Designed as budget Mario Party knock-off, Petoons Party is a young gamer mini game compilation that is best played with parents and siblings. None of the mini games are especially good and most feature some inaccurate controls, but families of four can probably have some casual fun in thirty minute increments.

What is a Petoons? They are these colored blob characters that are supposed to be humorous but ultimately come across as poorly drawn and undetailed. Even though there are multiple characters on the roster, they all play the same during any of the three available modes. The first mode is a typical board game, where the goal is to reach the end, play mini games along the way, and earn a higher score than your opponents. However, the boards lack any creativity, are very straightforward, and mini games only unlock after certain tiles have been accessed. This means players might be forced to play the same mini game for several rounds if low dice rolls are prevalent.  Uniquely, if two players land on the same space, they have to play a lightning round of rock-paper-scissor to steal points.  Even if the player wins, points are still deducted due to a programming error. The good news is, there is a fast forward button to make navigating the board a little less tedious.

Instead of plodding through an entire game board, the player can also participate in a cup.  Cups are gauntlets of all that world’s mini games one after another and cuts out the dice-rolling board element completely.  This is a more straight forward mode and players with higher skill will win over the luck element that is involved with rolling a random die. The final mode simply allows the player to select any mini game to be played at will which is the mode to use for Trophy hunting.

There are a few odd performance and housekeeping issues that further showcase the lack of polish of the final product. For example, if the player ties with the CPU, they get the lower rank on the podium. The Dual Shock controller is always glowing red which is easily mistaken for a low battery. The player has to watch the “how to play” animation every time a mini game is started. There is no difference between the two difficulty settings found in the options menu. Some mini games last too long and games like Spooky Madness often doesn’t give the player the right ingredients to complete the task. The colored orb loading screen doesn’t make any sense and has no correlation to the blobby Petoons.  The Guitar Hero-styled mini game allows the player to play one of four instruments, which are tied to specific Trophies, but doesn’t give the player the choice regarding which instrument is played. And being honest, none of the mini games are very fun.

Petoons Party is a good family oriented, budget party game. It doesn’t do anything new with the genre and has its share of flaws but it isn’t all bad if expectations are low and parents want to play something light hearted with their youngster.

Also available on PC. A port to Switch and Xbox One is planned.

SCORE: 5/10

Also Try: Arcade Islands Volume One (Xbox One/Switch)
Better Than: Fun! Fun! Animal Park (Switch)
Don’t Forget About: Astro Bears Party (Switch)

By: Zachary Gasiorowski, Editor in Chief myGamer.com
Twitter: @ZackGaz

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