BODY: There is something deeply satisfying about blasting grime off a dirty surface. Swedish indie studio Speldosa Interactive wants to scale that feeling up to an entire island — and wrap it in the environmental conscience of a Studio Ghibli film.
Announced on September 30, Muri: Wildwoods launches December 7 on Steam, with Japanese language support planned. Players control Pele, a member of the "Muri" species — an odd little creature mixing rat and fish traits — dispatched to scrub a polluted island back to life. Two water-gun nozzles are available from the start: a wide-coverage Bubble Spray and a precision High Pressure Washer, with two more unlockable as you progress.
The scale is the pitch. More than 1,000 objects across the island can be cleaned, from ruined structures to the landscape itself to the animals living on it. Vegetation regenerates as filth comes off, so the island visibly recovers in your wake. Between scrubbing sessions, the game is a 3D platformer — running, jumping and climbing through ruins — and it keeps score via the "DigiDial," a smartwatch that logs progress and pipes in messages from your team. Over 100 collectibles await, including illustrations, cosmetics, and fairies to rescue. You can also spray wildlife clean and then hug it.
CEO Ellinor Bergman has been explicit about the influences: Spirited Away, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, and Princess Mononoke, aiming for something "relaxing yet thought-provoking." The underlying message is that small actions compound into real change — a familiar Ghibli register, delivered through a pressure washer.
A Steam demo is live now, sitting at 99% positive across 111 reviews, with wishlists past 45,000 as of September.
The insider take
Japanese gaming press has watched the "cleaning game" micro-genre with genuine curiosity since PowerWash Simulator became an unlikely hit here, and AUTOMATON's framing — "社会派" (socially conscious) powerwashing — is telling. Cleanliness as a moral and communal act lands differently in a country where schoolchildren clean their own classrooms and o-sōji is seasonal ritual. What makes Muri notable from Tokyo is the direction of influence: a Swedish team citing Miyazaki's ecological anxiety and selling it back to the market that produced it. Japanese coverage tends to treat such cases warmly but attentively, watching whether the Ghibli homage reaches past the art style into the actual tone. The confirmed Japanese localization suggests Speldosa knows exactly which audience it most needs to convince.
Originally reported by AUTOMATON (Japanese).