Jack Thompson called Grand Theft Auto a murder simulator, he believed video games taught kids to be violent. I don’t agree with this because Grand Theft Auto doesn’t force you to murder, you can go through a Grand Theft Auto game without killing anyone except mission based targets. In that reasoning Party Hard is more of a murder simulator than Grand Theft Auto since it makes you kill everyone.

Party Hard is the definition of the feeling we get when your neighbors want to party all through the night or blow off firecrackers because their team who they did nothing to help won a sporting event. It is the inner fantasy we have about them when they are at their worst.

Story:

A man needs sleep, he is not concerned with rational action when that sleep is broken. To those who break a man’s rest will feel his wrath. The man will stop at nothing to make sure his sleep is avenged.

So now that we know Party Hard has one poor start to the story, but let me lift your spirits by saying that it’s delivery and progress into the story makes it pretty good. The story is delivered in these low resolution but dark and noir cut scenes that really do a great attempt at being a psychological thriller by just having the lead detective talking to another guy about the Party Hard killings.

Sound:

The background music is nice but highly repetitive, it can get on your nerves eventually. Each level has its own music but since you are going to spend quite a bit of time in a level it gets bad.

The knife and explosions have very faint sounds, they might as well have no sound at all and that is a great let down since it feels like your best kills are worth squat.

Graphics:

The graphics are 8 bit with sprite characters. The gameplay area is flat and is supposed to fake an isometric overhead view which I don’t think works. It makes angles very difficult to understand.

The colors are nice most of the time and you can easily follow your character once you find him. It’s just that there are so many NPCs to kill and duplication is quite common so it gets a little overwhelming.

Gameplay:

The core mechanic is to kill everyone at a party, simple enough right? To kill the party guests, you have your knife and different traps in every level.

The levels are various places for parties like houses, campgrounds, clubs etc. Each level has a phone, a DJ and various traps. The levels have rooms, walls, doors and so on but that is the start of the problem. Since the graphics are overhead attempting to be isometric it makes it difficult to do something basic like walk through a door, if you’re too close to the side you’re going to hit the wall if you try to cut it. This same problem applies to traps that go in a straight line (like cars that you can start that leave by themselves) since while it might seem that you have a lot of targets some of them might be out of line and they will miss.

The traps themselves take multiple attempts. The first attempt is just to figure out how to use them and their blast range which varies level to level, so a stove in a one level might have a smaller blast range in the second which gets really annoying. While most traps are one use there are also traps that are multi use like un protected ledges where you can throw someone off and this feels more like a cheat since you can simply spam that move again and again. There is also a phone which lets you call someone, most of the time these are people who help with the death rate but sometimes they can be more party guests which you really don’t want since now you have to kill them too.

There is also a counter-weight to your murder spree in the form of the guests themselves. Whenever a party goer finds a body or sees you stab someone they call the cops who covers up the bodies. Whoever was close to the victim when a bystander sees the body the cop will try and arrest them, this is nice since you can defer the target from yourself to someone else. Sadly, this is where the graphic layout problem arises again! The cops chase you till they get close enough to knock you out but it seems the reach of both your knife and the cops take downs are greater when vertically aligned than when horizontal so a 10-foot gap when vertical is enough for an arrest which is really annoying. There are also bouncers who try to knock you out when they see you, who you have to kill too. and finally the special agents who show up if your traps take out too many cops, these agents will arrest you without provocation so that adds to confusion but would be a good feature if the other systems weren’t so buggy.

Conclusion:

Party Hard is fun in short bursts of 20 minutes or when you have friends over to laugh at. Most of the time it’s dull repetitive and annoying so while I don’t recommend it if your playing alone, it is good fun when friends are over.

Buy it in a Humble Bundle.

Final Score 5/10