Car Parking
Slide the traffic out of the way and drive the gold getaway car off the deck. 240 levels then endless, free in your browser, no download.
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How to play Car Parking
Car Parking is a parking escape puzzle — a free parking puzzle, no download and no signup, that runs straight in this page. The deck is six bays by six, packed with parked vehicles, and one of them is yours: the gold getaway car, sitting on the marked exit row facing the gate. Get it out and the level is over. Everything between it and that gate is the puzzle.
You have one move: drag a vehicle along its own lane. The ones lying across the deck slide left and right, the ones standing down the deck slide up and down, and nothing turns and nothing jumps. A vehicle moves into the empty cells in front of it or behind it, and stops the instant it meets another vehicle or the wall. Cars are two cells long, vans are three.
That is the whole rule set, and it is why this kind of puzzle bites. You cannot take a car off the board and you cannot squeeze past anything — the only thing you can do is put things somewhere else, and the deck is full, so every car you move has to go into space you made for it with an earlier move. Working out that order is the game.
A move is a resting place, not a distance. Nudging a car one cell and shoving it three cells in a single drag both cost one move, so push a car all the way to where it needs to be. The par shown next to the move counter is the fewest moves the level can possibly be finished in — the solver's own answer, not a guess — so matching it means you found the shortest way out that exists.
There is no timer and no move limit. Undo is unlimited, Hint reads the deck as it stands right now and shows you one move from a shortest finish, three times a level, and Restart puts every vehicle back where it started. Prefer the keyboard? Tap a vehicle to select it and the arrow keys push it along its lane.
Tips
- Work backwards from the gate. Do not start with the car that looks most annoying — start with the vehicle actually standing on the exit row, ask what would have to move for it to clear, and keep asking. The move you need first is usually three questions deep and nowhere near the gold car.
- The vans decide the level. A three-cell van in a six-cell lane has three places it can be, and often only one of them is out of your way. Find where the long vehicles have to end up early, because everything else has to fit around that.
- Push things to the ends, not the middle. A vehicle parked halfway down its lane blocks traffic on both sides of it. Shoved hard against a wall it blocks one. It costs the same single move either way, so take the extra cells.
- Watch what you are burying. Clearing the exit row by stacking three cars into the top-left corner solves this instant and jams the next one. If a move leaves a vehicle with nowhere to go afterwards, check that you will not need it to move again.
- The gold car can reverse. It is not glued to the left wall — backing it up a cell is often exactly what lets a vertical van drop through the exit row and out of the way. It costs one move and it is the move people miss most.
- Undo is free — use it like a scratchpad. There is no penalty and no timer, so try the line, see where it strands, and walk it back. That is faster than solving the deck in your head, and it is how the shortest routes get found.
Car Parking FAQ
Is Car Parking free to play?
Yes. It is a completely free car parking game — no download, no install and no signup. Open the page and start sliding cars.
How do I play Car Parking?
Drag a vehicle along its own lane. Cars parked across the deck slide left and right, cars parked down the deck slide up and down, and none of them can turn. Clear the traffic in front of the gold car and drive it out through the gate on the right to finish the level.
What can block a car?
Anything in its lane — another vehicle or the wall. Nothing jumps over anything and nothing squeezes past anything, so a vehicle can only ever slide into the empty cells directly ahead of it or behind it. There are two sizes on the deck: cars take up two cells and vans take up three, and a three-cell van in a six-cell lane has far less room to get out of your way.
Can I turn a car around?
No. Every vehicle is fixed to one axis for the whole level — the ones lying across the deck stay across it and the ones standing down the deck stay down it. Which way a vehicle can be pushed is decided the moment the deck is dealt, and you can see it at a glance from the way it is pointing.
Is this a Rush Hour style puzzle?
Yes — Car Parking is a sliding block car puzzle in that tradition, the kind usually called an unblock car game or a traffic jam puzzle. If you have played a rush hour style puzzle online before, you already know the rules: slide the parked traffic aside, one vehicle at a time, and drive the blocked car out. What is ours is the deck it is set on, the 240 hand-graded levels behind it and the solver that proves each one.
Is every level actually solvable?
Yes, and it is checked rather than assumed. Levels are built from the level number rather than shipped as a file, and a deck is only handed to you once a solver has driven the gold car out of it. The whole set is re-checked automatically the same way before it ships, which is also where the par comes from.
How many levels are there?
240 graded levels, running from a nearly empty deck you can clear in two moves up to a fourteen-vehicle jam that takes more than twenty. After level 240 the deck keeps filling at full difficulty, so the game does not run out.
What does par mean, and what counts as one move?
A move is one vehicle changing where it is parked — nudging a car one cell and shoving it three cells in a single drag both cost exactly one move, so pushing a car as far as it will usefully go costs you nothing. Par is the fewest of those moves the level can possibly be finished in: not a target somebody picked, but the answer the solver found. Matching par means you found the shortest way out that exists, beating it is not possible, and there is no penalty at all for going over it.
What do the buttons do?
Undo takes back your last move and you get as many as you want. Hint runs the solver on the deck exactly as it stands now and lights up the vehicle to move and the spot to move it to, and you get three per level. Restart deals the same deck again from the beginning. There is no timer and no move limit.
Does my progress save?
Yes. The levels you have finished and your fewest moves on each are stored in your browser, so you can close the tab and pick up where you left off. Progress is per browser and per device — it is not tied to an account, so clearing your browser data will reset it.
Does Car Parking work on phones?
Yes. It runs in any modern browser on phones, tablets and desktops, and dragging a car with a finger is exactly the same gesture as dragging one with a mouse. The deck measures the space it has been given and sizes itself to fit, so the whole parking level is on screen without any scrolling. If you would rather not drag at all, tap a vehicle to select it and the arrow keys will push it along its lane.
Can I play if I am colour blind?
Yes. The only vehicle you have to pick out is the getaway car, and it is the one gold car in a deck of muted greys, blues and greens, sitting on the marked exit row pointing straight at the gate. Everything else on the board is read by its position and the way it is pointing, never by its colour.
How is Car Parking different from Getaway Garage?
Getaway Garage moves every vehicle in the garage at once — one swipe and the whole yard slides. Car Parking moves one vehicle at a time, and it has somewhere to get to: the gate on the exit row. Same cars, opposite puzzle.
How is Car Parking different from Car Match?
Car Match is a matching game — you tap cars to clear them three of a colour at a time, and the board empties as you go. In Car Parking nothing is ever cleared. Every vehicle that starts on the deck is still on it when you finish, and the whole puzzle is about where you have put them.
Is there a mobile app?
Car Parking itself is a browser game — nothing to install. It is one of the free browser puzzles from Bright Point Studios, the makers of Match Heist, our full 3D car match puzzle for iOS and Android. If you want a car puzzle on your phone with the levels, the garage and the graphics turned all the way up, get Match Heist from the App Store or Google Play.
Who made Car Parking?
Car Parking is made by Bright Point Studios, the studio behind Match Heist, Car Sort, Magic Sort, Car Match, Travel Tiles, Getaway Garage and Solitaire Castle Royal. You can see the rest of our games at brightpointstudios.com and solitairecastleroyal.com.
More free games
Car Sort is one tap per move — the cars pull onto a ring road and park themselves, and you only choose which bay empties. Magic Sort hands the steering back: pick the cars up, pick the bay, 240 levels of it. If you would rather clear a yard than rearrange one, Car Match takes vehicles off three of a colour at a time across 483 levels, and Travel Tiles is our untimed triple-match tile game. For the other side of this puzzle, Getaway Garage slides every vehicle in the garage with a single swipe. All free, all in your browser.