The rules and the knack

How to play

Each street on the map is handmade around one idea: a skip blocking your usual stopping place, cones in the bay, a van double-parked opposite. Reverse your red car into the marked bay without denting anything, in as few moves as you can.

The streets

District 1 is Acacia Avenue: eight streets on a little map, from Plenty of Room to the Test with Mr Hale. Finish a street to open the next. After the second street the road forks, so if one street has you stuck you can try the other branch. Both branches meet again before the Test.

Two more districts follow. The High Street has traffic released by a light behind you (the chip at the top shows it) and cyclists in a painted lane; queued cars honk after four seconds and give up after ten. Harbour Hill has hills that roll the car when you lift off, and wet roads and leaves that make it slide. Each district opens once you have half the stars in the one before; use the arrows on the map to move between them.

Before you drive, a card tells you the street's idea, its par and its three stars. Every street gives stars for the same three things, in the same order:

• Parked. Inside the bay lines, close to straight and within 40 cm of the kerb, held still for a second.
• No dents. A gentle touch at a crawl is a tap: the examiner winces, but nothing is dented. Anything faster is a dent.
• The street's own challenge. Usually par, sometimes something else, such as leaving every cone standing or passing the Test in under 25 seconds.

A move is a change of direction, like a stroke in golf. Driving up past the bay and reversing in is one move; pulling forward to straighten is a second. Creeps shorter than about 35 cm are not counted. Par is the number of moves a tidy park takes on that street, and every street has been checked by a route-finder to make sure par is possible.

Stars are kept from your best attempts, so you can get a clean run one time and a par run another. Your progress is saved in this browser.

Help on the street

• Guide lines draw where your car's corners will go at the current wheel angle, forwards and backwards. They turn red where you would touch something. Some streets switch them on, some let you choose with G, and the Test does not allow them.
• Hazard lights (H, High Street onwards): once per attempt, the queue behind you waits twice as long before it honks or gives up.
• Handbrake (B or the P button, Harbour Hill): holds the car on a hill while you turn the wheel, and lets go when you drive off. Space brakes as usual.
• Start again any time with R or the ↺ button. There is no penalty for a restart.
• Stuck on a bumper? If you stay in contact with a car for a couple of seconds, the examiner offers to back you out to where you were last clear. Press U or tap the button. Any dents already made still count.

The controls

The steering wheel does not spring back to the middle when you let go, so you can set the wheel first and then drive, as you would in a real car park.

On a computer

• ← and → (or A and D) turn the wheel. Hold them longer to turn further.
• ↑ or W drives forward. ↓ or S reverses.
• Space brakes and C puts the wheel straight in one press.
• G toggles guide lines where the street allows them, R starts the street again and U backs you off a bumper you are stuck on.
• Esc (or the pause button on a phone) pulls the handbrake: resume, start the park again, and change sound, music, the self-straightening wheel, reduced motion and colour-blind safe colours.

On a phone or tablet

Put a thumb anywhere on the left half of the screen and slide it sideways to turn the wheel. The little wheel in the corner shows how far you have turned, with a notch in the middle and at full lock. Put your other thumb anywhere on the right half and slide up to drive or down to reverse. A short slide creeps, a long one goes faster, and lifting your thumb stops the car. Double-tap the left half to straighten the wheel. If you prefer the wheel to straighten itself when you let go, tap Auto-centre.

A technique that works

Driving instructors teach parallel parking as a routine with fixed reference points, and the same routine works here. The kerb is on your left, as on any British street.

Ink is driving forward, red is reversing. The drive past and one reverse: a one-move park.

1. Pull up level with the front car. Drive past the gap and stop when your rear bumper lines up with the rear bumper of the car in front of the gap, roughly half a car's width out from it. This is your reference point. Stopping too far forward costs you room, and stopping short means your nose will swing into that car.
2. Full left lock, then reverse. Turn the wheel all the way to the left before you move, then reverse slowly. The back of the car swings towards the kerb. Keep going until the car sits at about 45 degrees and your rear wheel is roughly level with the back of the front car's bumper.
3. Straighten, then full right lock. Centre the wheel and reverse a short way in a straight line. Then turn to full right lock and keep reversing. The nose swings in behind the front car and the car comes parallel to the kerb. Stop when it is straight.

If you finish a little short of the car behind, a gentle pull forward with the wheel straight centres you in the bay. That is a second move, and two moves is par on most early streets.

Small habits that help

• Go slowly. The car is quicker going forward than in reverse, and a short nudge is often all you need.
• Set the wheel while stopped. Because it stays where you leave it, turning first and moving second makes every arc predictable.
• Listen for the parking sensor. It beeps faster as a bumper gets close to another car.

The daily park, practice and the Shift

Besides the streets there are three other modes on the title card. Practice gives endless generated streets that get tighter as you go. The Shift is a roguelite run of parking jobs where dents cost licence points and twelve points end the run, and the Daily shift is the same run for everyone that day. Those modes count shunts: every change of direction after the first, so a clean drive-past-and-reverse scores zero.

Sharing your result

After a daily park you can copy a short result to paste into a group chat. It shows your stars, the legs of your manoeuvre as arrows (▶ forward, ◀ reverse) and your numbers.

Questions