House Party Isn't Solely a Sex Game

After previewing Hardcore Cruising: A Sci-Fi Gay Sex Cruise!, I made a name for myself among the GameGrin staff: The Sex Reviewer. And although that's a totally false story, I've come to realise that the higher-ups have come to trust that I really don't have a problem playing these games. So, they asked me to review House Party. The pitch? "This is just a game where you go to a party and try to have sex with strangers". My answer was: "@%#% yeah!". Okay, maybe less vulgarity was involved.

Prior to being asked to review House Party, I knew one thing: the game was about sex so it's banned on Twitch. In fact, I came to know of House Party because of its ban and the scandal that was caused a few years back. So going into it, I expected a raunchy adventure full of beating up weird baldies (sorry, Frank, I didn't know you then) and going at it with the other characters. What I got was far, far different from what I expected. In a good way!

Derek has invited us to a house party; being new in town, we gracefully agree. After entering the mansion-like home (because damn, does Madison have a massive house), I began my quest of scouring through the rooms, looking for who I was going to get lucky with tonight... and the night after, and the one after that, because I was determined to do it with everyone. My sights were set on Amy: cute girl, bee shirt, good voice acting, she was the whole package, and I began the Scavenger Hunt, a quest in which she'd ask me to get her items from around the house. 

Things started tame as she asked me to get an expired credit card, but the items soon began getting raunchy and surprisingly challenging to acquire. The next item on the list was a condom. I asked my good friend Derek for assistance, and he told me that either Frank or Patrick would have one. Being the drunken and horny mess that Patrick is, I figured I'd ask him first, but I had no luck. Moving on to Frank, asking him for a condom prompted him to think I was in love with him. Instead of letting him give me a blowjob (and acquiring the condom the easy way), I was loyal to my Rhode Island bae, Amy. I denied any feelings, and he still wasn't convinced, giving me a quest that would soon end my Amy-focused run: he needed to see me have sex with another girl.

Seeing is believing, and I'm seeing that AMY DOESN'T WANT ME

It was at this point, around four hours into my first run because I'd decided to take the kleptomaniac path and steal everything that Madison didn't put under lock and key, that I realised that House Party wasn't the mindless sex game I expected it to be. In fact, Amy was hellbent on not letting me have 'the sex' with her, and it felt like everything was stacked against me. I waved my white flag after frantically trying to get other women to have sex with me to no avail; apparently, despite being a woman, I'm still no good at getting in their pants. I restarted and decided, if I had to, I was going through the blowjob scene with Frank.

I gave my House Partyginity to Frank in hopes of giving my House Party-femaleginity to Amy, only to be asked for another item: panties. At this point, I waved the white flag on doing it with Amy for the first time, as I'd spent well over eight hours on an endless fetch quest of increasingly raunchy items, and my character was suffering from a severe case of the metaphorical blue balls. It was after having played throughout numerous campaign missions twice for eight hours total that I came to realise: House Party isn't a sex game.

Totally not a sex game...

Sure, there are sexual scenes, but these aren't your typical raunchy games where you can get laid in just a few hours; House Party makes you work for them. And damn it, it was gratifying to finally stick it to Amy after hours of fighting! This puzzle element is what makes House Party feel so fun in contrast to countless other sexual content games I've played through. And, even when I'd finished sleeping with more people (aside from the ever-elusive Rachael, but my journey isn't over yet) and jumped into the sandbox mode (AKA using cheat codes to get my way), I still had plenty of fun. I fought Frank one too many times, made everyone get naked, got drunk and fought Frank again... I played and played different routes, did stupid crap that I found enjoyable, and I had a good, sexless time.

House Party feels like Groundhog Day, but instead, you're stuck living the same day over and over, trying different outcomes until you can finally get in the pants of your desired girl, much like Rachael says in one of her idle dialogues. This puzzle element of finding the right item, doing the right thing, not getting caught doing it, and trying to finish a quest through growingly vague hints, made House Party feel more like a puzzle game than a sexual one, and it was a pleasant surprise I did not expect.