Category: Video Games

Hey, Washers! Jess from FuturLab here to give you the low-down on PowerWash Simulator’s heaviest collaboration yet — the Back to the Future Special Pack! We’ve teamed up with the folks at Universal Games and Digital Platforms to transport you back in time onto various sets from the iconic “Back to the Future” trilogy from Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment.

And, when given the chance to visit the past, you do what any person with a superior knowledge of future technology would do… powerwash! Well, introducing the world to rock ‘n’ roll was already taken!

As well as saving the Hill Valley Clocktower (from muck, this time), you will also get to spray down Doc Brown’s Van, the Time Machine, the Holomax Theater and Doc’s Time Train. Plus, you can collect 10 electrifying new achievements.

This Special Pack features some of our coolest animations to date, so to learn more about how we brought the timelessness of “Back to the Future” to life, I was joined by FuturLab Junior Animator Alannah Meek to share some of her secrets here with you all.

Bringing the Back to the Future Special Pack to Life

Environmental storytelling has always been a core aspect of PowerWash Simulator. From early on, clues were scattered like breadcrumbs throughout each map, adding to the narrative and breathing life into the setting.

The Back to the Future Special Pack represents the next evolution of animation in PowerWash Simulator. Fittingly, alongside this celebration of cinema, we’re bringing you our most cinematic animations yet. From ticking cogs to flying trains, this Special Pack has it all.  

“The Back to the Future Special Pack has more animation than its predecessors,” explains Meek. “Being able to interact with and wash all these moving parts brings so much more life and interactivity to the pack, allowing you to experience the world of Back to the Future to a greater extent and appreciate the finer details from the films,”

Creating the Hill Valley Clocktower

The Hill Valley Clocktower played a pivotal role in the first “Back to the Future” movie. You’ll find it nestled in a fully explorable Hill Valley Town Square. Although 30 years has passed since the place was struck by lightning, it sure looks like it still needs some major TLC!

“Animating the clock mechanism involved a lot of research into how clock towers work and finding reference videos of the moving parts as the room in the film is only shown for a short time and dimly lit,” says Meek. “I also had to work closely with the artist to make sure the models would be functional and understand how all the individual pieces interact with one another. We made sure that the clock tower mechanism is broken as the clock tower has been struck by lightning, so eagle-eyed players will notice the cogs attached to the hands on the clock are failing to interact properly.”

Building The Holomax Theater

In “Back to the Future Part II,” the Holomax Theater captured the imaginations of viewers as a futuristic way to sink your teeth into a movie. Players can put themselves in Marty McFly’s sneakers to get up close and really personal with the holographic shark from the fictional “Jaws 19!” If you are looking for how to trigger this interaction, we’ll leave you with this timeless clue: X marks the spot.

“It was a unique challenge to imitate CGI from the 1980s with pixelated textures and interesting quirks in the animation! I studied the clip from the film and partnered with the team at Universal Games and Digital Platforms very closely to try to get the model and animation of the shark to feel as close as possible to the film,” recalls Meek.

Constructing Doc’s Time Train

Who can forget Doc Brown’s explosive entrance on a time travelling train in “Back to the Future Part III?” Players can experience the epic take-off of Doc’s Time Train in the new Special Pack, just remember: the future is what you make it, so make it a clean one!

“My personal favourite animation in this special pack is the animation on the Doc’s Time Train,” Meek remarks, “Working out how all the parts of the train work from film footage was a real challenge, but I love the end result and being able to wash the train while all the parts are moving and watching it fly away is a great end to the level.”

You might be wondering: “Why aren’t they talking about the Time Machine?!” Well, we wanted you to experience that magical moment for yourselves! Once you reach 100% on the Time Machine level, you’ll see some serious…ly cool animation!

“I hope everyone enjoys the Back to the Future Special Pack and look out for the shark!” Meek says.

We hope you’ll love all the wit and wonder of the Back to the Future Special Pack! Xbox Game Pass members can play the original PowerWash Simulator as part of their membership. The Back to the Future Special Pack is available now for a separate purchase on the Xbox Store (a copy of PowerWash Simulator is required to play).

PowerWash Simulator Back to the Future Special Pack

Square Enix Ltd.

☆☆☆☆☆

★★★★★

$7.99

Get it now

Great Scott! Crank that water pressure to 88 miles per hour and travel back in time to hose down iconic movie sets from the Back to the Future trilogy!

The future may be ‘heavy’, but the past sure is dirty. You’ve arrived on set in the nick of time to make every legendary location sparkle and every prop ‘pop’, even if it takes a whole 1.21 gigawatts of pressure washing power!

With filming schedules running tight, you’re in for one electrifying ride to spray down everything from the Time Machine to the Holomax Theater before you’re “OUTATIME”.

Make power wash history by blasting every spec of dirt and grime from heavy use, debris from explosive scenes and temporal ice from… well, we’re not actually sure where that came from.

Wash and explore five new levels:
– Doc Brown’s Van
– Time Machine
– Hill Valley Clocktower
– Holomax Theater
– Doc’s Time Train

Well, better get to it! There’s no time like the present! Or the past, or the future for that matter.

PowerWash Simulator

Square Enix Ltd.

☆☆☆☆☆
423

★★★★★

$24.99

$19.99

Get it now

PC Game Pass

Xbox Game Pass

Release the Pressure with PowerWash Simulator! Wash away your worries with the soothing sounds of high-pressure water. Fire up your power washer and blast away every speck of dirt and grime you can find. Build your own power-washing business and unlock new tools, upgrades and more – all with the simple satisfaction of power-washing to a sparkling finish.
TIME TO CLEAN UP THE NEIGHBOURHOOD
Build up your business in Career Mode and complete a variety of dirty jobs across the dusty town of Muckingham. There’s no right or wrong; no time pressure or final score, just you and the tools you need to soak away your stress. Want a clean start? Chill out and replay your favourite jobs in Free Play.
POWERWASH AND CHILL
Relax, unwind, and play with friends in Online Co-Op! Lend a helping hand to your closest pal in Career Mode, or up to 6 friends can splash around in Free Play, tackling any job the host has already completed.
KEEP IT CLEAN
For those looking for a little more pressure, beat your best scores in Challenge Mode! Fight grime in different scenarios; wash against the clock in Time Challenge or test your accuracy by using as little water as possible in Water Challenge.
GOOD CLEAN FUN
Graffiti, grime, moss, and mould, no dirt is too tough for your range of washers, nozzles, cleaners, and extensions. Different dirt types have different levels of toughness, so make sure you’re getting tactical with your equipment. Feeling fancy? Then customise your look with washer skins and gloves!
RELAXATION, SATISFACTION GUARANTEED
From casual, clean freaks to players looking to get into the nitty-gritty, everyone can pick up and play to feel immersed. Absorb the relaxing atmosphere and stress-free pace as you strip dirt from patios, pavements, vehicles, and public parks. Stress gets to us all, so sit back, relax, and wash your worries down the drain.
THE WORLD IS YOUR CANVAS
Create art by cleaning the way you want. Your nozzles are your brushes; the neighbourhood is your canvas. Unleash your creative talents and transform ordinary dirt into exceptional artwork. Share your techniques and showcase your power-washing prowess and mud-caked masterpieces!

The post A Sneak Peek at the Cool Animations of the Back to the Future Special Pack for PowerWash Simulator appeared first on Xbox Wire.

SteamWorld isn’t like other series. Where most game franchises take a single core idea and iterate on it over multiple installments, the creators of SteamWorld decided early on that it could be anything. It’s been a tower defense title, a Metroidvania mining game, a 2D strategy shooter, and a card battling adventure – all set within the same universe of down-home steam-powered robots. For fans of SteamWorld, it’s always a delight to see what it could be next – and now, with SteamWorld Build, it’s a brand new take on the city building genre. It’s a typically unexpected leap.

But, clearly never content with staying the same for too long, Build brings another first for the series – it’s the first SteamWorld game not to be built by its creators, Thunderful Games (previously known as Image & Form). After being acquired by Thunderful, The Station have stepped in to create Build. Oh, and for good measure, they also made it the first SteamWorld game to use a 3D perspective, and the series’ first voice-acted game, too.

It’s a fascinating next step for the franchise – and I caught up with Game Director Andreas Persson, Art Director Sofie Wikström and head of the SteamWorld franchise Brjann Sigurgeirsson to discuss how they sent SteamWorld on what might be its biggest leap yet.

“We knew The Station well,” says Sigurgeirsson of how the collaboration came about. “We knew that they were very solid studio that had done a lot of work on the LittleBigPlanet franchise. We also knew that they had been working on their own things. And then when the opportunity materialised to acquire them, we sort of jumped on it. One of the one of the first things we said was, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if you guys could pitch us something that could fit in the SteamWorld universe?’”

“Since this was our first SteamWorld game, we looked at a lot of what [Thunderful] had done previously,” continues Persson. “And what we settled on was that they are really good at taking something familiar, and then mixing it with something else and creating something unique… With that, we then saw that there is a real nice city builder that could be made in this universe by taking the city part and marrying it with mining gameplay. I would say it’s like a city builder meets Dungeon Keeper.”

It’s a unique proposition, and one Sigurgeirsson says proves the point of using a new developer – SteamWorld is a series that never stays still, and it can grow in even less expected directions by employing whole new groups of developers, with fresh perspectives and different expertise.

The Station had worked on ideas for a city builder for some time, but SteamWorld offered them a unique opportunity – to work on two layers. Above ground, you put together a Wild West-inflected railway town, piecing together housing, factories, and amenities for a growing population of Steambots. But below the sand and dirt, the action changes entirely, asking you to dig your own mines to find the resources needed above ground, with dungeon crawling and tower defense elements thrown in. The way these two layers link is the unique selling point, forcing you to manage two types of game at once, and always giving you something meaningful to achieve.

It can sound daunting, but The Station has also taken another key part of SteamWorld into account – the fact that the whole series acts like a smörgåsbord of game genres, and aims to introduce its fans to new ones in accessible ways.

“We then saw that there is a real nice city builder that could be made in this universe by taking the city part and marrying it with mining gameplay. I would say it’s like a city builder meets Dungeon Keeper.”

Andreas Persson, Game Director

“It’s something we’ve worked on from the very start of development,” says Persson, “since we knew we would get a lot of new players that were familiar with the world, but not necessarily with resource management games. So we had to think, ‘How do we communicate information and where do we put the complexity in the game?’ We deliberately decided early on to keep the city pretty streamlined. We didn’t want fires to erupt in the city and destroy everything.”

The idea is that there are demands on the player to build efficiently, but not major punishments if you don’t. Equally, while you’re mining, things will tick along above ground, reducing the need to constantly shift levels and micromanage. But, as Persson says, it’s not that there’s a lack of complexity:

“I remember we had some testers that didn’t realise how complex the game was until they learned everything,” Persson continues. “Because when you get to the first mine floor, there is not a ton of complexity. But as you go deeper, you learn each step, and each step builds on the previous one. So we said we want it to be ‘complex, but not complicated.’”

Another new consideration for both The Station and Thunderful was about transforming a genre best known on PC into a console-friendly experience. SteamWorld has always had a home on console, and it wouldn’t feel right to limit Build.

“We’d played a few [city builder] games [on console] and we really never felt that they worked,” says Wikström. “So we knew that going forward, we would have to adapt the UI and the gameplay with console in mind.” Unlike other games, this wasn’t a case of just working out button inputs – entire features were created with a controller at the forefront. “If we came up with anything, we always had to look at it from a controller perspective… I know that there were features that turned out in specific ways because of this. Rather than, you know, trying to shoehorn everything in on the console.”

The Station put limits on themselves to make sure playing with a controller always felt good – it’s been playable on console since the very first version of the game, and any time an update was prepared, it needed to be tested on console before it was approved.

Again, this feels like very ‘SteamWorld’ thinking – the series has always prized being unique and accessible, and The Station applied that thinking even to elements of game development that Thunderful had never had to think about before.

And, beyond the game itself, that’s the beauty of SteamWorld Build – it’s opening new doors for this already wide-open series. The Station isn’t just introducing SteamWorld fans to new ideas, and new ways of thinking about the series, but even Thunderful.

“I think The Station has proved that we can we can take SteamWorld in in any direction. There’s this internal joke that the next one should be a dating sim. And it’s a joke until we… make that game,” laughs Sigurgeirsson. “I think that The Station really proves that point. They’ve been brave, and very competent – they gathered enough understanding and then they just ran with it. And it’s turned out really, really great.”

SteamWorld Build comes to Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One on December 1. It will be available for Xbox Game Pass on day one.

The post SteamWorld Build Is the Series’ Most Impressively Wild Experiment Yet appeared first on Xbox Wire.