Party Game Sundays: Tamagotchi Party On

After playing The Bachelor: The Video Game we needed another game to play. One of our choices was Tamagotchi Party On, which I knew almost nothing about. After reading the back of the box I knew that we had to play it. Also, the box art is incredible and very Japanese.

I guess Tamagotchis made some kind of resurgence recently, which was when this game was released. There may be some kind of television show now too, but I decided I didn't want to look to deep into it. So, the goal of Tamagotchi Party On is to become the president of Tamagotchi Planet. I know, it sounds awesome right? I'm happy to let you know that it's just as awesome as it sounds.

This box art is incredible!

As you probably expected you start by picking which Tamagotchi you want to play as. You only have four to choose from at the beginning, but each time you complete a full game you unlock another one. All the characters seem pretty cool. The next thing you choose is how many elections you want to have. The game estimates that each election will take 30 minutes. For some insane reason the game maxes out at 50 elections, which would take 25 whole hours! What's even more upsetting is that there will probably be a point in my life when I play 25 straight hours of Tamagotchi Party On. It would be awesome at first, but get boring relatively quickly.

We started off by playing one election, because we had no idea what was going to happen. You're dropped on a Mario Party-esque board. In order to move you roll a dice. At the beginning you can go to any one of Tamagotchi Planet's five exciting themed cities, however the game recommends you move towards the crown icon. When you reach the crown you give a campaign speech and get super popular. 

You always want to get to the crown.

So, the way you win Tamagotchi Planet's elections is by being the most popular. As you move around the board you can land on a variety of different spaces. There are two types of mini-games. One space lets you play what I assume are games you'd play on an actual Tamagotchi, where you only use the D-pad. These were actually my favorite, because they were super easy. The other mini-games are all fairly simple motion controlled games that repeat a lot. These games get you money and popularity points.

My favorite spaces to land on were event spaces. Your Tamagotchi is depicted in a very weird cartoon style. Something will happen and you'll either gain or lose popularity points. For example, I watched some Kindergartners and won 50 popularity points. My friend picked up trash in the park and only got 30, because watching kids is way more important than a clean park. 

I played as this baller.

I didn't win our 1 election round, but I did win all 3 elections in our second 3 election round. In the beginning I landed on a friend space, which lets you talk to another Tamagotchi character. The Tamagotchi in question was a rabbit scientist. He gave me over 100 popularity points and told me that I would win the election. He then declared that his predictions are never wrong. I'm inclined to believe that his predictions are right, because I did indeed with the election by quite a large margin.

The real reason I won though was because I figured out the secret to getting tons of popularity. To start you want to give the campaign speech, because it gives you 500 popularity points. Once the speech is given it moves locations so you can keep doing them. The other key thing is to upgrade your headquarters. If you get back to the starting point you can use some money to upgrade your headquarters. I don't want to be crude here, but the headquarters looks like it's half penis, half mushroom. When you upgrade it, by making it bigger or decorating it you earn more popularity points from playing mini-games. Normally playing a game perfectly will net you 100 popularity points, but I was banking 200, because I upgraded my HQ. It was a pretty sweet deal and I figured it out early enough to fly ahead. 

These Tamagotchi games are super fun.

Looking back on it now not a whole lot happens in Tamagotchi Party On. You watch events play out and play the same mini-games over and over again. There's something weirdly charming about it though. The music and characters are very charming. Everything is upbeat and colorful, and made me feel good inside. I felt even better when I became the president of Tamagotchi Planet.

     -Manny