Tight Spot

Tight Spot is a free browser parking game about the part of driving that never gets easier: putting a car somewhere it barely fits. Eleven lots run across three yards — Street, Garage and Yard — with one car and no time limit. You drive, you reverse, you steer, and you try to end up inside the marked bay without touching anything. Nothing here is fast — the car tops out at walking pace — and that is the point. The difficulty is geometry, not speed.

The car steers the way a real one does. It pivots around its rear axle, which is why reversing swings the nose out and why a bay you cannot reach going forwards opens up the moment you back into it. Take as many turns back and forth as you need — shuffling is free. What costs you is contact.

Touching a parked car or a wall does not end the lot. The car scrapes and slows, the hit is counted once, and you steer off it and carry on. A clean park is three stars, one hit is two, and two or more is one, so the pressure is real without the restart-loop that makes parking games frustrating. The lots each teach a different manoeuvre and the difficulty is measured, not guessed: a solver plays every lot to prove it can be parked without touching anything. Street opens with a straight drive-in and ends at a blind corner; Garage teaches the reverse-in and ends with a real parallel park; Yard finishes with the hardest lot in the game, which takes six changes of direction to crack. Every parked car sits square in its own painted bay, and when you get close a parking sensor beeps faster the nearer you are to hitting something.

It plays with one hand. On a phone the two pads on the right are drive and reverse, the two on the left steer; on a keyboard it is W A S D or the arrow keys, with R to restart. There is nothing to buy, nothing to unlock and no timer counting down at you.

W or ↑ drives forward, S or ↓ reverses, A D or ← → steer, R restarts the lot. On a phone the two right pads are drive and reverse, the two left pads steer. The car uses real steering geometry — it turns around its rear axle, so reversing swings the nose out.

Touching a car or a wall counts a hit instead of failing the lot, and the car scrapes along it rather than sticking — every hit costs a star, and undo does not erase it. You are parked when all four corners sit inside the marked bay, the car is straight within eight degrees, and it has come to a full stop. Reversing in nose-out counts too.