by I've had my eye on Car Park Capital ever since I first saw development GIFs of the game all the way back in 2024.
As someone who played a lot of simulation games like Theme Park, RollerCoaster Tycoon, and SimCity 2000 on my family's trusty PC setup, the satirical parking garage simulator looked to be a perfect tribute to many of the titles I grew up loving, while still having enough clever and unique ideas of its own to avoid accusations of being a carbon copy.
As such, it's long been at the top of my personal wishlist, leading me to constantly check in on the developer Hilko Janssen's social media in hopes of seeing when it might be available to play.
In the past, this has mostly been filled with news of new features coming to the game, but yesterday, there was an exciting development regarding when the game would be ready, with the developer revealing that it is now scheduled to launch in Early Access on October 9th.
Car Park Capital, just to give you a bit of background if you haven't read our previous coverage, swaps the exciting world of rollercoasters and city planning for the slightly more offbeat task of designing car parks, or as the Steam description puts it, "unleash[ing] the Freedom of Car Dependency on unsuspecting townsfolk!"
It was inspired by classic games like RollerCoaster Tycoon and TV shows like The Office, with the developer citing the latter's approach to taking a mundane subject (working at a paper company) and making it chaotic and funny as one of many influences on the game's rather offbeat premise.
In the game, players won't just build car parks, but will also need to run targeted propaganda campaigns with billboards and slogans to convince people they need cars, while also shutting down protestors and undermining alternatives like public transport.
According to Steam, the game is expected to be in Early Access for 10 months, leading up to the release of version 1.0 in Summer 2027, and will launch with three maps/scenarios available: "American City, Pyramids of Giza and Florida with boat-cars."