Have you ever parked somewhere only to find out

you actually can't park there?

What if you could change that?

Parking Please!

Prototype

A puzzle game about civil disobedience through parking signs alterations

Made over a weekend with pen and paper, and photoshop. Pitched, playtested, and iterated with friends.

Concept

You are a person trying to find parking and you've finally found your spot; only to discover a street sign saying that you cannot park in that spot.

You are left with no choice but to swap the signage in your favor.

Puzzle Mechanics

Start of puzzle

Solution to puzzle

Each puzzle is made up of a few parts

day & time
Street sign
sign pieces

Goal

The goal is to use the assorted sign pieces to alter the street sign to allow you to park in the current day & time.

Player Feedback & Observations

Watching people play this game I realized a few things:

Users applied their understanding of real world street sign law to in-game mechanics. Meaning if there was a discrepancy with real world law and game logic, the immersion was broken and had to be course corrected.

AM & PM sign pieces were over powered, they gave users the ability to cover a broad range of time with little effort.

Similar to point 1, people were able to pickup and play easily as most people had a familiarity deciphering street signs in their life.

Adapting into a video game

While this is just a paper/photoshop prototype the thought has crossed my mind on how I would adapt it to a video game.

Progression

The way the player would progress would be similar to Baba is You overworld where multiple puzzles are available to the player and they can interact with them in a non-linear way. The aesthetic would look like a city map with various locations for parking.

Baba is You overworld

Art Direction

Aesthetically I would like to lean into the grunge/punk look shown in the photoshop video. There is a fun juxtaposition with the players civil disobedience being defacing street signs and the intensity of which things are presented. Something seemingly so intense and badass, but in reality kinda just silly.

Alternatively, another idea I had was the player is a time traveler and they use their time machine to travel to different time periods, all of which have parking in some way. Each era would have different street sign designs embodying the era.

A collection of real life parking signs across Los Angeles. These atrocities were the inspiration behind this game.

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