PowerWash Simulator 2, like its beloved predecessor, is a zen-like exercise in scrubbing the dirtiest things you’ve ever seen clean. It’s a rigorous test of your patience that’s somehow both calming and infuriating all at once. But I didn’t expect the game to give me a bit of an existential crisis about global warming, which admittedly might have been entirely self-inflicted. But that’s also exactly what makes PowerWash Simulator such a fascinating game, the way its lackadaisical simulation can lead to genuine reflection — scrubbing your mind clean along with the windows and tiles.
If I told you they were going to make a sequel to PowerWash Simulator, you might ask yourself, “What more can they do?” The answer is a lot, as it turns out. For all intents and purposes, PowerWash Simulator 2 is a bigger and better version of the inspired cleaning game, providing bigger challenges than ever before and a more robust array of options on how to solve them.

Ostensibly, you’re doing the same thing here that you did in the first game — simply spraying things clean. You have your trusty power washer and can equip it with an array of nozzles and attachments that alter your cleaning pattern, or help you get to tough-to-reach places.
By and large, PowerWash Simulator 2 doesn’t introduce drastic changes to the experience, but rather a cacophony of little changes that simply make it a much more satisfying game to play. This includes new attachments like the Floor Scrubber — a big circular head that doesn’t have a lot of reach, but lets you hit the area in front of you with a wide blast. Cleaners from the original game have also been replaced by a singular Soap system, where you can layer soap over a wide dirty area, then spray it with your biggest nozzle to cut through the grime quickly.
At the same time, the actual cleaning tasks and maps have a lot more complexity to them. Each one is still essentially a big puzzle box, but there are oftentimes interiors for alternate sections that shake things up. One of the first tasks you get in Career Mode is to clean a public restroom, and once you’ve done that, a door inside unlocks and lets you tackle the decidedly disgusting interior.

One of my favourite tasks involves cleaning a giant billboard, where you get to use a whole scaffolding swing system to fly around the sign itself — before figuring out how to get into the little nooks and crannies. And to that last point, one of the major improvements with PowerWash Simulator 2 is that the game is a lot more lenient about how you complete cleaning “tasks.”
“PowerWash Simulator 2 is a bigger and better version of the inspired cleaning game, providing bigger challenges than ever before…”
You can bring up a list of everything you need to clean at any time, and hit a button to highlight the areas that are still dirty. But one of my bigger problems with the original game is that you had to really get the nitty-gritty little spots that you can barely see. By comparison, the sequel is much happier to give the clean to you and let you move on to what’s next. This is simultaneously complemented by better pacing, where massive tasks, like cleaning a whole building, are often interrupted by little ones that can go off and do to break up the monotony.
I feel like this sequel’s environments are a drastic step up from the first game, and even feature some fun little story bits by way of the text messages your clients send you — in one, you even learn about a massive nearby volcano that threatens to destroy the town. All of that comes alongside a Home Base system, where you can purchase various furniture to place (after you clean it, of course), as well as a couple of cuddly cat companions you can pet. It’s a nice little touch that makes the game feel more personal.

On pretty much every level, PowerWash Simulator 2 either refines or improves the mechanics of the first game, oftentimes in subtle ways. But the more I cleaned and sprayed gallon upon gallon of water, the more a singular thought occurred to me — boy it sure would be nice to live in a world with unlimited water.
Perhaps this comes from growing up in Colorado, which, in my middle school and teenage years, often suffered from severe wildfires. So much so that there were a few years I distinctly remember having severe water restrictions, forcing us to turn off the sprinklers and cut down on general use. I’ve also spent copious amounts of time in California over the years, the other wildfire hotspot.
This has, sort of, inherently bred in me the idea of trying to be liberal about water use, and honestly, I’d never even seen an actual power washer being used until I played the first PowerWash Simulator. And the more I played PowerWash Simulator 2, the more I started to think, “In 60 years, will power washing even be a thing?” With global warming continuing to hit us, heat waves, and the worst wildfires we’ve seen in modern history, it feels like our most precious resource is becoming a more important topic than ever.
In recent years, as I get older, I’ve started to worry more and more about the future, and what kind of world we’re leaving for future generations, especially as I think about having children. I didn’t intend for my time with PowerWash Simulator 2 to turn into a crisis, but I think that’s a testament to the game’s strengths.

PowerWash Simulator 2 is an ideal world where there’s enough water to fill all the pools at all the perfect houses, and every problem can be washed away like the grime that endlessly cakes everything. There’s a shining veneer to the game’s world that I find undeniably charming — a world that’s simply all about fun and self-expression.
Its approach to finding zen through its gameplay is so effective that I forgot all of my own personal problems, and instead started thinking about the world’s. And this sequel eliminates nearly every little frustration point that was in the original, while still managing to layer in some genuine surprises with its location design.
And most surprising of all, PowerWash Simulator 2’s squeaky-clean, idealistic world is a reminder of how we should be striving to keep ours intact. I, for one, think it would be an utter shame if 100 years from now, future generations can’t know the simple joy of power washing.