Many of us have probably been in the situation where you have forgotten where you parked your car, which leads to pacing up and down the rows in the general vicinity of where you think you parked, while wracking your brain for what level and area you pulled up in. It is a situation that can be panic inducing as thoughts go through your mind, like maybe the car was stolen? Then that panic subsides when you see your car and life goes on. A Dream About Parking Lots takes that situation and turns it into a half hour therapy session.
A Dream About Parking Lots is a dreamy maze-like experience in which all you have to do is find the right car. You are armed with a key fob which you can keep pressing in the hope of hearing the car’s horn, which sounds simple enough. However, you must navigate mazes of other cars to find the right one, all the while talking to a therapist. The dialogue has multiple choices that steer the conversation based on your decisions. For the majority of the game, it does genuinely feel like you are having a therapy session, trying to figure out why you are dreaming about parking lots and what it signifies in your own life.
Across the 30 minutes of game time, A Dream About Parking Lots will transport you to different parking lot locations, each with cars parked in a generally neat formation, though there are obstacles that will make you look for the correct path. As you move through the dreams each area gets a bit more off putting. Most scenes still look normal, but they can also be a little disconcerting with things that are not quite right, just like dreams. It’s lent a further surreal element by the retro aesthetic, with blocky, simplistic environments .
The conversation between you and the therapist is the main strength of A Dream About Parking Lots. There is no voice dialogue so you have to read and take in what is being said. There are some poignant life lessons peppered through the dialogue with the responses dependant on the dialogue choices. Like I mentioned earlier, this does feel like a therapy session, even if it does not delve as deep as a real one would.