The latest indie game to bring a mixture of puzzles and platforming while driving a car through some wacky challenging courses is finally here! You Suck At Parking is a skill-based title from Happy Volcano that gradually gets more complicated as you progress. Driving around in a little car, going from one level to the next, players will slowly get better at completing these seemingly improbably courses. As a fan of top-down, racing car challenge games, this is one of the most entertaining titles I have played in some time!

Gameplay

The game starts you off with a two-level tutorial section where it shows you the basics of the game. Essentially, you can accelerate, brake, and steer your vehicle, but if it comes to a complete stop then you have to restart. The goal of the game is to get any part of the car within the designated parking spaces in the level to continue. Levels will contain two to four parking spots and every time you successfully park on one of them, you gain a little bit more time.

You’ll notice when driving your car there is a gas meter. This is an interesting way to put a time limit for each car you use, making it so you don’t have all the time in the world to get to these parking spots. Other than the gas meter per car, the level itself has a time limit for full completion. Some levels will have a gas canister to collect to have the car last a little longer, but only parking in a spot will increase the level’s given time limit.

As you progress, the levels will gradually get harder by introducing new ways to fail. Eventually you will face the likes of no railing cliff sides, boost pads, bumpers, cops that chase you, fire walls you can’t touch, electric gates and walls you can’t touch, a firing machine that spits fire pellets rhythmically and sometimes while spinning, and more. With the mix of these different challenges in place, you can expect to fail quite a few times before beating a level.

When you successfully park without failing, it will show as a gold crown parking job. If you can complete the level without dying or resetting, meaning you flawlessly park in all two-to-four parking spots in the level without losing a car, it will give you gold crowns for each parking spot. Otherwise, simply completing a level with some losses will give you a heart parking job.

You don’t have to land every parking spot in every level to move forward in this game. Progression is based on how many cards you have collected. If you are just moving through the main levels, then heart and crown cards are totaled together for a final number needed to progress. However, there are Mystery Island areas that are unlocked only from the crown cards, so if you want to complete every level there is, you will need to complete a lot of levels flawlessly - but not all of them.

In order to reach the next level, you will have to drive around an over world area. There is no map to this area though, so you will need to remember how to get to different sections of the game seeing as they space them out pretty widely to create an environment that matches the general atmosphere the game gives off throughout your playthrough.

Other than the single-player side of the game, they plan to include multiplayer with up to 8 players. Unfortunately, this didn’t seem to be active while I was playing the game pre-release, but it is sure to be a much more chaotic version of the single-player game, which can only be a ton of fun honestly.

Video and Audio

I really enjoyed the soundtrack that they created for this game. The use of car sound effects to make an upbeat track throughout the game was a nice change from the usual background-filling style a lot of games go with. Plus, the music style slightly changing when you reach the second biome to include the actual title of the game being sung was welcome as well.

Giving a top-down view was definitely the best aspect of this type of game. The art style is a cute version of a cartoon world and they did a good job filling it out with environment pieces and wacky challenge items for the track. Thought, Ido wish that I would have more freedom to look around maps when I first load them up rather than just being given that swinging-style camera that doesn’t always show where all the parking spots are.

Replayability

There are a bunch of levels and going for perfection is always a reason to return. Along with the fact that they already announced that they plan to bring more biomes and levels to the single-player side of the game. Then there is the multiplayer side of the game which is bound to bring a bunch of memorable moments as friends challenge each other and create carnage in their play!

What It Could Have Done Better

Other than the camera aspect I mentioned above, I wish they would add a level select option from the menu. Sure, it was fun to drive around the over world the first few times, but it gets really frustrating when you get lost and can’t find the level you are looking for. Not to mention that it just eats up more time to just get to a level you are wanting to backtrack to.

Not so much a complaint, but I would suggest and hope to see the developers add a ‘build-your-own-level’ section to this game. The community of players this type of game is going to reach are the sames that like to make nigh-impossible levels and then watch how many people fail to complete them while applauding those skilled enough to do so.

Verdict

You Suck At Parking is chaotic joy for platformer-puzzle fans! Driving my little car around the many different challenging tracks, trying to collect as many crowns as possible, and wanting to prove I can beat all the levels they built has been a ton of fun. I look forward to playing the multiplayer side of this game and the new tracks they plan to add in the future. This is a title I strongly recommend to anybody who is even slightly interested in these types of games.

You Suck At Parking is now available on PC via Steam and Xbox, along with the Xbox Game Pass. It will come to both PlayStation and Nintendo Switch in 2023. Additionally, they have partnered with Fireshine Games to release a physical edition of the game on Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo Switch in 2023.