When I was a child, I would rush to do my chores so I could play my favorite video games. I never thought, even in my wildest dreams, that I would devote so much time to a game about doing chores. PowerWash Simulator 2 expands upon the gameplay and map design of FuturLab’s surprise 2022 hit, creating an experience that is at once tedious, time-consuming and repetitive. But as I watched the dirt and grime melt away from various surfaces over dozens of hours, I felt a constant sense of satisfaction.
Like its predecessor, PowerWash Simulator 2 places you in a ridiculously muddy environment and tasks you with using a high-powered hose to keep the area looking brand recent. Career mode has 38 levels, each focusing on different job roles, and some with multiple stages. In over 20 hours of gameplay, I cleaned scooters, bathrooms, playgrounds, gas stations, mansions, airships, and much more. Thanks to the improved visual fidelity, I liked the transformation of the environment, although I would have preferred more realistic water physics; when you spray dirt on top of the wall, it doesn’t run off the surface, it just disappears.
While I played PowerWash Simulator 2 solo most of the time, these missions are easier to complete in cooperative mode with up to four players. Fortunately, this iteration adds shared progress, which means that players who go to another cleaner’s session will receive credit for completed tasks, allowing them to skip that job from their career mode save file. This goes a long way towards reducing repetition as you progress in your career.
The gameplay is consistent as you progress through the levels, but the tasks are varied and sometimes daunting. Sometimes I didn’t realize what I was getting into when I said “just one more,” like when I took a job that required me to tidy up a target-rich carnival shooting range. Larger tasks took me over an hour and a half when playing solo, which made me bored. This sense of boredom, combined with how laser-focused you had to be, often left me feeling more exhausted than other games when I came out of a marathon session.
This entry adds a ton of recent tools at your disposal, including an improved soap sprayer that dissolves dirt, a wide-area surface cleaner, recent lifters to facilitate you reach higher areas, and additional pads and nozzles that can be upgraded. I liked to select the appropriate nozzle for the extent and depth of the dirt and methodically move from segment to segment until each piece of the larger puzzle was spotless. When you finish an area, it starts flashing and producing dopamine. I’m glad the 100% purity threshold has been fine-tuned; you’re much less likely to get stuck trying to find the smallest speck of dirt to finish your job in the sequel. However, on a few occasions when I couldn’t find the last section to tidy before finishing the job, I could easily pull up the checklist and set a waypoint.
Career mode in PowerWash Simulator 2 features a narrative told through text and environmental storytelling. While I was often amused by the exchanges that appeared in the corner of the screen, they were completely irrelevant to my experience. I was mildly intrigued by the mysteries that unfolded in this loose narrative, but I was so focused on the job at hand that I usually forgot there was a story at all until the next beat. PowerWash Simulator 2 is the perfect game to play while listening to music, an audiobook or a podcast, as the sound effects are little more than white noise as you do the work at hand.
PowerWash Simulator 2 is a very specific type of game that will appeal to a very specific type of audience. If you’re the type of person who spends their evenings watching videos of cleaning or organizing things, you’ll probably like the interactive version. However, if you prefer intense action or hearty systems, you may feel bored or anxious. Although I fall more into the latter category, I felt an undeniable sense of satisfaction every time I completed a job, which was the highlight of the entire package.
