Parking Garage Rally Circuit comes from the solo developer of JellyCar Worlds, and is another wonderful car game with great physics and intuitive mechanics. This game excels from having tight controls and simple gameplay, and doesn’t ever overstay its welcome. In fact, it’s the kind of game you wish would stick around longer than it does. Parking Garage Rally Circuit defies expectations with a silly concept, where you feel nostalgic for a game from a bygone era that never existed, but it looks and feels like it was.
This was a game I previewed before, and I was delighted to find that my save game carried over from that playtest, not that it mattered much. I definitely wanted to start over, and put down new lap times. The gameplay to Parking Garage Rally Circuit is simple: you have gas, brake, and turning, but you can initiate a drift with ‘X’. And like Mario Kart, you get two charges of boost the longer you hold a drift. Once you let go of ‘X’, you get a speed boost, and can build this up for incredible speeds. Your goal is to pass through blue gates that serve as checkpoints and finish the race ahead of the trophy ghosts.
The clever combination of Mario Kart drifting and SEGA Rally racing is done so well. There’s even a start boost you can utilize to get a jump off the start line to have the best chance of winning. I think my favorite part of this game is that is a rally game, and a circuit racing game, which rally isn’t. It’s very unconventional, and done on purpose in a fun way.
As you play through the tracks, you have the option of playing a race or endurance, the latter is unlocked after completing the race version and achieving certain trophies. You can earn the standard, gold, silver, or bronze trophies for placements in races. The ghosts do a good job of showing you how to drive, drift, and navigate the courses. It took me an hour and a half to finish the game with all bronze trophies, or better. Now, to get all silvers and golds is going to take more time and practice. So don’t be dissuaded by the short gameplay time, there’s much more time to be spent here.
I do like the bits of connectivity between players, for instance, there’s a leaderboard where your times will be posted to compare yourself to strangers and friends for intense rivalries. And then there is a whole multiplayer mode to the game, but I was unable to find a game during the review period. Looking over the options, it supports up to eight players, and lobby types for public, friends, and private games, any track, any number of laps, and even a unique catch-up mechanic. It seems there will be some good fun to be had over Discord with this. Seemingly, there’s cheat codes, at least, there’s a menu for them. I have yet to unlock any cheat codes during my time with the game, but the fact that they seem to be so secret and hidden is such a relic of the era this evokes.
While it isn’t an actual problem, there are only three cars in the game, one for each class: light, heavy, and ultra. Each car can be customized with pattern, livery, number, and so on. So you can make each class you unlock unique, because their handling, acceleration, turning, and more is just as distinct. To unlock the next class, is easy as getting all bronze trophies for the current class, and then you’re able to move up and do it all again. You will learn that as you get access to their faster rally cars, you’ll have to make adjustments how you navigate the tracks because you’ll go faster and fly farther on jumps if you’re not careful.
There are eight tracks to conquer, and with the three cars makes 24 variations of rally racing to go through. You’ll have tracks that take place at the airport complete with luggage carts about, Mt. Rushmore with common rock slides, a stadium with a thunderstorm on the second lap, the piers of Chicago, a mall where there’s a herd of snow plows are stampeding towards you in a staggered fashion, and so on. The last level takes place on Liberty Island and is really demanding, with a great homage to “Rainbow Road”. One thing to remember is that the game has “parking garage” in the name, so that means you’re never anywhere but the parking garages of these places, it’s just such a hilarious premise. It’s not all laughs, there’s adequate challenge here as it’s too easy to break through the soft barriers and lose a race, and each new track requires more technique in order to get the gold.
The soundtrack is a highlight, offering a ska-influenced selection of songs by The Holophonics that just works so well. Parking Garage Rally Circuit is replete with customization. There are quick profiles to give it a specific look, Original Hardware does its best to look like the Sega Saturn (the primary influence of the game), Modern Emulator, Modern Handheld (Steam Deck), and PC Port which offers the cleanest of visuals and high framerates. However, you can tweak individual values for aspect ration, draw distance, game scaling, CRT scanlines, CRT wrap, and chromatic aberration. It should come as no surprise I was able to run the game at a capped framerate of 180fps. Though the true beauty of the game is that it can be a faithful retro experience or as modernized to your liking.
It’s also a perfect on the Steam Deck, just feels right at home (remember that Modern Handheld setting? there’s a reason).
My PC Specs:
– Microsoft Windows 11 Pro
– Intel Core i9 13900K @ 5.8GHz
– ASUS ROG RYUJIN II 360 ARGB AIO Liquid CPU Cooler
– G.SKILL TRIDENT Z5 6000MHZ 64GB (32×2) DDR5 RAM
– ASUS ROG Strix GeForce RTX 4080 16GB GDDR6X
– WD_BLACK SN850X M.2 (4 TB)
– LG UltraGear 34GP950B-G (21:9 Ultrawide @ 3440×1440)My Steam Deck (OLED) Specs
– SteamOS 3 (Arch-based)
– Zen 2 4c/8t, 2.4-3.5GHz (up to 448 GFlops FP32)
– 16 GB LPDDR5 on-board RAM (6400 MT/s quad 32-bit channels)
– 8 RDNA 2 CUs, 1.6GHz (1.6 TFlops FP32)
– Steam Deck 1TB NVMe SSD
– HDR OLED (16:9 @ 1280 x 800)
Parking Garage Rally Circuit does feel like a game plucked out of the SEGA Saturn or PlayStation 1 era. It’s a straightforward game where its ideas are all executed well, but I’d like to see the game grow and expand beyond what it is. While it’s not a long game, there’s lots of reasons for you to return to it, like to get all gold trophies, beat rivals, or participate in the multiplayer. Parking Garage Rally Circuit is a bite-sized game that I’ll always keep installed and revisit often, as it slides right into your heart.
A Steam code was provided in advance by the publisher for review purposes
