Party Hard Review

When I previewed this, it was a single level which I played over and over again. The tune got stuck in my head. And it’s still there. It’s driven me so crazy, I want to murder people! Luckily, I have a game in which to do it -- it’s a vicious cycle.

Party Hard is a game where you follow the exploits of a man who just wanted to sleep, when a house party wouldn’t stop. So he snapped and went on a rampage across America, pursued by a police force who had no way to stop him as he hit shindig after rave in 12 locations.

This level has random Sharknado's - I'm serious

It’s hardly Chaucer, but this is a game with pixel graphics and music that just. keeps. looping. It’s meant to be fun, and by hell it certainly is. It has a Hotline Miami vibe to it, with a humourous take on uber violence, but there are many differences. The action takes place all on one screen, your character is committing all of these murders through their own volition, you only have a knife, and people generally don’t care that all of these partiers are being slain.

They are put out that there is the odd body scattered about, and if they spot a fresh one they will call the police, but it’s never enough to end the party. Even when you set fire to the dance floor, or let off a smoke bomb upon it and stab everyone, the worst you will see are people complaining “These bodies are getting me down”. Well, the worst that will happen is your arrest, but that’s besides the point.

The police come by boat or helicopter, so you need to plan your escape accordingly

The failure criteria are: you get arrested or you kill yourself. Get spotted as many times as you like, and so long as you can escape the fuzz, you are generally able to get off scot-free. You can stab three people in plain sight of everyone, but as long as you can run far enough, the police will give up and people will seem to forget that you did anything. Though a few partiers might beat you unconscious for a few seconds if you’re too obvious about it.

It’s actually a little more complicated than that, as each person has a ‘suspicion meter’. The higher it gets, the more likely they are to finger you for a new murder, and will make sure to stay away from you if you move near to them. Not that you have to be near them to kill them.

A fairly clean playthrough of the level

As well as the stabbing are the mostly-random environmental hazards. Some things like telephones and DJ decks are going to always be there, but some of the most fun things are placed randomly each time you start a level. Horses, bears and pandas, entire room layouts, exploding speakers and gumball machines… If you replay a level four times, you probably won’t see the exact same layout twice.

And replay you shall, as Party Hard is a challenging game. I usually hate too much of a challenge, but when you’re down to seven victims remaining and run out of stamina just too late to stop the one who fingered you from reaching the phone… I won’t lie, I hated so many of the party-goers for dobbing me in, I never left a level unfinished before exiting the game. I had to restart one level almost 20 times, and the last attempt took me over 12 minutes of meticulous planning, but this is the hardest game I’ve kept myself from rage-quitting.

Sometimes the horse is indoors, I've no idea why

It has crashed a couple of times, however. Not for any particular reason, though perhaps as if to tell me “You’ve played enough for now”. There was also at least one instance of a woman walking without her limbs moving. Apart from that, I didn’t encounter any issues with Party Hard.

The one bad point I would remark on, is that things can be a little repetitive. I personally don’t mind it, but I know that some people would blast the game due to it being the same thing over and over. Start a level, set up some environmental kills, follow some people and stab them, hide the bodies or run away before they’re seen, rinse and repeat. With 12 levels at seven minutes each on average, it’s a short game -- so long as you can do a perfect run. You can easily spend half an hour on one level and not manage to complete it.

If a psycho murders in the woods, is there anyone around to hear the screams?

The length of Party Hard is extended by making it pure Let’s Play material. It has Twitch compatibility built-in right out of the box. You have to go to Twitch and get a code, but once it’s authorised you can interact with viewers from inside the game. In each level there are a series of events with a timer running down, for a couple of minutes. As each viewer types in a number into the chat, the game tallies them up and one of three random events will occur in the party. It can be a bear attack, a SWAT raid, a bunch of party girls will arrive… These random events can be triggered by the player using the same phone partiers will use to call the police, but only once per level. It can make things more challenging, or easier, depending on what viewers choose. Will you get more victims, or will a bear help you out?

It’s also a good sign that, less than a week after release, developer Pinokl Labs released a content update, and confirmed that they will never release DLC, just free content. So it turns out that even if you find it repetitive, it will be a while before you can’t come back to the game every so often.