Anyone who has played PowerWash Simulator for too long in a feverish state from eating too many fish fingers knows that feeling. You are no longer a sanitation entrepreneur and find yourself submerged in water, wearing a spacesuit, shooting dirt with lasers in a Zen-like trance while you nurture sea creatures. And now, FinalSomeone made a game about it.
Yes, it is. kind of about that. In LoddlenautMoon Lagoon has created a peaceful ocean cleanup mission where you glide around in an underwater jetpack to pick up trash and clean up the slime-covered landscape. Along the way, you’ll meet and care for little fish-like creatures called loddles, then do a little crafting to round things off.
In this fantasy/Tamagotchi job simulator, you play as an astronaut sent to the planet Gupp-14 to decontaminate the ocean from beneath the surface. It starts with trash collection: a special bubble gun will catch and collect drifting trash, like discarded bottles or plastic six-can rings. A trip to the recycling bins lets you deposit what you’ve collected and earn recyclable materials. These materials let you upgrade your tools and suits, which in turn allow you to collect more trash, etc. It’s a tried and tested loop of activity, and it’s no less engaging in Loddlenaut than anywhere else.
But it’s the gameplay additions around that core that give the game its personality. Adding a little spice to the mix is an oxygen meter. While it’s fairly generous (we intentionally ran it all the way down once just to see what happened), you still need to refill it by spraying through bubbles emitted by certain plants or through special rings that refill the tank. Those special rings are one of several items that can be crafted using materials returned from recycling bins, allowing you to set up small oxygen outposts for further exploration.
Another big aspect of the game is loddle care. When you first meet your loddle, it will be covered in goo and wanting to be cleaned. It then has needs beyond cleaning, including hunger, fun, and a desire for a home. Providing that home means purifying one of the biomes on the map thoroughly enough for a loddle to be willing to live there. Meeting these needs allows your loddle to evolve, and a loddlepedia will keep track of the different types you’ve encountered. Rounding out the virtual pet experience is the ability to name your companion and craft toys and snacks for them.
While we tend to sympathize with our radio advisor’s seeming annoyance with the loddles, the cute relationship building certainly changed the game from a rock-scrubbing exercise to something more open-minded. Loddlenaut is a place to hang out and let your brain rest. It’s a pleasantly immersive experience, and the soundtrack sometimes takes us back to the underwater exploration in Mario 64 (but it controls more precisely than that, don’t worry). However, this is also a game you maybe play while doing other things – a relaxing place to listen to music or turn on the TV.
However, that openness has its downsides. Even after you’ve worked hard to 100% clean an area, it will start to get dirty again after a short while. This adds to the sense that the decontamination project is a continuous process, but it also takes away the motivation to completely clean everything in the first place – it will just get dirty again.
Your lodle fish need similar care: they don’t seem to be able to take care of themselves even in a lovely, clear sea – that said, they don’t seem to die from neglect either. They need to be treated as a companion to spend time with, rather than a chore. Whether you can find that state of mind will largely depend on you.
Loddlenaut also almost destroys itself with its sheer lightness. While there’s some real satisfaction in blowing away dirt and collecting debris, the fact remains that the filthy environment looks pretty nice. The before/after comparison isn’t as dramatic as it could be, although the overall water color changes from a murky purple to a cheerful turquoise.
Interestingly, the story plays out like a horror game at times. It’s revealed through short snippets of text found along with the lost ID cards of workers at the evil corporation that mined the ocean in the first place. What happened to them? Surely those ID cards should have been on them at all times? There are remnants of abandoned machinery and some kind of processing plant. It’s clear that something went horribly wrong at some point. We were worried that our microplastic vacuum would get clogged with a human arm or something. (That never happened, just to be clear.)
But nothing really adds to the tension of the Loddlenaut experience. The controls are slick – the usual dual-stick controls, with ‘A’ for flying up and ‘B’ for flying down. Positioning yourself properly in the 3D underwater landscape can be tricky in any game, but there’s no need to worry here, as the right trigger will automatically aim your laser, vacuum cleaner or collection bubble at anything nearby that needs to be shot, sucked up or grabbed. It doesn’t always get what you want, but there’s no need to line things up in the right order anyway. Beyond the practicality, the controls are tactile, whether it’s tapping repeatedly to collect a pile of scraps ripped out of a trash bag or holding down a button to shoot microplastics down the gaping maw of a recycling machine.
Conclusion
Loddlenaut is a work simulation game where the work in question seems pointless. Places that have been cleaned need to be cleaned again, loddles that have been fed need to be fed again. With the project at hand being to clean up an ocean abused by large corporations, it’s sad that the game feels unwinnable – but perhaps that’s on purpose, in a sad way. In any case, if you don’t think too hard, the environments are peaceful, the loddles are cute, and the process isn’t too frustrating. If this is PowerWasher’s fever dream, it’s a shame to wake up.
