Game: PowerWash Simulator 2
Genre: Simulation
System: Steam (Windows) (also available on PS5, Xbox, Nintendo Switch 2)
Developers | Publishers: FuturLab
Controller Support: Full
Price: US $24,99 | UK £19.99 | EU € 24,99
Release Date: October 23, 2025
Review code provided, with many thanks to Dead Good Media.
In 2022, SquareEnix published a genuine oddity: the meditatively simple PowerWash Simulator, a game where you… powerwashed stuff. Like houses, and vehicles, and remote monasteries, and ancient relics that were key to stopping disaster and — wait, what?
That was part of the oddness on offer. PowerWash Simulator, in addition to its strange, white-noise chillness, had a plot. Details peeled off slowly, with angles familiar to distant American suburbs or the bucolic rural English villages. The mayor was corrupt, buddied up with a walking, uber-rich environmental disaster. The cats were going missing. Someone’s hunting Bigfoot, even though there’s more proof that there’s a UFO somewhere around. There are blipping garden gnomes everywhere. And then the volcano threatens to erupt.
Meanwhile, there you are, power washer in hand, cheerfully blasting dirt off a playground dinosaur and thinking about being able to afford the next most powerful tool. Your phone is blowing up, but c’mon. The skatepark needs us.
Yet, ultimately, you save the world. And the cats. I played the beans out of this thing, and it became my #1 comfort food game of 2023. I’ve replayed it completely. I have most of the DLCs. Now imagine my joy finding out FuturLab was making a sequel — now be in my shoes when I got a chance to review it.
Lather up, folks. PowerWash Simulator 2 is here at last. And it just may be everything you wanted.
PowerWash Simulator 2 Dings What You Need
PowerWash Simulator 2 may add some new tweaks and tools, but the most important thing is back: that serotonin-inducing “ding!” when you’ve cleaned a surface is untouched. Clean a bunch of stuff all at once, and it’s an old-timey jingling register of happy sounds.
Returning with that joyful noise are familiar stools and ladders to help you get to higher ground, and right away, some of the improvements begin to show. I was a parkour gremlin in the first game; there was just something about the stickiness of the ladders and scaffolding where I would make leaps I wouldn’t try in a Mario game to handle steeples and antennae on my own terms. The few areas where I had no choice left me grousing. But no more.
Ladders are responsive, and there are usually several of them, so no backtracking is required. If you can see it, it can probably be gripped and hauled over to you. The scaffolding has a slick external ladder, because honestly, if you’re using the scaffold, 90% of the time you’re going straight to the top anyway. Bless. New additions include a scissor lift, which is a compact mechanical platform that can adjust to your needs, and a window-washing harness so you can abseil around tall, wide items fluidly.
The latter item, which will be introduced on the very next level after the two we got to try in the demo, can feel a little funky at first, especially when you’re near the ground. But it’s also smooth to fuss with, making its usefulness, combined with nozzle extenders when applicable, outweigh any drawbacks.
Soaping It Up
Soap, the most controversial item in the original PowerWash Simulator, is back… and genuinely better than ever. The surfaces you wash are streamlined; no more confusing information about what’s metal and what’s multi-use. But some stains are real sticklers, and, as the second demo level likely helped show you, the soap is now crucially useful.
There’s no money sink around soap. Your canister may run low when sudsing up an entire wall, but it’s renewable. It just means you should wash a little of what you have before soaping up anything more. Bonus: it makes your favorite nozzles feel faster. Blast some foam, and the white and green nozzles will be just as powerful as the ever-reliable yellow, cleaning tough spots in one pass.
Assisting in your cleaning options are a few more variables when it comes to arming yourself with your dirt-destroyer. Washer tiers divide themselves slightly by the more generalist and white-shelled washer that keeps some focus on area of effect, while the more industrial line focuses on power at the cost of that AOE spray. I favor the former, which is terrifically efficient with soap, but you can figure out what works for you.
As another helpful bonus, as levels wind to a close, new targeting options make it easier than ever to find those last few dirt pixels. No more scrolling through your checklist menu, unless you want to!
PowerWashing 2: Mysterious Boogaloo
Focusing on the other side of PowerWash Simulator’s unusual allure, PowerWash Simulator 2 is not a sequel in mere name alone. With a corkboard in your office collating bits of news (and cute cat pics), you’ll quickly find that not all is as clean as you’d hope in Muckingham and the surrounding county. Loose ends from the original game will be pulled on, and it will grow every bit as bizarre as you’d hope.
Touching on only a few early game spoilers, that corrupt mayor didn’t run as far from town as one would hope, and his antics may even strike a too-relevant (but still light and entertaining) chord for some gamers dealing with expansive political corruption in their daily lives. But mostly things wash over you as the town’s wishy washer. Mostly. You’re a cat parent now, and it’s not hard to feel protective of the little fuzzballs.
Three cute kitties will accompany you to most washing sites. You can interact with them, getting some adorable mews as rewards (and the occasional achievement), and if you can spray them with water for more reactions, I cannot tell you. I never did. I have been achingly careful to not so much as moisten the darlings.
One more new neat thing in the game is the new type of level you’ll encounter. The demo gives you a crack at trying it out, with the public bathroom that rises from the ground as you clean. Savvy players may suspect this isn’t a device that’ll be overused, apt to return only when a given client makes this unfolding scenario make sense, and you’ll be right. I didn’t encounter it again for a long time, and when I did, I was delighted by how the level called back to the original game!
Home and Office
If there’s one thing I’m not in love with yet (but ready to be swayed), PowerWash Simulator 2 does give you an explorable and customizable base of operations. Some of it will be familiar as the garage you washed several small items in during the original game, but with the door open, you’ll find a spacious loft home & office. As you clean, you’ll earn fistfuls of two currencies. One pays for your tools and upgrades, and the other pays for furniture and cosmetics.
That’s a great idea, as it allows you to never fear you’re eating into your washer tool budget. But furnishing your home is a little barebones right now. The furniture — which you get to wash first, getting even more lovely dings — can be a little clunky and sometimes off-center to place. It may also take a while to unlock pieces that you feel suit your taste. It’s never intrusive, and it’s something you can mess with or not, depending on your preference. Do check that office corkboard occasionally, though!
That said, it certainly feels like an option ripe for a big future. One of the minor downsides of the original’s DLCs was that there were few cosmetics that could follow you back to the main game. No Warhammer washer suit, for example, nor certain special paint jobs for your washers. With a home base and a future of all-new DLCs ahead, it’s very possible we’ll soon see plenty of cool stuff we can shove into our homes for further customizations.
Conclusion
PowerWash Simulator 2 is exactly what this fan wanted from a sequel, with even a little bit more to offer. With improved tools at hand, oodles of all new levels to wash, and a continuation of the fun yet bizarre story that sucked us all in the first time, FuturLab is out from under SquareEnix and shining it up by themselves.
The only minor “fault” is a somewhat unexciting-so-far home decoration system, and, for those of us who detest lawn gnomes, there are plenty more of those little dudes to drop on sight. But be careful — I’m not certain they won’t remember how many times I’ve sprayed them, as they’re secretly concocting concrete gnome revenge.
Final Verdict: Two Thumbs Up
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