Welcome to our review of Watermelon Party, a party game that resembles old school pipeline games!
Watermelon Party is an action puzzle game for 2-4 players where players compete against each other.
Players are given tiles of different shapes and need to lay a path for their hero to walk across the map and collect all the watermelons. If someone makes a mistake or hits a dead end, they can use bombs to destroy the tiles and rebuild the path. The player who collects all the watermelons first is the winner. The others are ranked by their speed and number of watermelons remaining.
The game is family friendly: Each player can set their own difficulty. Kids and less experienced players get an even playing field versus puzzle geniuses. The game supports horizontal Joy-Con layout, so two players can play with one pair. Sadly there is no handheld play as there is a requirement for two players minimum.
When I was young, I owned a Commodore 64 and one of the games I had, Super Pipeline, was among my favorites, I was around 10 at the time and well, I enjoyed the simplicity and the puzzle aspect at the time. It all came down to placing pipes and corners on the playing field in order to get the water to the valve. Watermelon Party is based upon the same principle but comes down to the simple mechanic of collecting the watermelons.
While graphically underwhelming, this is not really a problem as games of this genre do not depend on a grand design but the fun aspect. I think the fun was few and far apart when trying out the game in single player mode (with a second player activated but doing nothing), with no opponent to beat, it became a boring puzzle game but at the same time, the best possible tutorial. I had all the time in the world to plan out moves, I found out I could make my character go in circles without end and blow up parts of the field to make new roads.
Surprisingly enough, that lame attempt at playing alone made me see the game through different eyes. I had the chance later that day to play against my brother’s youngest, who loves gaming. I beat him every single time and before anyone goes to say I should have let him win, you do not know the boy. He is very driven and will call you out if you let him win on purpose. His approach to games actually makes me proud every single time. He finished a Pokemon game at the age of 11 without any knowledge of the game or any real English skills.
So as we were playing, he did mention the game looked dumb but was fun regardless. I agree with him. The idea behind the game is clearly not reinventing hot water or even trying to do something new. It just took a tried and tested game mechanic and added a party mode to it. Luckily there is a relatively low price linked to this game so you will be more tempted to pick it up after all.
In conclusion, Watermelon Party is a simplistic game but those are often the best. Where it has several shortcomings and limits, the game is so easy to grasp, that you will know what you are getting yourself into. My first description of the game was calling it a “dud”, but after a little while, I did grow slightly more fond of the game.
