Party Pooper – You’ll Be Left With More Than A Hangover

Not often is a party pooper something that you’ll want when you invite people round, but that may be about to change.

Not often is a party pooper something that you’ll want when you invite people round, but that may be about to change. Possibly as early as January or February in 2014, Luke Whiston, one man indie-developer will be releasing his iOS and Android game, Party Pooper, in which people will be using the process of elimination to uncover the person who has quite little pooped the party, and blocked the toilet.

This game has a serious Guess Who/Cluedo vibe to it, except that you’ll always know ‘it’ took place in the bathroom with a lead… pipe. One by one, the gamer has to question the guests at the party, who will reply with hints to help you cross off the suspects until only a few remain. An example of this is “They are not drinking wine”, allowing the guests that are drinking wine to be removed from the long list of toilet-blocking suspects.

Luke states the Party Pooper will turn players against each other, and after playing the beta for myself, I can see how this might be the case. There are a number of special abilities that cause the next player to suffer in various party-related incidents. For example, if Player 1 wants to pull one over on Player 2, they can use an ability to deliver a pizza to the party on their turn, meaning that instead of searching for the culprit, they have to answer the door and miss their turn entirely. That would be the backstabbing that Luke mentioned, and I enjoyed it immensely. What does that say about me?

From my short time with the beta, Party Pooper seems to be a fun game to bring out during a get-together and can be played with 2+ players, though I’m unsure of what the maximum amount of people is. My only issue with this game was the pixel-art. Though I have no problem with the pixelated style – in fact, I rather like it – I found it difficult to discern between male and female guests after being told that the high-in-fibre culprit was “not a female”. If anything were to be improved before its early 2014 release, I would suggest this; even with something as simple as more obvious hairstyles, or maybe lipstick?

Though passing a chunky laptop or tilting a PC monitor isn’t quite the same as swapping a nimble tablet or phone between players, you can get a feel for Party Pooper with the beta version, available here. You’ll have a laugh with your friends, and fight against each other to accuse the right guest, who will be lucky to be invited to another party.