Dunkag on Nostr: A bit of an odd post for me but the existence of this game pisses me off. Car Park ...

A bit of an odd post for me but the existence of this game pisses me off. Car Park Capital is a tycoon game stylized after games like Rollercoaster Tycoon, and it apes the style very well. That's all.

The problem is, it doesn't do anything else right. The game is a superficial commentary on car dependency. One that is downright insulting. I'm not a big fan of car dependency myself, it was a mistake and while cars can be cool they absolutely should not have taken over life. This game however assumes the player is too dumb to get that message, and so it occasionally guts its own possible mechanical depth and so on in order to make sure the message is front and center. One of the first things the game teaches the player is how to access a "propaganda menu" to buy "car propaganda" in order to turn people into "carbrained people." The game at no point wants to actually let the player think, it's all just trying to put front and center that cars are bad. The satire loses its luster in mere second and from then on becomes grating.

The game being bad isn't really what pisses me off though. It's the fact the developer intentionally kneecapped a game that could've been good because he had to make absolutely 100% certain nobody could ever dare think this game was about anything other than cars being bad. The fundamentals of a way better and more interesting game are there. The idea of buying out land to replace it with car parks would do a good job of hitting the player with realizations of how fucked everything is. It's such a small and easy fix that would solve the vast majority of the game's issues. Let the player have the sandbox and let the actions in the sandbox speak for themselves.