Știri
Hands-on with PowerWash Simulator 2’s new quality-of-life tech
L
Laura Kate Dale
After a few years of updates and brand tie-in DLC releases, PowerWash Simulator 2 is due to release in late 2025. I was lucky enough to go hands-on with a preview build of the sequel last week, for around two hours. While it would have been very easy to zone out and lose that whole two hours methodically cleaning one large building, I did make sure to check out a variety of levels and all of the new quality-of-life tools.
The first bit I played through in the PowerWash Simulator 2 hands-on was a new multi-stage level, Public Facility. It's basically a public bathroom hut that needs to be cleaned both inside and out.
The new multi-stage levels are revealed to the player gradually. Public Facility, for instance, begins with the roof at ground-level, making it easy to scrub the highest parts of the exterior. Once the roof is tidied up, the rest of the building rises up from the ground, allowing the vertical exterior walls to be easily accessed. After the entire exterior is complete, the door then opens to reveal the mossy interior environment (which also needs cleaning, of course).
Not only did this staggered reveal make the roof much easier to clean, but holding back the reveal that the interior needed cleaning really helped me avoid feeling overwhelmed by the scope of the project, breaking it down into natural segments.
In Public Facility, I also got to experience one of PowerWash Simulator's most important post-launch quality-of-life improvements. The ability to highlight all dirt in a level was added to PowerWash Simulator in an update, but PowerWash Simulator 2 will include this capability at launch, making it much easier to figure out which items you've missed. You can even customize the color the dirt is highlighted with, as well as the duration.
Additionally, as you approach completion on a project, activating the dirt highlighter now places a large target icon on objects that are not yet completely cleaned, helping identify where you should look for those telltale dirt highlights. This is a hugely appreciated addition to PowerWash Simulator 2, and dramatically reduces frustration when trying to finish cleaning complex environments like the interior of a bathroom.
Another level, Art Deco House, showcased a few new tools for gaining elevation during cleaning jobs. Starting with the most basic: Scaffold structures now feature ladders up each side. While they were a little inconsistent during our demo, the benefit is clear. As a person who's prone to motion sickness in first-person games, being able to go straight up a ladder instead of walking in rapid circles up the interior ramps of the scaffold tower was hugely beneficial to my enjoyment. You’ll still need to use the interior ramps if you’re eager to clean from a particular platform (say, halfway up) but the ability to minimise that type of movement was a huge positive.
The more dramatic height customisation tool in Art Deco House was the scissor lift, which can be raised to precisely the height you want. This granular height selection is really useful for reaching spaces like the underside of roof awnings that would be tricky to approach even from a scaffold placed to one side of a building. Being able to approach a problem from below at a short distance really helps make cleaning specific areas much more manageable.
The final level I dedicated time to exploring was the Billboard area, which featured yet another new way to interact with height in levels: abseiling (or rappelling, if you prefer). In our hands-on, it was possible to climb to the top of the titular billboard and attach a seat held up with wires. You could then sit in this fabric seat and freely move vertically and horizontally around a large area, making it much easier to reach areas of the billboard that weren't convenient when standing below.
Cleaning this billboard was also when I most appreciated one of the new cleaning tools present in PowerWash Simulator 2, the Surface Cleaner. This tool, which has been frequently requested by players of the first PowerWash Simulator, features a large circular head with spinning brushes and is able to quickly and effectively clean large areas—so long as they are relatively flat, close at hand, and the dirt on them isn’t too stubborn.
The Surface Cleaner can be used both on the floor as well as vertical walls, making it a great time-saving tool for first passes, and it very quickly became my default tool-of-choice on most of the levels I explored. It's a top-notch combination of cleaning strength and area-of-effect, and while it won’t reach high up or deal with more resilient grime, it pairs extremely well with a movement tool like the abseil rig on large flat surfaces like the billboard. Cleaning floors in PowerWash Simulator 2 no longer felt like I was trying to clean a ballroom with a toothbrush. The Surface Cleaner felt like a much more natural fit for getting the bulk of the dirt removed from large flat areas.
There are other little details that help to make PowerWash Simulator 2 feel more visually fleshed out than the first game, such as visibly flowing water (impacted by gravity) and the particles that spray off the walls reflecting the type of dirt you're actually cleaning. These little touches are nice enough, but not the kind of thing you’re likely to notice unless you’re looking closely.
For most players, the exciting part of PowerWash Simulator 2 is going to be the new quality-of-life tools available—and, of course, new levels to explore. In many ways, PowerWash Simulator 2 feels like more of the first game, and that’s certainly not a bad thing. The biggest changes are mechanical tweaks and long-requested feature additions, and at the end of the day, that’s really all this sequel needs.
Wishlist PowerWash Simulator 2 on the Epic Games Store.