Pummel Party - A Celebration of Violence

A mean-spirited take on the party game genre.

Welcome to the Party

Party games are a rare breed. They're meant to let virtually anyone pick them up and play, but that often means sacrificing depth and complexity in favor of easy controls. Pummel Party aims to be one of these games, albeit with a mean streak that's uncommon in the genre. How much you'll enjoy this game does depend upon how much you enjoy its violent aesthetic.

Not Mario's Party

There aren't too many games like Pummel Party out there. A bit of a riff on the Mario Party franchise, it combines the competitiveness of a board game with the hectic fun of a mini-game collective. It's not exactly a tall order for a game to achieve either of these feats, but it's rare enough that Pummel Party feels special.

If you peel away the mean exterior, you still get a very familiar game.

Special or not, it's impossible not to compare Pummel Party to that other big party franchise. There's very little here that feels new or innovative, with most of the blood and gore existing as a strange attempt to seem more adult. The game is at its best when it just relies on the strength of its game-play to succeed.

Pretty and Deadly

This game is a lot prettier than one would expect from a party game. The backgrounds are great, the characters look unique, and the blood surprises are honestly a bit shocking. It feels like the game could've gone a little more cartoony to play it safe, but the extra visual work feels like it paid off.

The sound, meanwhile, can probably be best described as fine. The music does get a little bit repetitive, and certain sound effects are going to be stuck in your head if you play too often, but there's nothing that's precisely bad here. The fact that the audio is inoffensive honestly helps to elevate the game a little farther than one might expect, as annoying music in a game like this can be a real deal breaker.

A Party With Plenty of Diversions

Just like the more famous game that this one mostly copies, Pummel Party is generally divided into two sections - the board and the mini-games. The board feels a lot like a class board game, with the usual dice rolls to figure out where you land. The big difference is that both the AI and other players can whittle away at your health with a variety of weapons to stop your progress.

Most of the fun, though, is in the mini-games.

Just as with the other big party game, you're going to find most of your fun in the mini-games here. While they're a little more violent, the games themselves are the same kind of thing that you'd expect to see Mario and friends playing. They're as hit or miss as any mini-game collection, though, and you'll quickly figure out that some are more worth playing than others.

Not a Party for Everyone

At the end of the day, you're going to need a few elements to make this game worth playing. You need competitive friends, enough patience to play a long game, and the willingness to see the same boards over and over again. If you've got all of that, you're going to love Pummel Party. If not, though, you're going to get all the downsides of Mario Party without the familiar mascots.

TL/DR

Pummel Party is a violent party game that sticks to an old formula.