Wash Your Hands is a powerful little pixel art experience where you give respects as you visit a vast graveyard that’s updated in real-time, with each grave stone representing an actual life lost to COVID-19.
The Coronavirus has had a dramatic effect on our way of life since a global pandemic was declared on the 11th of March 2020. Social distancing and self-isolation have become everyday terms, bars are closed and toilet-roll has been in very short supply. These inconveniences will pass for the majority of us but there’s an increasing number of people who will never see that day.
In Wash Your Hands you walk through a huge virtual graveyard where each headsone represents someone that’s died from the Coronavirus. You can follow in other players footsteps and you can pick up flowers and lay them at graves to pay your respects. It’s all updated in real-time and you may even spot a grave digger burying the newly departed. The pixel artwork and the soundtrack are beautifully implemented, but it’s the sheer number of graves that’s the most striking thing about the whole experience.
At time of writing COVID-19 has claimed 13,599 lives and in most countries things are just getting started. When lives are represented as numbers It can be hard to visualise what that actually means, but when they’re represented as gravestones in a graveyard it’s a very sobering experience. At the moment it takes a little over five minutes to walk through the graveyard, but by the end of this pandemic it’s likely to take hours. Please stay safe and wash your hands.
Controls: WASD – Movement, Spacebar – Interact
Available On: Windows and Mac
Gameplay Video: Here