Spring cleaning has come in the fall, and it’s glorious.
Three years after they chilled us all out by putting us to work with an extreme tool of clean, FuturLab are back with some new tools.
Ultimately, you know what you are getting with PowerWash Simulator 2. For the cost of adding this game to your library, you are investing money and a significant amount of time in the simple act of using a powerful water cannon to clean an extensive collection of items and buildings, and that’s really all there is to it.
There’s a story and a world full of lore, should you choose to indulge in it. But it really doesn’t state itself very much, which is either a total delight or a genuine disappointment.
A world of quiet, a world of clean
PowerWash Simulator 2 excels in simple, understated world-building.
There’s now a fully-realized wall map hanging up in the cleaner’s office that shows the many cities, towns, and in-betweens of Caldera County.
You’ll find yourself in quaint 1950s Americana towns with Art Deco houses and just a touch of modern self-comfort technology, all the way up to gleaming skyscrapers that offer playgrounds of the new verticality.
Story and lore elements unfold through text messages left while our cleaning man is doing his thing. Characters will share their life stories with you in multiple text messages, similar to how I used to text after a night out at the bar. Here, they will drop hints about other characters or provide details about locations in the county.
For a game all about amping things up with pressure, a really nice component of PowerWash Simulator 2 is that it doesn’t full-on spray you with cutscenes or story. In fact, skipping the story is as easy as not reading your texts. You can simply ignore the dirty details of life in Caldera County and put all your focus on dirt itself.
Or you can replay levels and follow along with the story beats as they come in.
Should you choose to engage with the story, you will find residents reacting in various ways to the presence of “The Beam,” which is a Pink Floyd album-cover-like concentration of light visible in the skies throughout Caldera County. Residents are unsure of what its existence means, and as you continue cleaning, you’ll come to find that things aren’t quite as clean in this world as they should be!
Soapy time savings
One of the new additions I’ve been so enamoured with is soap!
Dirt now has varying degrees of caked-in status, meaning while your washers all do the same thing, you’ll need to actually think about how you take on grime. Okay, in all fairness, you really don’t have to think about this at all. Aside from the draw distance of dirt requiring longer tools, more powerful washers will save you time, but any washer will get the job done.
However, PowerWash Simulator 2 introduces new caked-on dirt, requiring you to use the new soap tool!
Your store of soap is infinite; however, if you continuously use it for too long, you will run out of pressure and be forced to endure a short cooldown phase.
Using the soap in all cases will also grant you a slight boost in time savings, as the soap does remove all grime on its own.
Another new tool for good time savings is the new Surf Ace floor washer, which I have a feeling is going to become more than just your floor washer!
With a 15-, 17-, and 20-inch head, the pressurized ability to cut through hard grime without soap, and access to the super-long wand, the Surf Ace becomes the fastest tool for cleaning up!
Cleaning…up in PowerWash Simulator 2
PowerWash Simulator 2 introduces a new cleaning element of verticality, along with various climbing tools to assist with these tasks.
Climbing ladders, scaffolds and using lift trucks helps the cleaner get above messes and closer to the theme. It also adds more emphasis on multi-level cleaning jobs.
The new heights really add new levels of challenge, but they can also be extremely finicky and slow-moving to contend with.
There is even one job where you clean a billboard on the corner of a highway outside the city, and the precision required to reach every angle made it an absolutely excruciating job for me.
Break time!
In case you haven’t been able to tell yet, PowerWash Simulator 2 likes to take things on your own time. It isn’t trying to rush you to complete a job and move on. It also rewards you for taking your time to complete jobs with money that you can use for upgrades and furniture in your hub.
Furniture purchased on the portal can be washed and arranged on the first floor of your hub.
I encountered some glaring issues with the furniture placement. At times, I would try to place a piece down, only to find I couldn’t put it anywhere until I had put it away and then taken it back out. I also noticed that things didn’t seem to be able to be placed on top of rugs, which can’t be the case!
Ultimately, there is very little interaction with furniture aside from cleaning it and placing it. But you can invite your friends into your space to see it, so that’s pretty swell!
Cleaning sounds
What could prove to be decisive about PowerWash Simulator 2 is its almost total lack of sound design. There is very little here to hear, and it keeps you from thoughts creeping into your mind during cleaning time.
In the earlier jobs, the low hum of The Beam keeps you company, comfortably leading you into a trance, but once that’s gone, all you have is the sounds of water pressure and suds, and the occasional bird.
Now, it is easy enough to throw on some lo-fi in the background and keep working. But I find myself struggling to really feel at home in Caldera County when there are so few sounds of life.
PowerWash Simulator 2 has put such care into building a cleaning-inspired lore with silent nods and hints throughout, but I find myself wanting for an auditory environment like that of Two Point Museum and its predecessors, where music and spoken elements with the same kind of dry British humor that’s present here help establish the world and keep you engrossed in it while letting you do your thing.
Verdict
PowerWash Simulator 2 isn’t really hiding that much about itself. You know precisely what you are getting into, aside from its subtle story for those who wish to invest in it. Aside from that, this is a continuation of 2022’s winning formula, which emphasizes taking things at your own speed and doing things in your own way. My only complaint, and it is mainly personal, is that I find there isn’t enough in terms of sound design to fully immerse me in the game. I need a rich auditory story experience to help with staying interested, and that’s not here.
[The publisher provided a copy of the game for review purposes.]
Reviewed on: PC
