Parking Garage Rally Circuit

What a fun idea for an arcade racing game. A parking garage is a very tight space to be racing around in. Perfect for a rally isn’t it?

Don’t expect traditional racing game mechanics. From the trailers alone you can see the car drifting around with multi-colored sparks reminiscent of Mario Kart games. This is not just for show. Parking Garage Rally Circuit’s vehicle physics are very similar to a kart racer. This isn’t really a “Rally” game, but that doesn’t mean it’s game that isn’t fun to master.

Similar to kart racers, drifting rewards you with a speed boost upon exiting a drift. In this game the boost also increases the car’s speed. The challenge here is to chain drifts together to achieve faster speeds and retain that increased speed throughout each lap in order to set the fastest time you can.

This gameplay loop is executed perfectly thanks to the level design. Each level is a tight course with some unique event to differentiate each track from each other. Each zany parking garage will have unique obstacles to deal with like toll gates, falling boulders, driving on snow, and even driving across gaps between buildings. Dealing with this while trying to maintain your speed is exhilarating and it only gets crazier on the higher speed classes.

You will not be disappointed by any level here. They’re incredibly fun to master, but the experience is short lived. Ignoring workshop content, the game only has 8 tracks to master. As a person with a lot of experience in racing games, I was able to blast through the entire game in 4 hours with a gold on each level.
It’s paired with fantastic visuals calling back to classic Sega racing games and an amazing ska soundtrack. It’s awesome, but so short.

Recently, a paid DLC dropped that adds 8 more tracks to the game. Without a doubt, I’m sure it’s worth the price as the game is already fairly cheap as it is. I have yet to try the DLC myself, but I trust the dev team based on the quality of the base game. With the DLC, there should be 16 tracks total by default. It’s still a small game, but you’ll have a blast of a time with it the whole way.

Besides the core game, there is online multiplayer functionality. You have the option to host a lobby and run some tracks with friends to set the best time you can.
Not only that, but you can try out levels on the workshop as well. Parking Garage Rally is unique as it doesn’t have a level editor, but it does allow you to essentially import a Godot project of your own into the game. Level creators have free reign to do almost anything as they just need to know how to put together an environment in blender and figure out how to import it into the Godot Engine. I’m over-simplifying the process here, but what matters is that it allows people to do something like port every track from Crash Team Racing into the game.

Any fan of arcade racing should nab this game. You will not be disappointed.