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Why did no one tell me PowerWash Sim has actual loreCome for the cleaning, stay for the storytelling
Come for the cleaning, stay for the storytelling
Last week I talked about how I spent my week off at Christmas playingPowerWash Simulatorlikeit was my job. When I wrote that, I was about two thirds of the way through the story in Career mode, which turns out to be just before PowerWash Simulator goes as bananas as everyone’s home baking in the summer of 2020. I can’t believe I need to say this but: this article contains spoilers for the PowerWash Sim story.
This article was originally exclusively available to RPS supporters, but we’ve brought it backFrom The Archivefor all to read. It was first published on January 9th 2023.
PowerWash Sim’s career mode is set in a town called Muckingham, and you clean stuff in and around the town. The first thing you clean is your own new business van, in fact. Then someone’s back garden, a house, a big RV. Stuff: you clean it! And I figured that the game would just be that you clean things of increasing size and complexity, earning money to buy better powerwash equipment - and thus, the ability to powerwash with greater efficiency. And I wasn’t exactly wrong about that. I have cleaned a big wheel at a funfair, and a giant shoe house in a forest. I have cleaned an experimental high-tech plane with anti-gravity engines, and a monster truck with a big fibreglass cat decoration on the top. Having a great old time.
I started to notice little extra things as I played. There’s a garden gnome in every level, and a missing cat who leaves pawprints accross the mud you’re cleaning, or else can be glimpsed perched on top of a vantage point near where you’re at work. Details and jokes I appreciated. There’s a special one off level where you clean the Mars Rover, in situ on the planet surface. There are alien footprints in the dust, and you can see them approach the Rover, stand around as if looking at it, and then walking up to one of the wheels, which has, in the game, a metal parking clamp applied. Good stuff.
Your clients will send you texts when you’re working, and I sort of skimmed them a bit, because I was washing stuff at the same time, and the texts come in as pop ups at the side of the screen. My friend Harper seemed to be going on some kind of expedition to the volcano near the town, someone wants me to powerwash their treehouse, the mayor is an asshole, yada yada etc. and so on.
This fishy boy. Lookit.
Reader, I lost my mind
And on one level I get why nobody talks about this. It’s a delightful surprise. It’s like the ending of The Mousetrap. But on the other hand, I feel like people should at leasthintat it more because it’s a big selling point! I hope it’s expanded on in many DLCs. I can’t think of many other games where the story goes way harder than it needs to. Can you?
