Reverse It

YOU CANNOT SEE WHERE YOU ARE GOING. THAT IS THE GAME. Reversing is hard in real life for one reason: the information is bad. The thing you are steering towards is behind you, split across three mirrors and a wide-angle camera, each showing a different slice of the same scene at a different scale. Reverse It keeps that problem instead of solving it for you. There is no chase camera and no overhead view to steer by. If you cannot see it in a mirror, you cannot see it. EIGHT VEHICLES THAT EACH TAKE SOMETHING AWAY • Small Car: a short wheelbase and the tightest turning circle you will get • SUV and 4WD: a higher seat, a longer tail, and a spare wheel filling the rear-view mirror • Ute: the interior mirror now shows you its own tray, so the wing mirrors become the whole manoeuvre • Ute and Trailer: steering acts on the trailer, through the hitch, backwards. Let the angle build and it jackknifes • Van: no rear window at all • Flatbed Truck: nearly two metres of body behind the rear axle, so the tail swings wide into whatever is beside you • Large Truck: nine metres, a blind spot no view covers, and spotter mirrors to make up for it SIX PLACES TO PUT IT A suburban driveway on a slope. A parallel park in a gap that keeps closing. A long drive with a dogleg you have to reverse the whole way down. A car park where the aisle runs out before the bay does. A country lane with no kerbs, no lines and a ditch. A city alley with brick on both sides and traffic moving through the space your nose needs. Ten levels each, and every one adds something, cones, bins, a dog on the verge, someone waiting to cross or drivers in their cars being impatient DRIVE IT AT NIGHT Night is not just darker. The fog closes in and takes the far references away, so the parked car up the road and the treeline you were judging your heading against are simply gone. It is worth bonus points on any level, because it should be. EVERY DAY, THE SAME PARK One combination a day, the same for everyone, whatever you have unlocked. • Parking sensors that quicken as you close • Guide lines that bend with the steering • A contact diagram showing exactly where you clipped it • Three bumps and the run is over