Yes, you can pet the cats as you wash all of the things.
Highly anticipated game PowerWash Simulator 2 has just announced a release date of October 23rd, and I for one am very excited. Back before this announcement, I sat down with Jess from FuturLab to talk about what’s new.
With the success of the first PowerWash Simulator, I was curious as to the point of a sequel and why upgrades couldn’t just be added to the original. Jess sat me down with the PowerWash Simulator 2 demo at Tokyo Game show and showed me exactly why. This game, while still being the same PowerWash I know and love, has had a complete rework from the ground up, including not just the new equipment such as abseiling equipment for cleaning windows and floor washing equipment, but also a whole new home base.
“We know PowerWash appeals to the cozy community, so we just wanted to make this game a bit more cosy and immersive. PowerWash 1, you navigated through mostly the UI … so we've put in a home base. And the story is that you've bought the home base and you're moving in and you're collecting all of these mementos. You can bring back furniture and place it in your home base,” Jess explained as I cleaned a public toilet.
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“Every time you finish a job in career mode, you get a little memento, so a little statue of the place, so you'll get a little statue of the public toilet … who doesn't want that?”
Adding to the cozy factor, I was excited to see the inclusion of cats in the game, which were adorable and extremely petable. “The studio is really cat heavy,” Jess explained. “Most people have cats. Usually in life the people I meet are dog people, but FuturLab is very cat centric.”
The game also has a new split screen couch co-op mode and shared campaign progress when you play together online, meaning that when you play by yourself, you’ll still have all the same levels completed that you did in co-op mode. Some levels have multiple stages, meaning that after you have cleaned all of a certain part of a level you’ll gain access to new areas. The amount of levels however stays roughly the same.
“But in terms of the span of the area it's bigger because you've got Muckingham and then you've got all of the other cities that you'll go to now that you're a bigger business, and they are sort of references to the first game as well,” Jess said, referring to the fact that the new locations could be seen in the subway map in the first PowerWash game.
Other than the more obvious things, the team have also improved the game’s visual and washing effects. “They're almost things that you wouldn't notice. They're not in your face, but they're all small improvements that make you so much better.”
Another thing that Jess also explained that will excite long time players is the improvements to dirt layering. “When we started out like early access, there were some issues with dirt thresholds, so it would be that you wash a wall and then you could still see a bit of dirt on it and then it would ‘ding’ because it was being really generous. They fiddled with that and they got that to a really good place in the first game but in the second game, they've changed the whole way it works. So the dirt layering system helps make that even more satisfying.”
Although the wash mechanics needed some fine tuning, the first game’s story is super interesting. Interesting enough in fact, that it inspired an episode exploring it on the popular Youtube channel The Game Theorists. I asked Jess if she had seen it.
“I loved it, and I remember when we were coming to close the game, I really wanted another lore video wrapping up how I wanted it … There were obviously a bunch of intricacies about the mayor and the politics and the volcano and the statues. It just goes from really mundane to really mad which is great.”
“So how do you follow a story like that?” I asked.
“There's been so many in-depth discussions about the story of PowerWash 2 … Our writer, Mark, because he's a one-man band, obviously the design team chip in, but he's mad as a box of frogs in the best way. So you can expect more of the same sort of weird wackiness from PowerWash 2,” Jess laughed.
Jess also noted that the fact people expect surprises makes it more difficult to catch them off guard .
“The design team were really focused on the story arc … how do we make it as good but not the same story arc or the same story flow? They're trying to keep the surprise element, because obviously it's hard to follow how it has worked [in the past]. You go from that game about power washing to, oh my god, this is a game about going to space, politics, volcanoes. So you've got to try and keep the element of surprise for a community that are hard to surprise now.”
The success of PowerWash Simulator has been great for FuturLab, who can now self-publish their sequel. “Being self-published, I think, is a really big thing for FuturLab,” Jess smiled. “We've done a lot of work for other people in the past, and then with PowerWash 1, it was all our development, but published by Square Enix Collective. And now we've just taken that next step.”
She said that that success has also helped the studio grow, with new talent from all around the UK working remotely as well as some even working on the game from abroad. “I remember as we were gearing up for PowerWash 2, a lot of the company meetings were just all hands where everyone could put in their ideas. So whether you were the studio manager, or you were in marketing or design, everyone could put their ideas in. So there's bits of everybody from the studio in this game.”
She also told me that the design team has included references to other members of team in the game. “So if you go into the home base, there's books that have the names of some of the developers and other people in them, which is really cute.”
I asked Jess if there are any collaborations she would like to see for PowerWash Simulator 2 in the future, and she told me that there are actually already some in the works.
“So I interviewed my CEO, Kirsty, the CEO of FuturLab and asked her the same question. And she said that her dream collaboration(s) would be Discworld, because she loves that whole universe, and also Ghibli .... We have a lot of collaborations in the pipeline though, so I can't be too forward about that. But some of the ones we've done in the past, to be honest, have been a lot of people's dream collaborations at the studio. I think Sophia, our QA person who the registration on the van in the first game is named after, I think she suggested SpongeBob, which obviously became a reality. A lot of people were Final Fantasy fans … Warhammer was huge for a lot of people as well.”
I asked Jess what the team thought about the wave of PowerWash-inspired games that had come out, including some that were there at Tokyo Game Show. “We're indie devs at heart, so we're just happy to see people doing well,” she replied.
“We just had some guys come over from another game actually, who were inspired by PowerWash. It's just so nice to meet people and see games that have come from a game that we've put together.”
As I wrapped up my time with the demo, Jess expressed the team’s excitement about the sequel’s release. “It's more of the stuff that you love, but better. I just think it's going to be fantastic. I mean, look at it, it's so nice. I think the team have really perfected what makes the game great and put so much love into this one. It's unreal.”
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