A game that you wouldn’t expect to be more than a gimmick can sometimes turn out to be one of the more entertaining and challenging titles you’ve played. Proof of this lies with You Suck At Parking from the developers at Happy Volcano. After giving their free demo on Steam a chance, I found myself playing that game until I got nearly every point possible - including finding the hidden VIP section and trying my luck at the hardest map in the demo!
Gameplay
The game is simple: you are given a limitless amount of cars to successfully park in a small spot on a track within a time limit. It’s the details of doing this that the game becomes challenging and the struggle to succeed despite these challenges is actually pretty fun.
Once you press the gas, the car can’t come to a complete stop. You can slow down, but if the car ends up stopping for any reason, it will be considered a parking attempt. If you aren’t in the small parking spot, then it is a failed attempt. The good news here is that you don’t have to park correctly to have it count as a win. A car is considered successfully parked as long as any part of it is within the parking spot when it comes to a full stop.
While the first level starts off with a simple u-turn to challenge the players with the basic controls of the game, the difficulty of the levels will escalate with the use of wind, holes, mines, other vehicles, and various other factors. You also only have a limited amount of gas, which acts more as the vehicle’s time limit, so make sure you have a route in mind when you begin each car’s attempt. The overall clock for the level doesn’t ever stop, so once you get the first car started, you better get to work on getting all of the levels parking spots filled!
Picking the level you are going into was an interesting setup as well. This game provides a driveable overworld that you can find each level in and the more levels you complete, the more levels become available to enter. The hidden VIP level is also evidence that there will be hidden areas in the finished game as well, so I definitely suggest trying to figure out your way over to this hidden area when you try this demo out yourself.
Expectations
After seeing how intense and crazy the secret level was, this game is going to definitely end up being one challenging title. It may have a simple gameplay style and obvious goal, but completing the object is going to be a test of patience once players reach the midway point of the game. I do hope that they have a set of levels to give a more gradual increase in difficulty before it reaches the point that the VIP level was at because the difficulty jump between the last obvious level in the demo and that hidden level was pretty steep.
There didn’t seem to be a way for me to look around the level prior to my attempt at playing through it. Sure, it did give a short full-level scan when you load up, but that really isn’t enough when the levels start getting more technical. They should include a free-roam camera for players to utilize when they are about to start a new map. Just remove the ability to use this camera once the first car starts going. This way players can start planning their routes and see what challenges lie in wait for them because knowing it’s there doesn’t always make it easier to get passed.
Conclusion
You Suck At Parking was a surprisingly entertaining and delightful change of pace from the typical gaming experience! I wasn’t sure if I was going to like the game at all when I started downloaded the demo, but after playing through it and reaching the end, I was just wishing there were more levels to complete. This is definitely going to be a title I will be keeping my eye on and looking forward to its release date. If you are looking for a silly yet challenging game, then you need to try out this demo!
