon Simulator 2013” has been solved.

The mystery started after the “Team Fortress 2” update to the game, when it was discovered that upon completing the new surgeries, you were awarded a small statue on your desk that contained a cryptic message on the bottom. Theories ran rampant (many of them involved some sort of Valve related content) but outside of some highly educated guesses, there hasn’t been much actual progress towards figuring out what the whole thing meant.

YouTube user MattShea369 appears to have cracked the code recently, when he discovered an extremely complicated series of steps (detailed in full at the beginning of this video) that lead to the appearance of a new tape on the main menu screen that leads the user to a new outer space level where, upon opening a keypad controlled pod, you are tasked with operating on a gray alien, and replacing one of six probably vital organs whose functions, names, and looks are all very cryptic.

Besides the added challenge of trying to figure out what organs are what and a really cool new environment to play in, the content of the secret itself isn’t exactly life changing, but once again the dedication and intelligence applied to uncovering it has to be acknowledged and appreciated by gamers everywhere. Big kudos then to MattShea369 for proving once again that no gaming secret ever really remains one for long.

So let me paint a picture for you.

You’ve just saved the galaxy from a race of the most despicable, vile alien beings ever to cross the threshold to existence. After a long and brutal fight, you’ve finally achieved victory, and can now find a measure of peace while the people of several worlds build statues of you and plan holidays in your name.

However, the job isn’t done yet. See, while you were busy removing the universe of its greatest threat, you were neglecting the removal of the gunk and gore you left behind. Your likeness may be rendered in permanent remembrance, but that mess will not. Someone then will have to clean it up.

This is the rough intro to “Viscera Cleanup Detail,” a game which was recently greenlit by the Steam community for release.

It sees you fill the role of that video game character you may have once considered and pitied, but never really put much more thought into, the janitor. Specifically, you take the role of a space janitor who must deal with the cleanup of a space station that was a part of a scenario similar to the one described. Armed with your trusty mop, your job is to clean up the mess left behind, and get the station looking closer to normal.

A janitor simulator in space, this has to be one of the oddest games ever approved for mass release. Looking at video of the game, it’s difficult to see just where the appeal lies, as most of your activities appear to be just clicking on blood stains to remove them, clicking on clean water to clean your mop, and picking up chunks of alien to be incinerated. Even though it’s only currently in an alpha stage, the game has a lot of issues without clear resolutions in sight.

On the other hand, as titles like “Surgeon Simulator 2013,” “Eurotruck Simulator 2” and the very recent “Papers Please” have proven, taking an unusual or even dull concept and turning it into a video game is not necessarily a recipe for disaster, and can in fact lead to an entertaining experience.

Whether or not “Viscera Cleanup Detail,” is destined for that path is difficult to say. However, if the developers approach this with the right level of humor, and some clever wrench in the cog scenarios, this could become not a case of a game being approved wrongfully as a curiosity, but rather an intriguing prospect on the horizon.