Powerwash Simulator has its own unique satisfying charm to it. Watching things get cleaner, shinier, more colourful and brighter is a gameplay loop that just keeps giving. Fresh Start takes the same premise but gives it an ecological twist. Its time to sweep up the world and bring animals back into their natural habitat.
Each level is a biome devastated by ecological disaster. Some are garbage dumps, others are dry and on fire, others have had an oil spill. They are spread around the world and you are going to sort them out. You do this with a giant water can vacuum cleaner. With one shoulder button on your controller, you’ll suck up garbage, oil and gunk. With another shoulder button you can spray water to bring the foliage back to life. Levels will have watering holes around them, or take place around lakes and so you’ll need to run back and forth sucking up water and then watering the greenery.
Controls are easy to pick up and quite forgiving. You don’t need to be exact with your aim as half the time you’ll be washing away giant clumps of mud. These get smaller as you wash them but disappear when still quite large (most of the time). Its the flowers and small grass sprouts that require more finesse and sometimes it takes a while to work out what you’ve not watered to get it right.
As you clean debris and water plants, you’ll earn XP to spend on upgrading your tools. You can upgrade the power of your main vacuum/spray along with its capacity to reduce down that back and forth to get water. You can also get a radar that highlights trees and plants that you haven’t watered yet… but oddly not those tiny flowers or grass edges. The other two tools you can gain and use are a portable water spray and vacuum that you can place down they’ll water or hoover up things within their radius. These tools have limited use though because they need a very direct line of sight to their task. Any height changes ruin their effectiveness and I have to say I largely dropped them after a few levels.
I also ran into some other technical problems. I bought this on PS5 and some of the levels seem to bug out, not allowing you complete 100% of the clean up. Mud ends up shrinking under the floor, under hills or into rocks on the more varied terrains. There is also a nice mechanic where at 33%, 66% and 95% level completion, animals return back to your level. They are cute but very wooden and stilted but on a couple of occasions the game froze when doing this.
Gameplay is extremely light too. Much is made in the description about solving puzzles but they are non-existent. In a few levels you may have to pick up a packed of seeds and put them in flower pots before watering them. That is it. 98% of the gameplay is hoovering and watering. That’s fine in a sort of zen way, but its not as engaging or interesting as Powerwash Simulator despite that being the exact same premise. There’s no variety, ladders, interaction (aside from petting animals) or big pay offs for what you do.
Ultimately I did find Fresh Start a relaxing, mind switched off zen experience until I hit a bug. I’d recommend other ecological games over this such as Loddlenauts and Powerwash Simulator is the better pure cleaning experience. Fresh Start is the easier of the lot to pick up and paly though, so if that’s what you are after – this is still a tentative recommendation.
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