PowerWash Simulator on iOS

In the physical/real world it can be quite fun, but noisy to play with a kärscher cleaning device. It also wastes a lot of water. It is for this reason that PowerWash Simulator, availble in the iOS arcade store for “free” is interesting.

A few seasons, or even years ago I watched someone play this game on YouTube because YouTube recommended this type of content, which is part of my reason for dumping premium, and losing interest in videos recommended by YouTube.

The concept is simple. You start by cleaning a van, and once you’re done with the van you clean a house, and then a playground and so on. As you progress you earn money, and as you earn money you can buy new toys to play with. You can upgrade the kärscher device to do things, faster and more efficiently.

Game Play

The game play is intuitive and easy. If you want to move the step stool or the ladder, you wait for the icon, pick it up, place it where you want it to be, and then move on. If you’re lazy you can look for the circular icons on top of certain objects, and double click to teleport.

Hints

The game helps you. It highlights what is still dirty, if you need that assistance, but it also highlights the cleaning tasks that are yet to be completed. Each level takes half an hour to an hour to complete so you can notice that time has leapt forward when you finish.

Crouck, Lie Down, Stand and Jump

You can crouch, to reach places that you can’t see when standing, and in other instances you can lie down to get an even lower angle. You can also jump. This allows you to quickly see if the roof of the van is dirty, before getting the stool, or ladder.

Hot Phone

While playing I noticed that the phone tends to get hot, and it wears through batteries quite fast. This is a feature. If you play compulsively for hours, then, when the battery dies, you know to take a break.

And Finally

It’s interesting that they ported a game like this to iOS. I would have expected this on a desktop, or a games console. I had not considered it coming to a mobile phone. We can see why, since it drains battery. It is fun to play but I suspect that playing for 5-10 minutes is harder to do.

It would be nice if they had “five minute” levels, where we could clean something, like a bike, in five minutes, and then do something else. The levels require us to commit our time.

Having said this, pausing and resuming is easy, so we can clean one object, and then do something else.

I expect to play this more often, for a while.