Laundering The Loot In A High-Stakes Physics Sandbox
Goat Simulator, PowerWash Simulator, Police Simulator, and now Cash Cleaner Simulator.
Simulator games have steadily been releasing for the last 20 years now, and if there are games where you can menace people as a goat, spend hours washing houses, or walk around writing parking tickets, why wouldn’t there be a game where you launder – quite literally – piles of cash?
Humble Beginnings: The Dark Web, Cryptocurrencies, and First Contacts
Cash Cleaner Simulator puts the player in the shoes of an individual managing a cash cleaning operation. The game begins in a small warehouse. Suddenly, the phone rings and the player is met by an erratic individual that seems to waver between friendly and threatening. But their personality aside, they are a client that needs their cash cleaned, and you’re the one for the job.
Upon accepting, supplies will rain down from a large opening in the ceiling. This can be anything from packaging and money counting equipment, to actual boxes and pallets of cash that need to be sorted.
Like any major operation though, the player starts with humble beginnings. Jobs are assigned via an app on the in-game cell phone, listing their requirements and leaving it up to the player to accept. These requirements can dictate what denomination of bills to use, how clean the money needs to be, and how it should be packaged. Some jobs will give room for leniency on these requirements, and others are incredibly strict.
Meeting Specific Client Demands
Sometimes a stack of mixed bills in a dirty box is enough to get the job done, and other times the job specifically states to only use $50 bills, that bills need to be properly cleaned and plastic wrapped, and they should be delivered in a RED sports bag. Getting anything, even the colour, wrong will result in penalties or the job being undeliverable.
Of course, perfection also is rewarded. Make the delivery in one shot, with clean, unmarked bills, and the pay will increase.
Now you may be a cash cleaner, but a dealer doesn’t sample their own supply, which is why all the player’s in-game purchases are done via a cryptocurrency. This crypto is used to purchase packaging supplies, equipment, and more. And it won’t take long before this modest operation is running multiple cash counting machines, laundry machines, and dryers to increase the flow of cash in and out of the warehouse.
Scaling the Operation
Cash Cleaner Simulator is a game about scaling. At first, getting the money out the door is good enough for the clients. But as a professional, more and more starts to be expected of you. Money will arrive covered in mud and will need to be run through the washer and dryer prior to sending out. Other bills will be marked by either gangs or law enforcement. These marks can be exposed by UV lights and will need to be sorted out from the unmarked bills. And of course, there are counterfeit bills as well which need to be sorted too.
What starts as a simple job quickly becomes more and more complicated as other variables come into play, until eventually the warehouse is handling not just US dollars, but Euros, and even Japanese Yen.
Filtering Out the Underworld Trash
On top of that, some boxes will arrive with more than just money in them. Old bill wrappers, empty shell casings, and other various junk will get mixed in with the cash, and it all needs to be filtered out before the final delivery.
Cash Cleaner Simulator does a great job introducing these mechanics in a way where things don’t get bogged down though. Different currencies are only introduced when specific jobs are taken, and those jobs will explain what is required, as to whether the player needs to sort through Euros or Yen prior to being accepted. These jobs can be put off for a while, although the main missions will eventually force the player to interact with them to proceed.
Automating the Dirty Work
There are also more advanced cash counting tools that make sorting everything much easier. One machine will automatically filter out marked bills, and it can even sort things by the specific markings. At first, any marked bills can be ignored, but eventually missions will start requesting bills that are marked in a certain way.
The cash counting machine eventually can handle multiple tasks such as filtering out counterfeits and wrapping bundles of cash to make handling easier. Even bigger machines can handle processing multiple bills at once, ensuring the operation can really scale.
I had machines lined up in rows and as one would sort out 100 bills, it would throw the unwanted bills to the next machine, where it would sort out the 50s, and so on, until every dollar was properly accounted for. The small washing machine that could only handle dirt gets replaced by an industrial one that can dissolve goo and handle other nasty stains. The initially small room, after a small incident, is expanded into a larger space where multiple tables and cash counting spaces can be established. With carts pushing stacks of money around as more requests come in.
Physics, Collision, and Chaos
It’s easy for minutes to turn into hours as the addictive cash cleaning grind grabs hold.
But, while I did greatly enjoy my time with Cash Cleaner Simulator, the game does begin in a rough way. Earnings feel relatively slow, even after several hours in, and the controls took a while to get used to. This was exacerbated by the fact that everything in game is physics based and has collision, so dropping money in the wrong spot can cause it to sort into containers incorrectly and lead to a headache while trying to reorganize it.
The goal is to organize things as much as possible, but cash scatters and the never-ending barrage of unwanted items guarantees that it’s a losing battle. The physics system isn’t perfect either, and at times loading cash into the carts would cause it to jerk forward slowly until it collided with the table, causing everything on it to fall out of place. Each item then needs to be individually moved back into place, and hopefully all the cash is still separated enough that it doesn’t need to be resorted.
Thankfully, things do automatically stack and store onto pallets and into boxes, so setting up a workflow where money is relatively organized is possible, even if something catastrophic happens. But there were times when I would walk into a table, and it would bounce away from me. When I tried to push it back into place on the other side, it wouldn’t react without actually picking it up in game. This unfortunately means anything on top of it will fall to the ground and, again, I’d be reorganizing things.
Personalising the Warehouse Atmosphere
In spite of these quirks though, the game has a lot of personality, and it’s incredibly easy to lose yourself in the rhythm of the gameplay. And, of course, the in-game physics system is what allows you to toss boxes around and fling around stacks of cash, which ultimately give the game its unique personality.
The space is also the player’s to do with as they please, with there being an in-game store section for furniture and other items. One of my favourite bits is that music is diegetic. This just means that the audio is dragged from in-world sources where the characters of the world would be able to hear it too. Simply put, all the music is playing in radios positioned around the warehouse and different radios will play different kinds of music. They can also be paused and moved around at will. It’s a small thing, but it makes playing around in the space enjoyable, beyond just completing the in-game tasks.
A Sordidly Satisfying Sorting Simulator
Once you get accustomed to the controls, which at times feel a bit cumbersome, and as long as you are able to ignore some weird physics, Cash Cleaner Simulator is a game that you can easily spend dozens of hours in. The mechanics that can be frustrating are also what ensure the game is unique and fun.
The negatives definitely don’t outweigh the positives and so if this looks like a game you’d enjoy, I strongly recommend giving it a try yourself.
Important Links
Make Dirty Money Shine With Cash Cleaner Simulator On Xbox Series X|S And PS5 – https://www.thexboxhub.com/make-dirty-money-shine-with-cash-cleaner-simulator-on-xbox-series-xs-and-ps5/
Buy from the Xbox Store – https://www.xbox.com/en-gb/games/store/cash-cleaner-simulator/9nqnln91ckm9
