I enjoy games that are a little different and think outside of the box. Developer Interactive Dreams and publisher Take IT Studio! offer up A Dream About Parking Lots.

“Look for your car in a series of mazes and parking lots while you talk to your therapist about feeling lost. An interactive short story about trying to make sense out of the unreal. Based on real dreams!”

The sub-genre of the Backrooms in videogames has exploded recently. I’ve reviewed a handful on this very site and honestly, they’re all too samey. Very minimal gameplay and you just wander around mazes, often using a dream-like aesthetic. None of the games that I have played have ever grabbed me. A Dream About Parking Lots is yet another Backrooms-type game… a very short one. I got to the end credits in around 20 minutes and that’s it. There are no secrets, no extras. Just a very short story about getting lost in various parking lots in your dreams.

The mazes are small and the basic aim is to find your car in among a mass of other cars. You are armed only with a key fob which you press to give away the location of your car, which only works at a relatively short range anyway. Once you find your car, you get in it and onto the next maze. There are only (If I recall) five mazes and none of them are particularly tricky to find your way  round as the paths are quite linear. They’re hardly mazes really, just set paths with a few obstacles that you walk around. There’s really zero challenge with A Dream About Parking Lots and my 20 minute playtime included me wating around for dialogue to finish as I often found my car before the conversation ended. I reckon you could get to the end credits is sub 15 minutes.

As with all of the other Backrooms titles that I have played, the gameplay is almost non-existent here. You just walk around some very easy to solve mazes. There are no puzzles, no combat, nothing but the walking around mazes. However, I do have to admit to being pulled in by the story. As you find your way through these parking lot dream mazes, you talk to your therapist about what the dreams mean to you and how they make you feel. You get to pick from several responses as your therapist asks you questions. I really found this element quite interesting and the only reason I did play through to the end credits was to see out the story.

A Dream About Parking Lots does come with a tiny budget price to reflect the extremely short experience. Aside from the lack of any gameplay, I do have an issue with the hard too see menu/reply choice icons. They go from white to an ever so slightly darker shade of off-white. It’s really hard to see what you are selecting on both the main menu and in the game. Still, with this being only a few minutes long game, it’s an annoyance that you don’t have to live with for very long. There’s really not much more to say, A Dream About Parking Lots is a very, very, very short game that is a one and done experience. A somewhat interesting story, but the gameplay is devoid of any gameplay. I honestly can’t wait for this Backrooms fad to die off because it’s making for some really dull games right now. Good stories, but pretty forgettable games that are becoming all too samey.