A Clean Getaway.
Simulation games are nothing new. Hell, just typing “Simulator” into the Steam search bar brings up a few hundred titles at minimum. But those that hit a high level of mainstream, those that become a talking point across the industry, or those that show up in top ten charts alongside the AAA heavy-hitters, well, those are exceedingly rare. Yet, this is exactly what Power Wash Simulator has done, a game that is exactly what it says on the tin and a game that is more obsessively brilliant than it has any right to be.
While I’ve dabbled in a few simulation games over the years, very few of them kept my interest after the initial reveal of gameplay and what you are tasked with doing. The various entries that I see pop up from time to time, such as building a car, a gaming PC, or attempting to cook a variety of dishes in a colorful kitchen, can often seem appealing, but their gameplay just inevitably falls flat. Yet, for as mundane as something like power washing is, or what I assume it would be as I’ve never actually done so in real life, there is something incredibly cathartic about what Power Wash Simulator offers here, almost giving off that coloring book for adults vibe a dozen times over.
The easy way to review Power Wash Simulator is simply stating the obvious; this is a game where you shoot a power washer nozzle at various dirt and grime and clean whatever is placed in front of you from head to toe. This ranges from a simple van to a motorcycle, a massive skatepark, a huge tree house, a playground, and even a mansion where you’ll attempt to clean it from behind a locked gate, testing a wide range of nozzles and attachments that extend your overall reach, making you out to be an aquatic sniper tasked with eliminating all traces of a few dozen tossed eggs.
Every time I cleaned a huge sprawling location, or a tall structure where I’d come to rely on a towering scaffolding that I could drag along with me, I’d have another client lined up with an even bigger task, or occasionally, a small bite-size job to give me that “one last clean” for the night to take on when it’s likely already 1 AM and I work in a few hours. Power Wash Simulator wasn’t a game I was even looking forward to and yet, I’m obsessed. Honestly, I expect this game to show up somewhere on my top ten list at the end of this year.
While there isn't some bit of a connecting narrative, there are text messages you'll get from your various clients, as well as the mystery of a missing cat named Ulysses, one explained throughout some of these messages you’ll receive but also that of missing posters stashed in a bin in the game's first location. It's not much, but it certainly gives the game a unique personality that I don't think I've seen before in any other simulator game. And, on the topic of Ulysses, they do make an appearance if you keep a sharp eye about.
Even with a few tasks left to complete before I hang up my power washer license, I’m well over 40 hours now as some jobs, especially as a solo power washer, can take anywhere from thirty minutes to even three or four hours as you are spraying down walls, windows, frames, joints, wings, and more, swapping to various cleaning solutions to counter the amount of rust and other harder to scrub surfaces I would encounter. While there are options to make cleaning wood, plastic, or metal that little bit easier, I only found those chemicals to really be worth it for battling the settled rust that would often give my nozzle a run for its money, at least until I unlocked the last and more powerful gun some many dozen hours in.
As you take on jobs, each will end when every single edge of every single surface has been cleaned to within an inch of its polygonal life. It's impossible to finish a task without hitting five stars and earning your pay, so you are always tasked with completing the job from top to bottom, literally. As you take on each surface, there is a meter that fills up and a more in-depth menu that details everything you have to clean. While navigating it is a bit unwieldy with a controller, you can keep track of what you need to clean and the percentage of how clean each surface is.
The money earned from each job will be put back into your efforts, purchasing new power washer equipment, skins for each tier of washer, as well as soap for various surfaces, as well as equipment to extend your reach. You can also buy new outfits and gloves, but unless you play in co-op, the outfit itself is largely pointless due to the game being in first person. If you pull the camera back via the FOV slider, your view of your gloves, especially with the extended attachments, does allow for that customization to be more visible.
The overall control of the Power Washer allows for a bit of flexibility in how you clean. RT is your spraying button, but left on the d-pad can be pressed for an automatic flow, meaning you don’t have to hold down the button to spray for hours on end. LT allows you to rotate the nozzle to have a vertical or horizontal spread. Pressing up on the d-pad gives you a standing still motion to move the gun around, almost like moving your gun around in GoldenEye to allow you to spray around without having to move your view around, making it perfect for when you are high atop a railing and don't want to fall off. Pressing down on the d-pad brings up a flash of what dirt is left to clean up, which is such a godsend when you are trying desperately to see what tiny little flake of dirt you have left, even if some areas mysteriously auto-complete when there is still dirt on the surface, which never really made any sense to me when I would have some walls not complete until the tiniest little pixel was sprayed out. Honestly, one wall auto-completed when I had a solid foot left on a railing.
Other control options are pretty par for the course, RB and LB swap between your nozzles, giving you nozzles that spray out a tight and controlled pressurized line or those with a weaker but larger area of spray. You can also hold Y and select them via a “weapon” wheel, as you can also do with selecting your gun and its ranged attachments. Holding B brings up all your cleaning solutions, but I wish there was a better way to refill them than having to go into a menu and refill the solution when that container is empty. It’s a small gripe, but it’s one that plagued my entire time with the game. You can jump, which helps with clearing some out-of-reach areas, but you also have a step ladder as well as a much longer ladder to lug around as well, but the step ladder is barely even high enough to really contribute in ways it really should be. You can also crouch as well as go prone, but the game likes to block your access to spraying if you are aimed even the tiniest bit down, so prone ends up being really only good for spraying up as you are lying flat on the ground. Again, a small nitpick, but one that constantly bugged me.
The game itself is split into a few modes; career mode, specials, challenge mode, and free play. Career mode is the main source of content here for one to two players as you’ll earn job after job and earn the money to improve your gear, whereas specials is where you get a lot of the massive jobs, suitable for up to six players. Challenge mode has you racing against the clock or having to clean the required tasks with a water limit, ensuring every last drop is used properly. Since I prefer Power Wash Simulator as a carefree and relaxing experience, I didn't put much time into these time and water sensitive offerings. Free Play is where you can revisit previous jobs and spend as much time as you like thoroughly cleaning them.
While I played a large portion of Career mode on my own, I did have a friend join me for a few of my career missions, and while smaller jobs were without much problem, any job that took place near the fire hall, of which there are I believe three jobs in total that do, would see their game unexpectedly crash every few minutes. Apart from that particular location, co-op ran extremely smoothly, even if they were mostly holding in a few giggles as they were drawing lewd shapes on top of a roof or on the side of a wall. And, thankfully, Power Wash Simulator offers crossplay between both Xbox consoles and those on PC via Room Codes that are easy to enter.
Visually, Power Wash Simulator does what it needs to do. The dirt is noticeable, and the cleaned parts are even more so, especially in areas like the Playground, experimental jet, and the public washroom, where the stark whites and vibrant colors scream out when cleaned. The overall lighting is decent where it needs to be, but some shadows of trees seemingly come out of nowhere or are visible from somewhere far too distanced to really feel natural. Some areas have some solid reflections, making them feel better represented and far more realistic.
The audible ding that is attached to a 100% clean is joyful and reaffirms your efforts, making for a huge sigh of relief when you've sworn you cleaned every last inch, and then one more pass with an angle that looks impossible to reach ends with that glorious sound. Apart from that sound, and the different ways the water sounds on each surface and angle, Power Wash Simulator has nothing else in the form of an audible offering, lending itself to being the perfect podcast game, letting you catch up with your current backlog or tossing on YouTube, Netflix, or one of the many other services to fill that void. Hell, this is how I ended up pushing through the awful new Resident Evil show on Netflix.
Power Wash Simulator was incredibly fun, offering a true sense of accomplishment that feels far more earned than most other games even try to attempt. The state of before and after, which is shown in a time-lapse of your job, truly shows you the stark difference between where you started and where you ended up. It's a very simple gameplay loop that remains as satisfying from the first job to the last, and experiencing it with friends is an absolute blast, just make sure you keep an eye on them as they could be drawing something incredibly lewd in all that dirt and grime, you know who you are!!
Developer - FuturLab Limited. Publisher - Square Enix Ltd. Released - July 14th, 2022. Available On - Xbox One, Series X/S, Windows PC. Rated - (E) E for Everyone, No descriptors. Platform Reviewed - Xbox Series X. Review Access - Power Wash Simulator was downloaded off of Game Pass for review.