Boo Party (Nintendo Switch) Review

In the title screen one can see a creepy mansion, which will be the world players will explore, as it bops along a pretty funky tune, with the gravestones beside it dancing as well. Then you press 'Start,' and just when everything has stopped moving, the very… mammaric 'Os' from the word 'Boo' will keep bouncing for a few more seconds. This tiny intro immediately shows what Boo Party is; an easy-going, feel-good kind of comedy/horror experience with a little bit of naughtiness thrown in. As for the concept of the whole thing, the avatar of the player, a dorky-looking fellow with a big nose, is tasked by a sexy and/or crazy scientist lady to enter the world of paranormal and return with photo evidence. Essentially, you'll meet cuties the likes of a hungry vampire, a gym-rat Frankenstein monster, a Mermaid queen, and so son and forth, and will have to complete certain tasks for them so that they'll let Nose-dude do his thing.

In practice, this works like a simplistic arcade-style adventure; a two-four hour-long fetch quest, basically, where you explore the world for key items, which can then be used on those who asked for them, with not much thinking required like in "normal" adventure games. You are supposed to pay attention to your surroundings and gather clues, but in all honesty the main strategy will be to explore the mansion as thorough as possible, making sure to talk to every single one of the many NPCs… which, of course, are all skeletons, mummies, ghosts, demons, zombies, etc.

This leads to one of the major flaws at hand: the world is large, super non-linear, and gives you almost no clue as to where to go. The first, tutorial-esque mission is all about cooking a burger, so you want some tomatoes, a piece of lettuce, and some meat. All three are easy to find and can be gathered in areas where it's logical to look for food. After this small "intro," however, you are left to simply roam around aimlessly, hoping to find what you are looking for. It would be much better if the characters would sort of give a piece of info on where to go next, or if there was at least an in-game map.

The next flaw revolves around some pretty challenging (for all the wrong reasons) mini-games, which feel out of place in a title that for the most part doesn't require much dexterity - and that comes from someone who is actually experienced with action games, which is not the target audience of Boo Party, as this is a very casual-friendly walking-simulator kind of deal. The developer has sort of "fixed" this problem by adding the option to basically cheat and avoid the mini-games altogether. Nice, but it would be better if the actual games were heavily improved, instead of having the means to not play them entirely.

It's the repetitive nature of the whole quest that's really the biggest downside. From the first hour, to the last minutes, the gameplay is all about walking around the place, talking with people, and searching the place for key item. It gets old really fast, which is why players are advised to approach this as a typical mobile game; play a while, and then move on to something meatier. The short length of the game, and the Switch's portability is definitely a blessing.

Is Boo Party all flaws? No. In fact the whole walking-around-gathering-items and taking-nude-photos-of-monster-girls isn't what this is really about. The fun here is two-fold. First, it's very easy-going. You are never in a hurry, you are never threatened, you are never forced to "go there quickly" or any of that stuff. It's a great game to relax. Second, the humour. Boo Party won't win any comedy awards any time soon, but it will activate those snicker muscles, and will do so very often, with the tiny dialogue sequences having a nice and quirky sense of humour. You won't enjoy this if you approach it as an adventure game where you must do X to achieve Y. You are encouraged to just walk around and talk to people… pretty much what you would do in an actual party.

As a last comment, CosmiKankei has made the right decision to not turn this into one more porn indie title like the ones that can be found by the hundreds in platforms like Steam where this was first released on. No, this takes the Leisure Suit Larry approach, and as such is not that concerned with titillation. Expect no vulgarity whatsoever, or the typical trope of many a lewd game, where everything looks like a penis. Even the 12+ photos Nose-dude will take are actually Playboy-scale naughty, and maybe even safer than that.