You ever play “Bumper Balls” in Mario Party, see Wario slip off the cliffside and think, “I wonder where he went? I wonder if Wario just died?” Ever wonder if Wario died? Machine Party, a new game from the mind behind 2023’s black hearted, dark horse hit Buckshot Roulette, is much more conclusive about that question. In this new game, you’re subject to some unusual thrill mongering. It’s your party. And you can die if you want to.
Gather up to four of your buddies to run, crawl, chisel and smoke for your life. In over a dozen novel gauntlets, you are surviving ever stranger and cynical Squid Game trials. Some, such as combing a narrow freckled minefield, allow all of you to escape together. Largely intact. Most pit players directly against each other, seeing who can last the longest on an out of control escalator or build a large ACME gun the quickest to blast away the others.
Fans of Buckshot creator Mike Klubnika’s work will feel right at home in this loud, rusted out belly of hell. It seems set in the bowls of this collective world of torture. The developer has numerous small, unnerving body horror games well beyond the rap sheet on Steam (I highly recommend the Ballardian garage horror Fused 240). But it was Klubnika’s nasty Russian roulette sim that became an unsuspecting hit. There, players were pitted against a grinning gambling partner, strategically using items and odds to see who gets to keep their face. People adored it.
A mean spirited game for a mean spirited time, Buckshot Roulette became one of the highest selling Steam games that year, and Klubnika added a multiplayer mode soon after. The all-new Machine Party continues this campaign of flesh mangling party games, where drones mow you down for poor art projects or a robot spider will practice unlicensed chiropractic techniques. My favorite of the bunch has you gobbling up green peas like a hungry duck, though the cigarette smoking competition is not far behind. We are living in a golden age of cigarette gaming after all.