It seems like retro arcade-style racers are having a bit of a moment, with countless indie developers teasing new projects that aim to recreate the look and feel of classic racing games from the 1990s.
Parking Garage Rally Circuit from the LA-based studio Walaber Entertainment (the creator of the beloved 2D physics-based platformer JellyCar) is the latest in this growing trend to cross our radar over the past few months — following Midnight Challenge and Old School Rally. It is an upcoming Steam game scheduled to arrive later this year that is setting out to combine Sega Saturn-style visuals with a ridiculously fun premise all about racing through repurposed Parking Garages in big cities across the UK and North America.
From what we've been able to gather, the game is being made in Godot Engine (a free cross-platform engine capable of producing 2D & 3D games) and grew out of a game jam project that was submitted last year to Ludum Dare 54.
Here's the developer's description of the project taken from Steam, going over the background of the "Parking Garage Rally Circuit", the type of racing featured, and its presentation:
- The “Parking Garage Rally Circuit” tour comes into a city, selects a parking garage, and temporarily turns it into an exciting rally course for a week-long competition. Each track in the game is styled as a unique parking garage that has been turned into a race course. Players will use a map of North America + UK to chart their course from track to track across the globe.
-This is a hybrid of Rally and circuit racing. From rally it draws the jumps and “one racer at a time against the clock” time-trial format. However, the tracks are similar to circuit racing, with each race consisting of multiple laps around the same track (the track may change slightly from lap to lap, however). Controls are very tight, simple and arcadey, similar to Mario Kart (accelerate, reverse, steer, drift), but with a bit more dynamic “smash into things” physics.
-Designed to look and feel like a long lost Sega Saturn game that could have been released in ~1998. This includes low-resolution, low-poly, chunky textures of course, but also extends to the audio, simple interface, and streamlined game scope."
If you want to help spread awareness, you can wishlist the game now over on Steam to show your support. Here are some more screenshots of the game: