Express Car Wash Simulator Review (PC)

Express Car Wash Simulator may not predate the iPod Touch’s integrated ASMR-like bubble-popping app, but it comes just as close to replicating its core features in a modernized, albeit slightly gimmicky sort of way. It’s a lot like one of those novel apps that you would often install back in ‘09, only to remove from your dock after fifteen minutes or so. Here, though, you don’t tilt your device to simulate a beer pouring out from your headphone port, nor do you mindlessly drum your fingers against your screen to pop endless rolls of bubble wrap. No, what you do here, in short, is lather vibrant foam over various vehicles, and then, if you can believe it, rinse it out with power washing tools in exchange for cash clips and other upgrades of a significantly better quality. Well, there’s more to it than that — but you get the gist.

With all of the above said, there isn’t a huge amount to unpack here. Aside from its obvious fixation with foamy suds and tropical colors, the game itself doesn’t really do much to break free from its projection of a rather generic business simulator. But don’t let that sway you into thinking that this is a bad game. On the contrary, Express Car Wash Simulator is actually quite good, even with its novel concept and fairly lackluster gameplay mechanics. I suppose, when all’s said and done, that’s sort of what ASMR strives to achieve, though: a stress-free audiovisual experience that doesn’t require a ton of effort to comprehend. On that basis, it pulls through, tenfold.

Make Mine a Foam Cocktail

At the heart of Express Car Wash Simulator is a simple process—a cleaning cycle that consists of three stages: foaming, rinsing, and upgrading. The initial phase involves lathering colored foam over a vehicle, whereas the latter phases lean towards power washing techniques and making gradual changes to the way you earn a passive income from your business. For the most part, though, what you see is what you get: a first-person soak-and-scrub car washing simulator in which your primary objective is to—you guessed it—clean. There are different foam synergies to mix, nozzles to experiment with, and customer satisfaction checklists to fulfill. Like PowerWash Simulator, you could say — but with more bubbles.

While Express Car Wash Simulator doesn’t offer much by way of ironclad plot points, the game does feature a simple A-to-B campaign that includes a good selection of vehicles to unlock, cosmetics to purchase, and a fluctuating color wheel for you to dab your brush at over a relatively sizable career mode. Aside from that, though, the game doesn’t dish out anything else for you to do. There’s comfort in familiarity though, I suppose, so while it does mostly fail to keep things fresh with unique settings and extracurricular activities, it does at least provide an experience that’s both coherent and oddly satisfying. That said, I wouldn’t expect to clock a hundred hours here.

Beyond the Bubbles

As luck would have it, Express Car Wash Simulator does feature the odd “side quest”—the sort of jobs that either involve completing basic timed maintenance repairs, or installing both vending and arcade machines in your business grounds to attract more customers and a passive income, to boot. To call these “mini-games” wouldn’t be entirely true, mind you, as gameplay-wise, they don’t really require much more than a simple input or trigger to activate a node of some sort. It adds a little extra to the overall cleaning experience, but again, I wouldn’t say that it elevates the overall quality of the game. It’s filler, if anything, so you can take a lot of it with a grain of salt.

With all of the above said, Express Car Wash Simulator does show a tremendous amount of potential. Moreover, lest we forget that, at least at the time of writing, the game is still in its teething phase, which means that, while a huge portion of the game is already available, the full ball of wax, so to speak, has yet to come to the table. So again, perhaps it’s only a matter of time before it lifts the veil on its Excalibur of nozzles. And with valuable business upgrades and other nifty perks still hiding behind the post-Prologue version, I’d be lying if I said that there wasn’t a reason for to return to it at a later date.

Verdict

Express Car Wash Simulator set out to capture the beating heart of a traditional ASMR experience with a series of foam-fondled cleanup jobs. It didn’t set the benchmark, I’ll admit. But it did, however, come clean with an enjoyable, albeit somewhat lackluster journey with an admirable variety of bubbles, nozzles, and vehicles. I can’t say that I’ll be jumping back into it in the near future, because quite frankly, I feel as if I’ve seen just about everything that it has to offer already. In fact, I felt as if I had swept most of it beneath the rug in just under thirty minutes. But I enjoyed it all the same, even if the novelty of the situation was rather short lived.

If you have the patience to carve through cleaning-based games like PowerWash Simulator and Crime Scene Cleaner, then you shouldn’t find it to be a major problem mopping up the leftover suds in this old bucket. Granted, it doesn’t offer a great deal of variety in terms of jobs or settings, but it does deliver a good old fashioned satisfying experience that you will no doubt want to carve away at for a couple of hours to unwind your thoughts. That said, there isn’t a huge amount of replay value here, so if it’s a jam-packed career mode that you’re looking for, then you might be in for a surprise here.

As I said earlier, the Prologue is merely a sneak peak of what’s to come in the near future. So, be sure to take a lot of these words with a pinch of salt.