YOU SUCK AT PARKING
A driving game where your objective is to stop
I SPENT MOST OF THE GAME GIGGLING OR SWEARING HAPPILY AT THE SAME THINGS
I’m not great at parking in real life, because I’m paranoid about hitting other cars. Here is a game where you’d fail your parallel parking test because a giant magnet threw you into a laser barrier, or the sea, which isn’t something I’ve had to worry my insurers with. Yet.
You Suck at Parking is a simple blend of isometric racer and, well, parking, but not as you know it. Drive your tiny but clearly overpowered car round a treacherous Trackmania-style circuit of obstacles against the clock and with dwindling amounts of petrol, before trying to leave your car in the general vicinity of the marked bays.
Handling much like a fairground bumper car, each turn is likely to become a doughnut spin, but critically there’s no reverse gear at the end of it. The catch here is, once you stop, you’ve parked and that’s it. That run is over. Never mind, your next car is just a quick reset away. Just don’t hit your old wreck on this fresh run. Eventually time catches up with you, and the game gets to declare that you rock or, more likely, actually suck at parking some cars.
SQUEE POINT TURN
Even if you’re confounded by one track, you’re encouraged on to the next one, so you never really feel stuck on anything. There are always more tracks, more spaces, more mines, more giant fans and house-sized boxing gloves to challenge you. You will have to circle back eventually to complete the levels if you want to progress to the next hub-island, but that never felt unfair or arduous. Instead, I spent most of the game giggling or swearing happily at the same things depending on how many times I’d tried to do them. I even figured out the magnets eventually. The biggest challenge was using consistent controls to steer a car that constantly changes direction, like the fastest RC car you’ve ever tried. I wouldn’t have minded a scheme where left was always left, but maybe that would be too easy.
This being a beta build, the multiplayer is, as yet, deserted, but it’s clear they’re hoping for the chaotic and sharable fun of Fall Guys and its ilk. There are hats and custom explosions, for one thing. You get a little view on this with the ‘Frogger’ level and those with other non-player cars busily getting in your way, before flinging themselves, lemming-like, to their deaths. In singleplayer, you can push your own car out of an occupied parking space by accident, and I imagine that’s where most of the fun/griefing will be had in the arena. I suspect it’ll all be too frantic to be a good spectator sport, but time will tell. Maybe I just suck at parking.