Early Access Review: Party Hard Tycoon

• Platforms: PC
• Developer: Pinokl Games
• Publisher: tinyBuild
• Release Date: October 19th, 2017 (Early Access)

Party Hard Tycoon is the new project developed by Pinokl Games, which according to their website is set in the same universe as their previous game Party Hard, which was relatively well received, receiving very positive steam reviews. In the interest of full disclosure, I have never played Party Hard, so I can’t comment on the franchise as a series and if there is something I’m missing here from not playing Party Hard, then I sincerely apologize.

That being said; Party Hard Tycoon was an interesting experience that I personally doubt will reach the same positivity as its predecessor.
In Party Hard Tycoon, you are attempting to make a name for yourself in the party planning business, on a small island with around thirty different venues for such purposes conveniently placed next to each other. You will be guided and sent challenges by other party planners, some of which are incredibly random, specific and at times impossible, asking you to use things you haven’t unlocked yet, but not telling you that you need them until after you’ve accepted the challenge! But for the most part you have to throw parties, improve the venues and gain fans. What do you do once you improve the venues and gain fans? Why you unlock more venues so you can gain new types of fans! What else would you do?After each party, you will gain a series of points depending on how successful your party was which will allow you to unlock different styles of parties, new staff members and, yep, new venues.

There isn’t a whole lot I can say about the game, because I’m not even sure the game knows what your ultimate goal is. To be the person who plans the most parties? Who plans the best parties? To make the most money from the parties? At each of your parties a group of customers will automatically show up and whine about how everything is terrible or express their joy somehow. And these people are the whiniest little blobs of pixels I’ve ever had the misfortune to lay my eyes on! Some of them will turn up at your party and declare after half a second that the party was “Not Cool Enough” for them and immediately leave. Others would complain about one snack table being empty when there was a completely full one right next to them and some would ask the grammatically questionable question: “Where is music?” When literately standing next to a speaker! Their intelligence levels aren’t nearly high enough for their levels of fussiness and I don’t know on what level I am supposed to give even the slightest damn about their happiness.

Apparently, the more fans you get the more successful your parties are as they will spread the word that you are super awesome and bring all their little pixelated friends along with them. However, the game description on Steams says, quote: “a business simulation game where you’re tasked with throwing the most profitable party ever.” But as I found out throwing the most profitable parties has no correlation with pleasing the silly people who come to them.

After spending all my money on sushi tables, DJ booths and light shows which still didn’t make the little jerks happy, I decided to throw a huge champagne party at the biggest venue in town and jacked up the ticket prices. I sat back and relaxed as the bastards cried and whined about how lame my party was and made sure the waiter refilled the beer every now again, and sure enough there were some angry social media messages about how my party was only to make money, which it totally was, but I earned forty grand in that one night. I lost ten fans and pretty much everyone was disappointed but, good riddance to them was all I had to say.

My victory however was short lived as I then realized that the only thing I could do with this money was to buy new things to make them happy. Although even after I became the evil money-grubbing party planner I still reached the top lists of “Hores Magazine”, so no loss.
I didn’t go out much as a student and I used to regret not spending as much time in clubs when I was younger, but honestly if this was all I was missing then I guess I dodged some pretty gross, overpriced bullets.

As I mentioned before, the further you get the more you can unlock, but you never seem to unlock anything useful. There are different party themes you can unlock, but none of them make any difference to the party, you literally just change the signs. Different styles are supposed to more compatible with different venues, but once you have two or three the others just feel like novelties, until one of the other party planner’s messages you and tells you that they need the one specific type of party. The personnel don’t seem to make much of a difference either, they just seem to wander around the party waiting for you to tell them to entertain the guests for a few seconds before going back to wondering around, and whenever you actually need the waiter or the cop they always seem to be on the opposite side of the party from where they’re actually needed!

Party Hard Tycoon isn’t so much a game as it is pure evil, there are no dire consequences for failing or any real motivation to do well, yet somehow sucks you into the bizarre addicting world, where you can’t please anyone but you can’t walk away from them either, just hoping it might all be explained at some point down the line. Perhaps this is the most accurate Tycoon game ever?
The game is both visually and audibly annoying, with odd flashing lights the hurt my eyes, which after fifteen years of gaming are well accustomed to staring at a computer screen for hours on end, as well as the kind of repetitive loud music constantly on a loop that I suppose is entirely accurate of the club scene.

While I certainly did enjoy Darth Vader coming in and dancing to techno music, I can’t see someone getting more than a few hours of entertainment out of Party Hard Tycoon. The game is still in early access, so they may plan to iron some of these issues out later- perhaps adding in more achievements or more interesting challenges to motivate the player? Maybe make the soundtrack more interesting? Or even just give me more reason to care about the needs of my customers!

A Party Hard Tycoon Early Access Steam code was provided by tinyBuild