Race on the Fiat Factory Roof Test Track in This Charming Indie Game

It’s been a minute since we checked in with Parking Garage Rally Circuit, the indie racing game that channels the soul of arcade mainstays from 30 years ago in a way that many try to, but few pull off. When we first played it ahead of release back in 2024—which itself is hard to believe—the game had half the tracks it eventually launched with, no multiplayer, and not even a soundtrack. Recently, it got even bigger, with the release of the European Tour DLC that doubles the raceable parking lots from eight to 16, and adds a whole bunch of new music from ska-punk band The Holophonics.

If you’ve never played PGRC, you should, and now’s a great time to start. Your task is to set the fastest time through zany courses set in and around parking garages. The handling isn’t too dissimilar from Mario Kart’s, being pretty linear most of the time with the addition of a drift button, and boosting if you maintain a drift for long enough. On your own, you won’t be racing against any bots. But, online, you can challenge your friends and turn car contact on or off.

These new eight tracks include venues like the quaint York Castle Car Park and Hamburg Concert Hall. It also includes a track directly inspired by Fiat’s iconic Lingotto facility in Turin—you know, the one with the banked test track on the roof. That gives you a pretty good idea about how charming and inventive PGRC is, but don’t let that lull you into thinking it doesn’t reward skill. Much like Mario Kart, it can be a world of hurt for less-experienced players faced with strong competition.

The thing about drift boosting in PGRC is that there is actually no limit to how much faster your car can go if you manage to keep chaining them. The normal top speed of the light-class Tatsugi Zippi, for example, is just 34 mph. But if you drift boost, you can blow past that. And if you keep repeating boosts at your already inflated speed, you can double or even triple the Zippi’s cap during normal driving.

The upshot is that this game doesn’t really have a skill ceiling; you’re limited only by your own reflexes. High-level players will basically always be in a drift—even during straightaways—to seize every opportunity to boost, just like people who were disgustingly good at Mario Kart DS back in the day. The video below provides an example of what I mean.

Admittedly, I find racing games that operate this way kind of annoying, as I prefer to drift in corners only where it makes sense. If you’re anything like me, you’ll reject the way PGRC asks you to play it. You might struggle to record gold-medal times in the single-player mode, but you can opt out. I just wish the normal straight-line top speed of the Zippi wasn’t so dang low when you’re not chaining.

Even for an aging, anti-competitive gamer like me, though, PGRC is extremely satisfying. The graphics go for a Sega Saturn-like presentation (check out my earlier story on the game if you want to know how the developer achieved that), complete with low framerates and draw distances, though there are plenty of options at the player’s disposal for a more modern presentation. And while ska might be the musical equivalent of cilantro and tastes like soap to my ears, I can’t deny the vibrant, bombastic charm The Holophonics lend to PGRC. This game is full of little visual treats, too, like how the normal “Parking Garage Rally Circuit” title card switches to “Multi-Storey Carpark Rally Circuit” if you back out to the main menu after selecting the European Tour.

It’s just a super-high-quality, golden-era-inspired arcade racer made with love, and it’s cheap, too: The full game with the DLC costs just $13 at the time of writing, and the DLC itself is a meager $4. When was the last time you saw an expansion pack for any game that costs $4? PGRC is currently available on PC and Mac via Steam and through the browser-based service Wavedash, however console ports have been planned for this year.

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