The life lessons we can learn from PowerWash Simulator

PowerWash Simulator has finally left Early Access and is now a “complete” game — though if previous Early Access titles are anything to go by, it will continue to get new updates over time, lest the perpetually unsatisfied Steam audience whinge about it being “abandoned”. But that’s a rant for another day; this is a time for celebration, since PowerWash Simulator is a great time, as we’ve previously explained.

As I’ve returned to PowerWash Simulator now that it’s “finished”, I thought I’d return to some of my previous thoughts, and specifically correct one of them. In our previous look at the game, I said that “there’s no real sense that you come away from the game having learned anything”. Upon further reflection, I don’t think that’s true at all.

While the things you can learn from PowerWash Simulator might not be deep and meaningful philosophical reflections on the human condition as you would find in a more ambitious narrative-centric game, they are instead practical life lessons that we can easily apply to our day-to-day existence. And, on the whole, the game is an eminently positive sort of experience that, as many people have discovered, is especially valuable during particularly stressful times on our planet — such as, say, the last couple of years.

So let’s explore some of these life lessons in a bit more detail.

Cleaning is fun

I suspect that for most people, cleaning their house is one of their least favourite activities. Both my wife and I are terrible for this — we inevitably end up having a massive blitz of the whole house before anyone comes to visit and witnesses the filth we live in on a day-to-day basis, but every single time we also come out of the experience feeling like we’d actually quite like to keep the place clean and tidy this time. Because it’s nice to live in a clean and tidy place.

PowerWash Simulator emphasises that the actual process of going from “rancid shithole” to “shiny, sparkling haven of cleanliness” can be fun in itself; it’s all a matter of attitude. Sure, the end result is satisfying — but those smaller moments along the way are enjoyable, too, so focus on those if the conclusion to your cleaning session seems a particularly long way off.

Got rid of all the dust from your game consoles? Time to celebrate! Eliminated that unidentifiable stain that’s been on the table for the last week? Give yourself a pat on the back. Finally dusted out those cobwebs you’ve been thinking you should do something about every time you sit down and happen to look up at that particular corner of the ceiling? Shout “Ding!” with no shame.

Yes, PowerWash Simulator is set up in such a way that we’re rewarded with a minor dopamine hit — that delightful “ding” noise and the accompanying flash of colour — whenever we complete a smaller subtask of the overall project. Learn to provide yourself with a similar form of satisfying reward in reality if you’re struggling with cleaning, and you’ll be surprised how much tidier you might be able to keep your living situation.

Patience is a virtue

Clearing a single level in PowerWash Simulator can often take quite a long time, particularly if you’re playing one of the “location” levels rather than the “vehicle” stages. When you first start playing, you might think that it’s going to take an unfeasibly long amount of time to get anywhere, and that it might actually be better if you spent your time doing something — anything — else.

But once you get started, and you start making progress, and you start getting those little dopamine hits, you won’t want to stop. By splitting your overall task down into smaller, manageable subtasks, you’ll be done with the overall larger task before you know it.

It’s all about patience. Don’t look at a big project and think “oh, God, this is going to take ages”. Be patient; look at the smaller parts of the whole, and consider how clearing a small but noticeable subset of the whole task will still feel good — and will have made some meaningful progress towards your end goal, also.

Complete perfection isn’t necessary for satisfaction

We, as gamers, have a bit of a problem with the pursuit of supposed “perfection”, particularly as online competition has become more and more prevalent over the course of the last couple of decades.

It’s all too easy to get stuck into the relentless pursuit of perfection at the cost of enjoyment — grinding out a particularly stupid trophy so you can get a Platinum rather than simply enjoying the game on its own merits; restarting an event in a driving game the second you clip a wall because your run won’t be perfect; resetting an arcade-style game if you die embarrassingly in the first few seconds; obsessing over one-credit clears or speedruns before you’re completely comfortable with the game in its basic form.

In PowerWash Simulator, you don’t need to be perfect. In order to check off one of those subtasks from each overall stage, you don’t need to eliminate every last piece of dirt — just most of it. In other words, your work doesn’t have to be completely perfect for it to be considered successful. This is a good attitude to take, because although the pursuit of perfection can lead to us striving to do our very best at all times, it’s also unsustainable and exhausting to act that way — particularly when it comes to things that are supposed to be for pure enjoyment. Like, say, video games!

Doing things your way is fine

In PowerWash Simulator, there’s no set way to clear each stage. Sure, it has Challenge stages available, where you must clean a stage as quickly as possible or by using as little water as possible, but the main game simply tasks you with cleaning stuff and nothing else. There’s no optimal way to play, no “correct” way to play — you can simply take it on as you see fit. And, indeed, with the achievements added in the 1.0 version of the game, developer FuturLab is encouraging players to try various different ways to play if they fancy changing things up a bit — ranging from cleaning things in a specific order to deliberately restricting yourself to certain tools.

I’m normally not the biggest fan of achievements and trophies in general, but this is a good implementation of them. Rather than grinding out repetitive, boring tasks that don’t prove anything, achievements like this encourage you to have fun with the tools at your disposal, perhaps discovering a new favourite way to do things along the way. A favourite past example of this sort of thing was in Crackdown for Xbox 360, which included an achievement for playing rocket launcher tennis using a car as the ball between two co-op players. Completely useless in the grand scheme of the game, but super-fun once you tried it for the first time.

Anyway, this philosophy can be taken into the wider world and applied to any project you might want to turn your attention to. Getting the thing done fast is good, sure, particularly if you’re working to a tight deadline and other people are waiting on your contribution — but if you’re just doing something for yourself, there’s no need to do it the “best” way. Do what works for you, even if that’s a bit more “inefficient”. If you’re happy and comfortable doing things that way, don’t let anyone stop you!

Sometimes all you need is sound

If you haven’t yet booted up PowerWash Simulator during the heatwaves that have been sweeping the globe recently, I highly recommend you do so — and either wear a good pair of headphones or turn the volume on your speakers up quite a bit. Because you might just find yourself surprised at how refreshing the simple sound of water spraying at various degrees of pressure onto a variety of different surfaces is.

Sound is a powerful stimulus and a trigger to both our other senses and our cognition. The enduring popularity of ASMR streams on YouTube and Twitch — as well as for erotic purposes — should provide plenty of evidence of that. So don’t underestimate quiet how refreshing a good game of PowerWash Simulator can be in the sweltering head; obviously don’t sacrifice things like proper hydration and ventilation just because a video game sounds nice, but do make good use of it to help your own headspace through this difficult period to endure!

Sometimes tuning out is good

Probably the most important thing that PowerWash Simulator can teach us is that sometimes simply tuning out from existence and the pressures of the modern day is exactly what we need to do. There is a point and a sense of progression to PowerWash Simulator, yes, but it’s not a game that you need to stress out over. You don’t even need to complete each job in a single sitting if you don’t want to; just fire it up, spray your fluids around a bit, then put it away and go do something else.

While you’re playing, though, allow yourself to relax. You earned this time to do nothing of any real importance — and while it can be tempting to think that you “should” be doing something of greater value either to yourself or to society at large, sometimes it’s important to just be selfish and do something for no other reason than it feels good.

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