Ghost Party

Ghost Party is an indie game about a ghost at a party. He's at a mansion that has a lot of rooms, and he has to collect quite a bit of things: a bicycle helmet, a dog collar, squid, a #2 pencil (sharpened), sleep pills, an old camera, an old carrot, a pan flute, a dusty CD player, scarab beetle, a baseball card, and lots of other stuff too. It's like a pretty fancy party at a stately mansion, right? But people start to get murdered and turn into ghosts just like you. So what's going to happen then? Play this game and find out.

Gameplay
Or don't. In this game, the main thing you have to do is walk around and grab stuff. You can examine stuff too if you like. Look out windows. Ruminate on the nature of thine own existence. But one can't help while doing these things in a game that it may serve you better to do this in real life, where it really counts. Yes, it is important for a game to help you explore your inner self. But this game puts it in such a cutesy way and combines shallowness and deepness with such saccharine irreverence that either you will love it or hate it. I was in the hate category.

It's for much the same reason that I dislike the song "Royals" by Lorde. I live in New Zealand. I should be patriotic, right? I should love her. She's the spokeperson of our country, leading the charge of the new wave of music, right? Not quite. She's a teenager with competent writing skills but a very whiny point of view on anything popular. And that doesn't agree with me. I like popular stuff. And being "twee" for the sake of being "twee" irks me. Maybe I'm anti-hipster. Maybe I harbour dislike for the disaffected malcontent of the malaised and rebellious teenage culture, or maybe I'm just a person who doesn't quite enjoy Wes Anderson flicks as much as the next schmuck.



Presentation/Lasting Appeal
So when you approach this game with the attitude that this is going to be like Yume Nikki, an "experience" more than a game, then you can call it successful. I found Yume incredibly annoying and unsatisfying. If you're the type of person that enjoys games where you wander around trying to figure out what to do for about an hour before making an inch of progress, then this game is for you. However, if you're a person who enjoys employing skill in a game to achieve a certain outcome, then this game might irk you a bit.

Combine placing stuff in your fanny pack with an excruciatingly slow walk speed, and the need to talk to absolutely everyone in the room to continue the story, then you've got this game.

Graphics
Everything looks 8-bit Nintendo. Beautiful graphics. I wish all games had graphics like this. Beautiful pallette, two tones or whatever you artist folk say. Monochrome. Everything is crisp and clean and nice. Smooth animations, nice pallette, cute title screen. Reminds me of a lot of other similar "art" games.



Story
The story is light-hearted and pushes along at a nice pace. Some light-hearted observations combined with dark ruminations about the meaning of life. Very chic stuff. A mansion filled with some sort of bats and diviners and random people that talk to you, or... don't? You're never quite sure. So in this mansion filled with therapist couches you just start picking up crap. People get murdered though! So that's legit.

So you're wafting around this mansion with clues to try and "whodunnit" the thing. It's fairly short and can be solved in under an hour - but not if you're a noob like me and get lost every single time. So for me it took about 1 1/2 hours actually, thank you very much. It felt like a lot longer, though.

It has three endings, each of which are pretty OK. I like the "good ending". Overall, the story is very interesting but doesn't really lend any depth overall.

The Verdict
Ghost Party is like The Royal Tenenbaums combined with a CARRIONBLUE game. In other words, get ready for some excruciatingly-slow-walk-speed, interact-with-everything fun. There's bold graphical style, there's nice animations, there's a pretty unique story, all bundled together in largely frustrating gameplay. And that sums up quite a few games like this, actually.

• Presentation:4/10 || Slickly polished game, but doesn't use good game design.

• Graphics:8/10 || The strong point of this game. Slick graphics, nice pallette.

• Story:6/10 || Cute story and dialogue. Didn't hold my interest for long, though.

• Gameplay:0.5/10 || Really frustrating.

• Lasting Appeal:1.5/10 ||Not actually that unique in terms of RM games nowadays.

Overall: 4/10 || A graphically beautiful but altogether boring collecting game