A humble piece of sushi cleans mold off leftovers in the fridge. That’s the premise of Moldwasher, a small pixel art curio with serene ambient tunes that is coming to Steam later this year. It recently landed on the the r/powerwashingporn subreddit where it became a mini-sensation.
It’s being made by solo indie dev Rubel Games and sports a unique twist on traditional power washing games: here, the stuff your cleaning away isn’t static. Unlike the dirt you blast off a muddy truck in PowerWash Sim, the mold has a life of its own and will slowly grow back when you’re not spraying it down. Waste too much time cleansing an old bell pepper and that abandoned jar of stuffed olives you bought for those classic martinis you only made once will soon become ensconced in the dusty fungus.
Currently slated to release near the end of 2025, Moldwasher promises a range of unlockables, various treasures to clean, and lots of different mold types to combat, including mimic, crystalline, and glowing variants. I hope it goes full Dungeons & Dragons and adds some slime boss fights, though that might go against the meditative energy at the game’s core, which will include non-AI lo-fi chiptunes.
This isn’t just an idle post on a subreddit showing off a cool mockup. Instead, Moldwasher follows two previous sanitation-inspired games. The first was strategy sim Listeria Wars and the second was the tactical roguelike Staying Fresh, which was about preventing old food in the fridge from turning into zombies. Both have only a couple dozen Steam reviews so far but are positively rated.
PowerWash Simulator is getting its own follow-up as well. PowerWash Sim 2 is arriving sometime in the fall with split-screen co-op and other new features.
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