Become the best at cleaning up everyone else’s mess. Complete all tasks in Car Detailing Simulator to earn as much as possible.
Taking care of a vehicle takes a great deal of work. Making sure the inside and outside look good is not easy. In Car Detailing Simulator, one truly gets to see the kind of dedication that goes into automotive detail work. It’s time to get to the grind and make that money. From developer GameFormatic, comes a simulation title where one must get their hands dirty.
As an industry, there are very few places people trust to clean up their vehicles. It might be easy to get into the industry, but staying in it is another story entirely. Keeping the customers of the shop happy will not be an easy task. Some vehicles in Car Detailing Simulator might need very little work. Others will require a complete overhaul when it comes to cleaning. This is why one must ensure they have the right tool for the right job.
Getting into the Car Detailing Simulator was simple. After booting the title up, it gives users the option to toggle standing or sitting controls. In order to ‘press’ any button object in the game, one must pull the top trigger and push the corresponding finger against a specific button. To grab an object, pulling both the top and bottom trigger grabbed whatever object was highlighted.
Figuring out how to find my objectives was extremely hard. Car Detailing Simulator does little to hold the player’s hand. And while that can be a good thing for some titles, the same cannot be said for this one. Once I figured out what I was doing, I looked down to my left hand and saw the menu on my wrist. Initially, one is simply shown a graphic representing the pressure washer and how to use it.
It took simply messing with the slider on the menu to figure out what it was even used for. Sliding the arrow from left to right brings up both the task list and the shop list. Accessing the shop was interesting as it had essentially everything I needed to get started. Since the starting bank is about $8000, it seemed like a non-issue to simply buy everything I might eventually need. Surprisingly, getting most of the stuff available in Car Detailing Simulator put almost no dent in my funds.
With all cars, spraying off the mud seems to be a thing, which is understandable. The only way to do this is with the pressure washer, of course. Using it was nice and easy. Just press the bottom trigger to grab and hit the top trigger to spray. A special foam can be bought from the store, which makes cleaning look a little more polished. The only downside is how much longer it takes in comparison to simply spraying the mud off a car with water. Car Detailing Simulator ensures that an action like cleaning mud isn’t a simple point and click motion.
Spraying mud off a vehicle is a painstaking process. Luckily, there is a visual cue to notify when a section has been cleaned. After getting enough mud off a specific area, it will glow yellow to let a player know that section is fully cleaned. This is a nice feature in Car Detailing Simulator, as it is not always easy to tell when a spot is truly clean.
Cleaning the outside of a vehicle in Car Detailing Simulator is much easier than cleaning the inside. Two door cars were a pain in the neck to clean up. To clear small bits of trash, a vacuum with an attached canister was required. It was no problem cleaning the front seats. It took reaching around corners blind to clean the back of a two-door vehicle. Attempting to lean into a vehicle cause the vacuum to glitch out and begin twitching in my grip. It would have been much preferred if every car that came in had four doors instead of two.
If there is an important lesson to be learned here, it’s to never lower the vehicle into the floor. The only reason this feature exists is to make it easier to clean the roofs of the cars. What is not good about this feature is getting stuck in the hole with the vehicle itself. In Car Detailing Simulator, there is no way to climb out of this well. Completely exiting the game was the only solution to this issue.
At one point, my avatar must have come too close to a wall while holding the pressure washer. Before I knew it, the tool was completely gone. Because issues like this seem common in Car Detailing Simulator, there seems to be a reset button on one of the walls. It reset the pressure washer and placed it back in its holster. It also ‘threw’ everything purchased from the shop right to the door it usually appears in front of. Seeing this, it appeared a little pointless to take anything from that pile and organize it on a shelf.
Visually speaking, one can say the graphics were those of a game still in the open beta stage. It was extremely satisfying watching the pressure washer slowly clean areas of each vehicle. The garage itself was a little bare. Tones of dark blue and grey appeared as the only color that adorned the inside of the workstation. Store items seemed restricted to garage supplies and nothing to decorate the area with. There should be a way to at least adjust the colors of the wall if there are no decorations.
It’s important to address the issue of opening the menu in Car Detailing Simulator while holding a tool. The left hand will always have the game’s menu ready to access. While both hands can use every tool in the game, there is an issue when using a tool with the left hand. Opening the menu seems to freeze the hand and bend the fingers backwards. Like the issue of getting stuck in the well, the only fix for this glitch was to exit the game completely.
There seemed to be a fair amount of thought that went into making the tools sound accurate. As accurate as someone of the sounds were, some glitches will distort the noise of the tool one might be holding. As much as the music is appreciated, an option to change the audio of the stereo in the shop would be great. After a short while, the three tracks that play can become a little much. Hopefully, the player base can see this idea spun into some sort of ‘jukebox’ mechanic.
I really wanted to enjoy Car Detailing Simulator to the fullest. While I feel like I developed a good understanding of the controls and what to do, the glitches forced me to exit and load back in a few times. It’s unfortunate because when the title did run smoothly, it was fantastic. There are a lot of ways the game can improve. As of now, the game does not feel finished, and it might not be. Their focus is likely to be on their other VR games. It is a good game if you can handle dealing with a 90% chance of running into glitches during your playthrough. The game can be purchased on the Oculus Store at $19.99.
