Game Review: Drive and Park (Mobile – Free to Play)

Drive and Park is a free to play mobile game from developer SayGames LLC. Sticking completely to the free to play format of meagre gameplay, simplicity and an abundance of ads. If that isn’t enough to make you avoid this how about the fact that it also has in-app purchases?

This review is for version 1.5.

If you’ve got 5 minutes and must play a game then I suppose Drive and Park will fulfil that desire. Even if during that 5-minute period you’ll spend as much time watching ads as you will actually playing it.

The concept is very simple, park the car by holding your finger down on the screen to do a handbrake turn. Line your car up perfectly to earn money and keep doing that to complete the level. Turn too early and you’ll crash. Remove your finger too soon and the car won’t be parked properly. Don’t remove your finger in time and you’ll flip the car. Each will result in the level having to be restarted.

Levels are set around the world but you’d be unlikely to notice that if the game didn’t tell you. It makes little difference and is more of a smokescreen to suggest the developer has spent significant time crafting Drive and Park.

Supposedly to keep you coming back for more you can unlock different cars and upgrade them to earn more money quickly. Something that is necessary in later levels when the goal amount gets quite high. The difference between cars are the size and speed forcing you to adapt how you play and they are rewarded periodically with cards or you can pay real money.

There are two packs, one costing £1.99 which will give you 25 cards and the promise of 5 being ‘rare’. While the other costs £4.99 and gives 75 cards with the promise of 15 being ‘rare’ and 3 being ‘epic’. It might sound like great value for money but it’s completely random what you could get for your spent money. Also, you have to bear in mind that there is next to no replay value to the game so why bother?

To make matters worse, you’d still have to put up with the incessant ads. These come up after almost every single attempt and after only a few minutes most will be uninstalling the game. No-one will begrudge a free to play game having some ads. It is free after all but this amount is just too much. It actually makes the eye-watering price of £2.99 to remove ads tempting if there was any kind of longevity to the game.