Party Hard

100% worth the price great story and cool gameplay

pretty impressive how badly it aged
like not for any content but straight up how it plays: a lot of times the randomization of the levels leaves later on leaves you with no options to handle the mission more stealthly, and with escape options very limited there is no way to complete the level without having options to mass decimate the crowds and not get busted immidately
the second improves on this stuff immensively while having a bunch of problems itself, but you are much better going for that one instead

not fun and tedious

As of a few hours ago, I tried to 100% Party Hard. For those who are looking for a short and simple review, here are my thoughts condensed. Party Hard is a fun, small-sized "puzzle" game in which you have to kill all the guests at different types of parties throughout a short story (~5 hours) using a mix of traps, hiding places for bodies, shortcuts and plain-old stabbing to silence the loud parties annoying our protagonist. The game isn't without its flaws though. There were times where certain aspects felt unclear or not even explained in general, which mostly lead to full restarts of a level.


Now comes the long version for those who want a bit more of a deep dive without spoilers. Keep in mind that the opinion you are reading is one from a full completionist.


I will not go to deep into the story of Party Hard for several reasons. I want to avoid big spoilers as much as I can in my reviews. On the other end, I can just say that the story isn't glamorous or all that exciting, but it brings enough to the table to give some background to what is happening and possible evolutions of the plot.


The focus of the game is of course in the gameplay itself. Playing as our protagonist killer, the player must kill every guest at different types of parties. These types don't differ much from one another outside of pure aesthetics. The traps, NPCs, cops and other 'callables' function just the same in each level. Outside of one "go loose" level, the game even repeats the same layout or design with some slight tweaks on multiple occasions. Although this isn't a bit let-down or anything, the most fun I had was seeing a level for the first time and figuring out where the spots are to lure people to and kill them without anybody noticing.

In every level is a bunch of NPCs partying that you need to take down. This amount can range from 30-70-ish. Most of them walk around enough to give you the opportunity to take them out with getting spotted, although their programming felt weirdly unpredictable at times. From the range and angle they can or can't see a body from, to the way NPCs react when you dance near them, the unpredictability felt ... annoying at times.

This problem also extends to NPCs that can end your run. These characters range from police officers, to FBI-agents, bouncers and the like. They all have their added flavour to a level, but have also annoyed me in almost every single one in a way that doesn't seem fair. Bouncers spawn in a level from the beginning and restrict your access to a certain zone. This zone is weirdly designed sometimes and their 'range' of spotting you feels wonky more times than not. Then there is also the fact that they can end your run, but are killable by the player as well. This has lead me to weird distance-guessing stabbing when they try to catch me.

Cops and FBI-agents are a different bag with their own problems. They don't spawn unless certain conditions are met, like an NPC finding a body or multiple cops having been killed. You are able to outrun these characters when they are specifically chasing you, but the distance where they give up changes on a whim it seems. Sometimes, they give up after 3 seconds of chasing me. I've had other times where they ended up chasing me throughout the whole level for a solid 20 seconds.


The last thing I want to touch on, are the achievements. I am the kind of player that wants to see every aspect of a game and try for every achievement. The fact that 3 achievements don't seem to fire for me on any completion doesn't sit right with me. This fact is only made worse by finding out after a quick Google search, that this problem has existed from launch and the developers never fixed it. Some achievements just don't fire for certain players.


Overall, Party Hard is a fun and quick puzzle-ish game to play when I had half a brain to focus on something. The lack of explanation on certain aspects and the buggy achievements soured my experience overall, but I would still say it's worth buying it at a discount.

OG type shit game better than sequel

meow

Best mini game ever, 10/10, especially recommended for people who find a party going on nearby that disturbs their sleep.

The game feels slow and tedious. Play HITMAN instead, it's better

I bought it for nostalgias sake since the demo flash game version of it was really popular on youtube when i was a child, and thankfully i got it at a huge discount, as i would not reccomend paying full price for it.

The good parts are:
-the art is great
-the music is pretty good if you like techno
-the levels that happen inside houses are usually fun

The bad parts of it are:
-SO. MANY. BUGS. i had to restart the level with the serial killer fangirl so many times because i would randomly spawn as the main guy instead sometimes. I wouldn't mind the bugs that much if this was a new game, but its been out for almost a decade at this point.
-the rng is super unfair
-the ai sucks and is inconsistent
-the enemies (cops and fbi) are literally unkileable,
-you cant run for more than like 3 seconds
-hitboxes are impossible to predict, sometimes a trap will kill you because you breathed in its general direction, but sometimes npcs won't die to them even though they are literally right next to them
-the story is straight ass and the cutscenes have genuinely the worst voice acting i've ever seen in any game
-the levels that take place outside will make you question your life choices that led you up to playing this game

overall, while SOME of the levels are fun, it gets repetitive and frustrating quickly and i would not reccomend buying it unless you get it at a discounted price

Objective: Kill them all!! 🌚🔪

zi

Man, i just wanted some sleep, now im a killa, crazyyyy

kill everyone in the party then leave and go back to sleep afterwards good game

It's like hotline miami if everyone, including you, was on ambien. Seriously though the game isn't bad but it isn't as fun as I thought it would be.

yarrrr

The general premise of the game is fun and I tried really hard to like it but there are too many glitches or random things that happen which you have no control over that will cause you to lose for me the recommend it. I don't mind having to figure things out through trial and error that can cause you to lose as you make mistakes, but it's hard to have fun when you know that any time you devote to doing things can be lost based on a completely random occurrence that the game doesn't give you any capability to do anything about or avoid. I spent about half my time just being frustrated.

i lost sleep and murdered ppl cuz they were loud :)

Stupid bouncers keep attacking for NO reason. WTF? Makes no sense.

Party hardester

Fun art style and visuals, but the main gameplay loop is just far too dependent on RNG to be any fun. NPC's move around randomly and unpredictably, making it exceptionally hard to reproduce your successes or correct your mistakes. To make it worse, the game is incredibly punishing when those mistakes do happen, often forcing you to either toss out your run, or resort to an unfun game of peek-a-boo with the remaining targets.

A 90's slasher simulator, where you have to kill everyone with environmental traps and a knife, without getting caught. The pixel art offers enough detachment to make this goofy, not gruesome.

idk... losing at the last second and entirely restarting isn't fun. hardcore can really just be an excuse for bad/no design.

It teaches us that every murder requires proper planning. Like in this game. Music is great btw. 7.3

This one is definitely a favorite. The artstyle is beautiful. I like the 2D of it. Stroy is okay. I personally didn't think it was that good, but it wasn't that bad. When I first started playing it a few years ago, I stopped because of some of the challenges. Ngl some of them are really grindy. I personally found the FBI hard to get.

I played this game for free online (when the first level was legally available on gaming websites). I was so addicted, went back for years. When I found out there was a full ass GAME, I was ecstatic. Totally worth. Addicting, fun, and the npcs are hilarious.

weird that this artful, cheesy masterpiece didn't spark a wave of copycats. Is it me who is out of touch? No, it must be the children who are wrong

hell yeah

Had a lot of fun playing this game, though some of the achievements kept on glitching and took me repeating them multiple times and googling specifics to get them.
The storyline was good, and I like how you have different skills and abilities depending on which character you play.
Do wish the in game workshop page was organised better so it was easier to find new levels to play.

peak

It's a simple game that is also hard. Sneak around, and kill and hopefully dispose of partygoers without being neither discovered nor arrested. The premise is equally simple and addictive, if this is your jam. Due to brain fatigue, I had a hard time tapping the right key at the right time, and my guess is that a somewhat normal brain would have an easier - but probably not easy - time than me.

The visual style really had me waxing nostalgic. Pixels almost always lure me in. Time will tell if these pixels acn make me stay.

Morbid and black humour, easy to learn, stealth-killer game. If you are in to all of this, this game is a must-have.

# party hard

I wanna kill people in real life without getting arrested

infuriating

Classic

Tem de graça no navegador, mas decidi pegar aqui depois de muito tempo que eu não ouvia falar nesse jogo, cada puzzle tem um ou mais obstáculos que dificultam o jogador de fazer algo, é um jogo bom e legal com gráfico de pixel e ele é um jogo de estrategia, se você não pensar bem ou pensar demais você acaba perdendo e tendo que jogar a fase novamente do zero, recomendo muito se você comprar por menos de 15 reais, o jogo tem poucas fases e se você pegar um dia para fazer algumas em menos de uma semana você termina todas as fases.

Tried to beat the beach level for over three hours. Looked online to see if I was missing something, but no, the level is crazy hard. Because of the randomized mechanics and the layout of the map being very open with no shortcuts or cover for murders/hiding bodies I gave up. I enjoyed the game a lot and wish I could continue it but not when it feels like the game was designed against you.

sleep deprived guy goes on a killing spree because of loud neighbours. Relatable.

Honestly i was just gonna play a few levels to compare it to the sequel before i played it but i stuck with it to complete the story. Speaking of the story was a nice touch. It did feel a bit RNG based sometimes on the level layouts I think I spent more time resetting a level until i got traps I liked. It's simple kill em all. i say grab it on a sale if you have an interest in it.

6/10

Love the game

I party hard when i play this!

7.5/10 good game but hard with few saves

Diddy party simulator

Just not really fun. Kinda tedious.

Very fun, Some levels can be a little tiresome because there aren't enough ways of hiding bodies or from prying eyes.

killed people. lots of them at that

Oddly Frustrating.
Unfulfilling.
Sluggish to control.
Boring AI.
Did not enjoy.
Do not recommend.

It is legit fun for about the first dozen levels but by the midway point the difficulty just becomes so artificially inflated that whatever early enjoyment you find in the gameplay just turn's into nothing but tedious frustration.

This game has a unique concept, and while at times I do find the game enjoyable, the issues that the game has are too big to ignore. Some of the things that I find annoying about the game include:

-When killing inside the area of a smoke bomb, sometimes you will still be chased by the police when the smoke wears off. this might be an intentional game mechanic, maybe I just don't understand how they work.

-Killing multiple cops in a level will cause FBI agents to appear, making the level a little more challenging, but sometimes, seemingly at random, one of the agents decides to just go back to the FBI car, making it trivial to avoid the now alone FBI agent looking for you.

Every level has one song that just plays on repeat, This gets annoying fast.

-The game rewards patience instead of skill/cleverness. You often have to wait for civilians to be alone in order to kill them, since if they see you, you have basically no chance of catching up to them. They are faster than you, by a lot. This makes the combo feature seem kind of meaningless, and serves more as a distraction. I don't know if it's because I have ADD, but if there is a combo feature in a game, I can't just ignore it, and in this game it often causes me to get beat up and arrested because I try to murder a huge crowd to build my combo.

Now as I said at the start of the review, I do find this game enjoyable at times and I will probably finish it, and when I do, I might edit this review.

I don't think anyone reads steam reviews longer than 4 sentences so nobody will probably read this review anyways. Just wanted to use this as a diary I guess.