A game about collecting human waste in 1854 London just hit Steam – and yes, you can accidentally pat your horse to death

Miniscule Mayhem, the studio behind cozy horse games Top Steed and Back to Stables – featuring mischievous George, a horse who looks like he's never had a bad day in his life – has released something completely different. Nightsoil is a grim top-down narrative adventure set in 1854 London, at the height of the cholera epidemic.

You play as a gong farmer – that is, a collector of human waste – on his final shift before retirement, trudging through the city streets alongside his trusty carthorse Ol' Boy while reminiscing about a life lived and happiness that never quite materialized.

Gameplay is straightforward: hit E when prompted to shovel waste into barrels, feed Ol' Boy hay, draw water from wells to keep him hydrated, and steer the cart by tapping A and D rhythmically to move forward or holding both to reverse. The turning radius is genuinely terrible, so every corner risks snagging a wheel on a doorstep. That would be manageable, except Ol' Boy dies of thirst with alarming regularity – his body retains water about as well as a sieve.

If the horse gets too distressed – say, because you've driven him into one too many rat swarms – he'll refuse to budge. You'll need to hop off the cart and calm him down via a QTE: pat his nose or whisper something reassuring at just the right moment. Handle it poorly, though, and you might make things considerably worse.

Nightsoil is available on Steam right now. It's a game that probably shouldn't exist by any commercial logic, and yet here it is – which, honestly, says something about games in general.