Oh dear. The word “simulator” in the title, gameplay based around a boring mundane job-like task and a complete absence of NPCs because it’s aimed at people who like being left alone to browse new HDMI cables – yep, it’s a Dad game. It’s not even a post-Dad game as defined in my Hardcocks Sheepshagger review because there’s no element of fantasy in Powerwash Simulator, unless you count the fantasy of establishing a successful small business in today’s economy. But it was the game I sunk the most time into last week so I guess we’re fucking reviewing it. I couldn’t help it, I’m a dad. It lured me in with its promise of simulating good honest labour and the satisfaction of a job well done. The same way the Home Depot lures me over to the power tools section by wafting in the smell of fresh sawdust. So it’s a first person game where in each level you’re plonked in front of a building or vehicle of increasing size and complexity that appears to have been at ground zero of a volcanic eruption, we’ve got a high-pressure water spray and we can only move on when the true colours shine brightly anew and we’ve cleaned off all the dirt, played in an interesting historical cameo by the population of Pompeii.
Well, we don’t actually have to clean off ALL the dirt, once you’ve got about 99% off an individual component the game goes “PING! Fuck it, that’ll do. Move onto the next bit.” But there’s a big difference between 1% of a small thing and 1% of a big thing. 1% of, say, a wing mirror is like two pixels of dirt you can’t see so you have to spray a perfectly clean looking thing over and over like it’s a black man in the 60s who wants human rights. Meanwhile, if you’re doing a giant wall or a patio it’ll usually ping when you’ve still got a few square feet left, and that just gives me Dad game blue balls. I was really going to relish the last bit. I was going to cut it into funny shapes. You know, like when you finally decide to shave off your whole beard and take a moment to playfully see how you look with a Hitler moustache. There, that’s my one gameplay issue with Powerwash Simulator. It’s not exactly complex mechanical design. You point at a dirty thing until all the dirt is gone. Occasionally you solve the riddle of the more stubborn stain by pointing at the dirt for slightly longer. There’s no timer or puzzles or challenge beyond getting through a level without succumbing to the overwhelming urge to stop for a piss.
Nevertheless, there’s something very absorbing and zen about systematically cleaning a big thing, as was the case in the now classic Viscera Cleanup Detail, and I don’t know if I’d say Powerwash Simulator steals its throne as prince of the cleaning games. I think VCD was a lot more intuitive in that a big violent red bloodstain on the floor of a sterile space lab stands out in ways that two square inches of soot on a gravel driveway do not, and didn’t necessitate a special button that makes all the remaining dirt glow like Spider-Man’s radioactive cum and which you basically have to constantly hammer like the Quicksave button in a Hitman mission. But to its credit Powerwash Simulator pulls off all the little sensory details of sound and water effects that give something like this its satisfying popping bubble wrap appeal. It’s just that, maybe because I’ve been living in California too long, I feel instinctively guilty playing it. Like after I’ve finished hosing off an entire two storey house all I can think is “Fuck, I probably used up half the state’s annual rainfall doing that. The kids are going to be making their oatmeal with human spit for the next few weeks.” Luckily, I could assuage some of my guilt by playing our next game of discussion, Endling (HURRH) Extinction Is Forever.
The unofficial sequel to Powerwash Simulator in that it depicts the world that results of everyone having a nicely watered lawn. It starts with everything being on fire and we play a pregnant fox trying to avoid being on fire by moving to the right. So at first I was afraid this was going to be one of those one-dimensional Limbo-style poignant narrative indie games where the only gameplay is to keep holding right until your last limb falls off, but to my pleasant surprise, after the prologue we evolve the ability to go left along linear paths as well. And controversially, make turns onto different linear paths. Slow down, Endling: Extinction is Forever, you’re burning through ideas like a hot civilization through unrenewable fuel sources. The game proper is a sort of micro-open world game with only one permanent, ongoing goal, and that’s to keep finding sustenance for your three layabout kids who won’t get jobs at the Whole Foods because they think it’s beneath them. Making sure to return to your den before the end of each five minute long night as the daybreak will bring the evil humans who are desperate to meet demand for fashionable scarves in the post-apocalyptic world.
Boy, it’s a shame Stray already sucked up all this month’s oxygen we had reserved for games where you play as wild animals because supremely shitty title aside, Endling: Extinction Is For Losers is probably the stronger game mechanically. The simple objective to find food allows the game world to organically expand as we use up all the resources near home and have to venture further afield, and the game is very good at letting us stumble upon things naturally without much direction – the little teachable moments where your cubs acquire new skills, the background storytelling details in which we catch glimpses of all the wonderful ways human civilization is collapsing around their ears. That said, there are one or two recurring annoyances in the gameplay – your cubs can’t keep up with you when you sprint so it was annoying to have to keep waiting for them to catch up, but I’m not even sure if I need to be supervising them so closely because the few hazards that actually threaten them don’t show up very often and I’d hate to be accused of helicopter parenting. And it was annoying whenever I had to start the whole day anew because I made one teeny tiny misstep right before dawn and a human hunter shot my ovaries out before I even got to the first ‘O’ in the word “whoops.” But harsh punishment for relatively minor failings might be part of the game’s point.
And this is a game with a point to make. To a slightly obnoxious degree. The other area in which Kindling: Distinctly Furrier outperforms Stray is how utterly noseblowingly depressing it gets towards the end. I won’t go into spoilers, let’s just say this isn’t the kind of cautionary environmentalist story that ends with Captain Planet showing up to punch a factory owner in the goolies. Some might accuse it of being preachy, but as I said I live in California and the only reason I’m not presently on fire is because I’m too damp from anxiety sweat, so perhaps a certain amount of heavy-handedness is justified. But then again, I don’t know what the game expects ME to do about anything. I’ve got three bins and a bicycle I still sometimes use, I’m not the fucking problem. And messaging aside, I’d describe Ending’s Endling… I mean, Endling’s Ending as unsatisfying. Intentionally so, but nonetheless. The final takeaway was that all the work I put in to get through the game didn’t matter for shit because everything was fucked from the start. Yeah, thanks, I know. Every morning I wake up, realise I’m still alive and think “Well, that’s put me in a bad mood for the day.
