Your first job in the game is to clean your newly purchased work van, which looks like it was rolled down the hillside of the local park where all the dogs do their business. Published by Square Enix, it’s one of the top-selling Early Access games on Steam.Īnd it takes precisely two minutes of playing PowerWash Simulator to see why. Except PowerWash simulator is not some cobbled-together curio to extract a quick buck from a very specific audience. It’s the kind of gimmicky simulation experience that litters Steam Early Access, the ones where normally you’d frown at the title, have a giggle at the screenshots, and then swiftly move on.

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In other words, the jobs you actively avoid doing in real life so you can pretend to be a monster hunter or a super-soldier or a grizzled murderdad with untreated psychological trauma. It’s a game about starting your own power-washing business, where you spend the entire game cleaning the grime off cars, garden sheds, and patios with high-powered jets of water.

This week, Rick Lane discovers the therapeutic pleasure to be found in PowerWash Simulator. Unfinished Business is NME’s new column about the weird and wonderful world of Early Access Games.

Cleaning car games