PowerWash Simulator’s speedrunning scene puts both time and water under extreme pressure
When PowerWash Simulator came out of Early Access, it became quite a hit amongst the team here at Eurogamer. I was curious to see whether I’d enjoy it too, so I cashed in the free month of Game Pass that came with my new PC to give it a try.
I enjoy it a lot. In the game’s career mode, there is no pressure to finish a level quickly or efficiently and that’s what I love about it. You can ignore the time and leave the hose running for as long as it takes you, and that’s all part of the appeal. Bertie expertly summed it up in his review.: « This is not a game about rushing towards an end, » he wrote. « This is a game about the sedate pleasures of repetitive work – a slower game about the satisfaction of a job well done. It’s relaxing and calming, and that’s a powerful quality. »
But this inevitably got me wondering about the other end of the gameplay spectrum in PowerWash Simulator. Speed and efficiency, rather than leisure. True, you can already play the game’s time-limited and water-limited modes, but they weren’t as extreme as what I was imagining. I’m talking speedwashing. Was there anyone out there playing like that?
A quick Google search brought me to Speedrun.com, where leaderboards for the game indicated that, yes, there was a small but growing group of players committed to speedrunning PowerWash Simulator. After watching footage of runs on YouTube, I wanted to reach out to some of the people who are behind feats such as the one below, where the game’s Fire Truck level gets cleared in less than two and half minutes.
(Warning: this can be a bit nauseating to watch, so you might want to not watch if you get motion sickness)
Here we can see the game’s chief « wiggle-waggle » speedrunning technique, where you leave the washer on auto-spray whilst rapidly moving the cursor from side-to-side, switching nozzles if and when required.
From the official PowerWash Simulator Discord, I found a separate server that speedrunners had set up to discuss all things speedwashing – PowerWash Simulator Speedrunners. Here, players told me that they had been speedrunning the game for some time while it was in early access, long before its full release in July. One player, Fireball, said they started at version 0.
