PowerWash Simulator is one of the most unexpectedly popular games of the last few years. On the face of it, it is exactly as the title indicates: A simulation of using a powerwasher, which—much like using a real powerwasher—sounds like it would be fun for a minute or two, and then quickly turn into drudgery.
Yet somehow, it’s become this whole thing: PCG guides writer Sarah James picked it as her personal game of the year for 2022, news writer Joshua Wolens called it the best Far Cry game he’s ever played, and it’s had crossovers with other games and properties including Tomb Raider, Final Fantasy, and Spongebob Squarepants. It’s also got an “overwhelmingly popular” rating across more than 34,000 user reviews on Steam. And now it’s going back to the future for yet another weird crossover with another unexpectedly big entertainment series.
See what I did there? Back to the Future is a hit 1985 comedy film starring Michael J Fox and Christopher Lloyd that kicked off a huge multimedia franchise encompassing two sequels, a television series, theme park rides, and various videogames. And soon, PowerWash Simulator will become a part that roster. Intellectual property moves in mysterious ways.
The Back to the Future Special Pack, as it’s called, will take players back in time: Not to the 1950s, as I read it, but the 1980s, where they’ll have the opportunity to power-wash “iconic movie sets and props inspired by the Back to the Future franchise,” including Doc Brown’s van, the Hill Valley Clocktower, the Holomax Theater, Doc’s Time Train, and of course the Time Machine—the modded-up DeLorean that carried Marty McFly from the mid-’80s to the mid-’50s.
(Which makes this a fine time to note that if Back to the Future was released today, Marty would travel back to 1993, two years after Pearl Jam released Ten. I think I need to lie down.)
“Back to the Future is a dream IP,” said Kirsty Rigden, co-CEO of PowerWash Simulator developer FutureLab. “This new collaboration gives us the opportunity to take our players somewhere completely unexpected… the past, future and present!”
This won’t be the first Back the the Future crossover in recent memory: In 2015, for instance, Rocket League added the famous DeLorean time machine to its lineup. But that makes obvious sense: The DeLorean is a car, and Rocket League is a game about cars. Pressurized cleaning teaming up with Back to the Future is a little weirder—not the weirdest in the game’s history, that honor probably goes to the Warhammer 40,000 crossover announced earlier this year—but even so, fans seem awfully excited by the prospect. “Hope we get to clean the inside of the DeLorean,” redditor Barbash_ said. “Man, this game makes you excited about really weird stuff when you say it out loud.”
