Hands on with Lego Party! – Preview

Going into Lego Party, there was a constant thought making the rounds in my head, Nintendo already has Mario Party, so why do we need a Lego attempt at it. Having put some time into the game with a few other media folks and under the watchful eye of SMG Studios, the makers of the game, I can say that Mario Party is finally not the only party in town.

It is honestly impossible to play Lego Party and not compared it to Mario Party, something that the developers are well aware of. But while you can compare them, it would be like comparing Pokémon to Digimon or Metroid to Castlevania, they all have a lot in common, but there is also a lot more that makes them unique. Mario Party at its heart is a party game, you pick a board and the party starts, whereas for Lego Party, it begins in a TV studio. Using a tv game show as its basis is not just for a laugh, it actually plays into the events, with the hosts Paige and Ted, providing commentary as you play. In fact, as players win games or lose, they will make comments about that, in our session they even questioned if one of the players was trying, given how many mini games they had lost.

Speaking of the mini games, there are 60 in the game and all of them are unlocked from the start, no need to try to unlock them. One of the things that the developers wanted to focus on, was making each of the games as uncomplicated as possible. This means that if on day one, you just want to jump into the games, you can do that and that is a great touch. But there are things to unlock, more on that in a bit, for now the mini games. Across the main mode and a mini game selection, I did get to play a number of them and yes, most of them only require one input or two. One of the games was about scoring points by drifting around a moving object, the catch was that the better you did, the faster you went. Another one had us using rockets to try and hit balls, in order to turn them our colour and then push them into holes, it was utter chaos.

You can play the game via its Challenge Zones, the boards from Mario Party, or jump into the mini games and enjoy curated lists, or create your own. The Challenge Zone is where the meat of the game is, what makes it really fun is that each round, everything can change. Now in Mario Party, you roll a dice to determine who goes first and then that order is set for the entire game. Lego Party on the other hand, drops you straight into a mini game with the results determining who goes first and then each subsequent mini game resets those placements. This means that if you were last on the first round, but win the next mini game, you will be first in the next round. It will offer a layer of strategy that Mario Party does not offer. The zones are themed to Pirate, Ninjago, Space and Theme Park and each is filled with things that make them unique. Across the boards there are stores for items to help you roll, a thief to purloin a golden brick from someone and event spaces that can be good or bad. We played through a six round match, which was about 45 minutes worth of game and we had laughs, cries of frustration, but most importantly, we had a good time.

The final thing that we got to look at was customisation, because this is Lego, there is a lot of it. What I was surprised at was that there are almost no restrictions on what combination you can make. Now there are some rules, you can’t take a known character, like someone from Ninjago and then dress them in a hot dog outfit, but otherwise it is free reign. Something that I liked was that if you used the game to randomly create a combination for you, it would save all those it creates, just in case you skip over one. Unlocking things is done in two ways, the first is by levelling up, as you complete Challenge Zones, you earn XP and level up and unlock a new minifigure. You are also rewarded with carrots, the currency for the in-game shop, which you can then use to buy new minifigures. Once you have unlocked say a pirate with a blue hat, you can then use that blue hat on any minifigure you want to. For those curious, there is no buying carrots or minifigures, the game is fully self-contained.

Lego Party! was a blast, the mini games were great, some more than others and the Challenge Zone was great. The TV game show setting lends itself very well to more chaos than the standard Mario Party board. With the game offering cross-play, you can now have a party with friends, no matter the platform they are on, but the thing that really excites me, is just how it is evolving the party game formula. Mario Party has been the uncontested king for decades now and while others have tried, Lego Party! looks like it might be the one to get closest to the top.

Lego Party! is set to release on Nintendo Switch and other platforms on September 30. For those on the newer Nintendo hardware, more details on Nintendo Switch 2 will be available at a later time.

This preview was played on PlayStation 5