Valet parking attendant wanted. Earn a hourly wage and receive bonuses for doing a good job. Should you apply or find another job? Read on to find out.
Valet Parking Inc. is a fairly original strategy game, I have not played one like this before, where you work in a parking lot. You collect customers cars, park them and then return them when the customers come back to collect them. Each car has a collection time so you must juggle around parking new arrivals while also returning cars to customers at the exit. Bonuses are paid for returning cars on time and also not damaging them.
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Things however, are not as easy at it sounds. You have two meters representing your Stamina and Hunger. The stamina meter decreases as you move around the parking lot and you hunger meter decreases over the day. To keep these topped up you must take breaks which take time, anything from 10 minutes for a quick rest to 30 minutes for a lunch break. Careful planning is required to take breaks during quiet periods otherwise you may miss a new arrival or to return a car. If you take too long you will anger the customers and potentially be fired.
At the end of each day your earnings are calculated based on your performance which essentially acts as your score. Online leaderboards are supposedly included but I could not find them. You can also apply for a new job at a better parking lot, of which there are a total of four. If you are not good enough for the new job, your application will be rejected and you must continue work at your current parking lot. The first three jobs are working in regular parking lots such as Grumpys and Whackys collecting and returning cars, while the fourth is at an airport which only requires you to park cars but there is a much higher demand for spaces.
Working out a strategy for parking the cars in certain areas soon becomes a very useful tactic. For example parking cars nearer to the exit if they are in a certain collection time frame so you do not waste time travelling between cars. Having a good memory is also useful as you can remember quiet periods for when to take breaks.
The graphics and presentation are quite basic which does detract from the games quality. With some more polish this could have really helped get over the first impressions of being a basic looking game. There are a few music tracks which are overall average, they do get repetitive so you may want to play your own music. Sounds effects are also average with generic car crashing noises and some basic speech. The collision detection is a talking point, you can sometimes get stuck on scenery or enter the wrong car if they are closely parked together, when time keeping is of the essence this can be annoying.
Valet Parking Inc. costs 80 :MSPoints: which is fair value for money. With some more effort on the visuals and a few more parking lots to work your way up to I think this would be a great little game and definitely something you should consider. As it stands, the game does feel a little shortlived and compared to other games for the same price I did not feel you got real value for money. I definitely recommend trying the trial at least, if you can get past the looks there is an interesting strategy game.
You can find more information as well as the trial and full version of the game on the Xbox Marketplace.
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