Party Versus review – Bringing mixed reality fun to game night

Sometimes when I try to tell my family what I do in VR, they look at me as if I’m speaking a foreign language and telling them an inside joke that they can’t possibly understand even though I’m explaining as clearly as possible.

I was playing a game called Party Versus.

It’s in VR, but it’s actually mixed reality, which means I can see the game, but I can also see my room through my VR headset. I can see both things at the same time. And I can also see the other people, but they’re not really in my room. They’re somewhere else.

“Where are they,” my aunt asks.

I have no idea, I tell her, but that doesn’t matter.

My aunts look at me with raised eyebrows.

Anyway, we were playing a new game where sometimes I was on a team by myself, but other times I had a teammate. Also, it wasn’t really just one game, but a bunch of minigames – like Sticky Potato or something called Milky Way Moovers.

They’re familiar with hot potato and with cows so I figured that was a good place to start.

It’s so much fun in VR because in one mode the hot potato gets stuck to objects. And there’s more than one potato! So, if you throw one across the room and it sticks to something, then you can throw another and make it stick to the back of the person’s leg so then they’re trying to pull it off. In another version, half of the people are upside down.

Imagine me laughing hysterically at this point at the memory of a hot potato stuck to the back of someone’s leg while they try frantically to figure out where it is. 

Or in Milky Way Moovers, we were on teams and for each team, one teammate was upside down. Not in physical reality of course, but IN THE GAME they’re upside down. Then one of you picks up a cow – it’s a tiny cow – and your teammate has to tell you where to go so you can put the cow in a beam coming from a little spaceship. Each time you do that, you get points. It’s awesome!

At this point my aunts were laughing as well because I probably did sound a bit insane. This is one of the reasons VR is best experienced first hand.

Party Versus showcases the potential of mixed-reality as well as the potential of casual immersive multiplayer gaming. It’s a highly social, unforgettable wacky experience that comes to us from Schell Games, the studio behind Among Us VR and the I Expect You To Die series.

You can play minigames – and the twisted versions, compete for the coveted Party Crown, and earn wands, glowsticks, and sparklers to play with while you’re in between rounds. The shared virtual space for 2 to 4 players provides a casual atmosphere for players of all ages and VR experience levels. It’s perfect for game nights or just hopping in for casual fun and fostering fun social interactions with family, friends, classmates, or other game night afficionados.

One added bonus is that it’s a pretty good workout. There’s a lot of movement involved during the mini-games so it’s possible to get your heartrate up if you want to use it for exercise. Thankfully you can take a moment to rest in between mini-games and the next round starts when everyone is ready.

Party Versus is available on Meta Quest 3 and 3S for $9.99 or free with a subscription to Meta Quest+.

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