I have to do chores now. My wife and son have watched me playing PowerWash Simulator VR for the last hour, and various questions have been asked along the way, such as “Why don’t you just go and clean the real garden?” and, “You’ve got your own car you could be washing, you know?” These are both valid points, but no one is going to pay me invisible game dollars to do that, are they?
The other thing that won’t happen in VR is that you won’t get wet shoes, and as it’s currently about 2ºC outside, I think Futurlab are saving the NHS and other health services a whole lot of money. So, what I’m really trying to say is, PowerWash Simulator VR is good, and not just for you, but for society as a whole. Not many games can claim that.
PowerWash Simulator has been proving that menial tasks make great games since 2021, but the move into VR feels as like the culmination of the game’s journey, where the art not only reflects life, but is near-as-damn-it the same.
This is a game about cleaning things. With a pressure washer. Using a variety of nozzles, hoses and attachments, you have to wash, scrub and generally titivate a series of extremely careless people’s possessions, stretching from vans and cars, through to entire garden renovations.
If ever a game would work well in VR, it’s PowerWash Simulator, and Futurlab has done an incredible job at getting the weight and feeling of pressurised water against dirty surfaces just right. You can often spray and pray, flicking the hose about with abandon, but there’s a weird satisfaction to working away at a particularly tough bit of dirt on some glass, or the gunk on an outdoor barbecue.
Each job has a series of requirements, all of which amount to cleaning every possible surface you can find. Most locations and items are broken down into sections so you can find whatever bits you’ve missed as you home in on that super-satisfying 100%. It’s weirdly easy to miss a bit – just as it would be in real life – but your checklist will remind you that you haven’t quite got the shed clean, or that the engine on that dirt bike still has some caked-on mud underneath it.
Everything feels incredibly tactile, and you’ll find yourself getting down on your knees to get underneath a park bench, or clambering up onto a stool to see over the top of a climbing frame. You can press a button if your knees are too old and creaky (or you just don’t fancy lying on the kitchen floor), but frankly, you’d be missing out. I recommend full immersion. Put wet socks on too, if you really want to go for it.
Translating the original game to VR has been done with a keen eye for immersion, and you feel as though you’re really working with a full set of tools. You can physically flick your nozzle around to alter the stream, and you have a rotating tool belt which grants access to all of your attachments and soaps, physically picking your accessory and attaching them to your hose. Futurlab have given you options here as well though, and you can either use a selection wheel, or simply cycle through everything by pressing a button if you want the quickest route to spraying success.
The downside, as mentioned at the start, is that there’s a real physical activity going on here, which you could be putting to use in the real world. I don’t think I’ve ever felt quite so guilty about playing a game as I did with PowerWash Simulator VR, as it almost proves that you’re not having a relaxed, chilled-out day, as you might often use as an excuse for a spot of game time.
There are a few limitations here and there, and though I was playing on Quest 3 they haven’t yet added any enhancements for the more powerful hardware. Some of the textures are pretty basic, and don’t even think about looking over the fence into next door’s garden. It feels as though the next step should be the introduction of more realistic physics – if I’m spraying a garden swing it should swing under the pressure – but despite this you still can’t beat the overall feel of PowerWash Simulator in VR.