For a certain type of player, PowerWash Simulator is about as satisfying a game experience there is.
Sweeping a high-pressure jet of water across absurdly filthy surfaces, carving cleanliness into objects big and small bit by bit, is a strangely meditative, rewarding way to spend your time.
There’s already dozens of hours of that in the original, but PowerWash Simulator 2 promises more of the glorious same — only with new and improved features that take things up a step.
Playing the upcoming sequel for about two hours via a remote session, it’s clear that developer FuturLab knows what people like about the first game, leaving the core very much intact while building around it in several smart ways.
Images: Push Square
Firstly, long-time players will be pleased to know that soap has been totally redone, and is now actually a useful tool in your arsenal. Soap now foams up far more visibly and clearly, and spraying it away with water will shift even the toughest patches of dirt.
Some will still stubbornly stick to using just water, and you can still play that way, but soap is noticeably better in PWS2, and will help speed up a job when used on hard-to-reach or particularly filthy spots.
One of the smaller levels we played was a car with dog-like adornments. We coated the entire vehicle in soap before hosing it down with water, and it made the whole task far faster and easier than if we’d have skipped the suds.
Images: Push Square
Another stage tasked us with cleaning a huge billboard, perfect for showing off some other new tools at your disposal in the sequel. New scaffolding features a ladder on the side to easily climb to the top, letting you reach higher places faster.
Additionally, some levels will feature a seat on a winch; while using this, you can move up, down, left, and right to clean large surfaces. It makes jobs like the billboard much more manageable.
We also got to try the scissor lift on a different stage — an art deco house — giving us easy access to the roof. Presumably these new tools will only be available on certain levels, but they’re welcome additions that vary up your approach and make larger jobs easier to navigate.
Images: Push Square[/iamge]
As well as your trusty handheld water jet, a new power washer specifically for floors is introduced. The floor washer has a larger area of effect than the jet, again just giving you more options and making your life that little bit easier.
One level worth mentioning — and bear with us on this one — is the public toilet. This was an example of PWS2’s multi-stage jobs, in which you can only access later parts of a level after cleaning earlier ones first.
In this case, the public toilet is a facility that emerges from the ground, meaning you first only have access to its roof. Once clean, it comes up to the surface level, allowing you to clean the outer walls. Finally, the door will open, and you can clean the interior to finish the stage.
Images: Push Square
It’s an interesting way of breaking down a level into manageable chunks, and though this was a relatively small level, we presume this multi-stage approach will be utilised in more imaginative ways on some larger scale jobs.
Tying things together this time around is a hub, from which you can accept jobs mapped out on a board. We didn’t get to explore this area much, but having a central space to ground the game is appreciated; the original’s reliance on menus always made the game feel a little disjointed.
So, while the gameplay is broadly the same as in its predecessor, PWS2 makes many sensible improvements and additions to the experience. Based on our time with it, fans can look forward to the sort of sequel that doesn’t reinvent the wheel, rather just making refinements to a game that already got so much right.
PowerWash Simulator 2 is coming to PS5 later this year. Are you looking forward to the sequel? Choose your nozzle in the comments section below.