Spilled! is PowerWash Simulator’s oceangoing cousin, and just as chilled

rockpapershotgun.com:

I’ve been scouring Steam Next Fest demos specifically for something laid back, and Spilled! – despite sounding like the title of a musical about upturned milk – has delivered nicely. It’s a light and breezy ocean cleanup game that has you sailing a cute lil’ boat around polluted seas, cleansing oil patches and scooping up plastic bottles. Even if it doesn’t have the every-last-speck detailing of PowerWash Simulator or Viscera Cleanup Detail, it satisfies in very similar ways, and I would very much like to get back out on the water whenever the full game is complete.

Spilled! technically operates on a cash-for-gunk system: returning any collected waste to a stationary mothership will reward you with coins, which can then be spent on improving your own boat’s speed, oil carrying capacity, and scoop size. Ultimately, though, these upgrades are optional, your only real task being the collection of those pollutants in the first instance. Plus the occasional rescue of gooed-up wildlife, who are subsequently added to... some kind of collection? It might just be a UI thing but I like to think all the animals come hang out on the boat out of gratitude.

Either way, the pleasure is very much found in the cleaning itself, rather than the rewards. And what a gentle, cosy kind of pleasure it is. Maybe as an English person, I just want to live out the fantasy of someone relieving my nation’s water of its turds, but anyone with a functioning heart should be warmed from within by Spilled!’s riverscrubbing. As the pitch-black splotches subside, hellish red waters gradually return to a crystalline blue, revealing even more happy fauna under the surface. Meanwhile, nearby hills are dotted liberally with solar panels and wind turbines, making each new stretch of spotless water feel like not just a return to the natural order but another step towards the harmonious green ideal that this world’s denizens have managed to figure out back on land.

It’s not challenging in any way, but that’s