At this time of year, we often find ourselves at festive gatherings with people of wildly varying ages and tastes. So, what’s the best way to stave off boredom, avoid squabbling and keep everyone entertained over Christmas? One potential solution is a video game or, more specifically, a party video game. But is it possible to download a dancing, singing or fighting game and immediately get everyone, young and old alike, involved?
To find out, I invited a bunch of friends and their kids around to my house to test five new party games. This is what we discovered …
Just Dance 2024 (PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series S/X)
Ubisoft’s dancing series has been going for more than a decade and has a passionate fanbase. Nowadays, it relies on players downloading a motion-tracking app and dancing with their phones clutched in their flailing hands. Each participant has to sign in to the game session on their mobile using a six-digit code and, annoyingly, unless they have Ubisoft accounts, they all appear under the same username as the game owner, but with different numbers added. It wasn’t immediately obvious how to change this, which made it hard to work out who was getting the best scores (reader: it was me).
Anyway, the experience of actually playing was fun and chaotic. You pick a song and follow the actions of the onscreen character, gaining points and commendations for successful moves. The game comes with 40 songs, ranging from the new (Wet Leg, Blackpink and Miley Cyrus) to the somewhat classic (Pussycat Dolls, Britney Spears and Fall Out Boy). You also get a month’s free access to Ubisoft’s subscription service Just Dance+, which has dozens more tracks. That should see you through the festive season.
Some tracks allow two to four people to dance together. The cute two-player routine for Vampire by Olivia Rodrigo ends in a long hug, which is a great feature if you like to load your Christmas parties with unexpected romantic tension.
One much-appreciated element was the ability to filter the list of tracks based on different criteria, including “no jumping” or “small space”. Some dances can be performed sitting down, a nice option for people with mobility issues. Although my guests would have enjoyed the choice of more rock tracks, and phones needed re-pairing once in a while, we had a solid hour of badly coordinated amusement.
Party Animals (Windows, Xbox)
Ridiculous multiplayer brawling games have been a party staple since the arrival of Gang Beasts in 2014. This cute newcomer pits cuddly critters such as kittens, puppies and gorillas against each other in arena-based fights involving up to four players. The creatures can punch each other, or pick up items such as frying pans to wallop their rivals, but the action is slow and ludicrous, like drunken sports mascots play fighting after a few half-time pints. You can fight in ancient ruins, on the wing of a plane, and in a laboratory with a black hole that sucks in unwary combatants. It’s full of clever little features, and the children and teens played all night, weeping with laughter as they stumbled after each other with baseball bats and sink plungers.
Let’s Sing 2024 (PlayStation 4/5, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series S/X)
Since the demise of Sony’s brilliant SingStar series, this has been the go-to annual karaoke game for most players. It’s simple to set up: you either buy the game with a USB microphone included or download an app that lets you use your phone as a mic. There are 35 tracks included, but you also get a month’s free access to the subscription service, VIP, which adds a growing range of additional numbers. The free selection is OK, with songs from Billie Eilish, BTS and Lizzo, but it’s very short on classic tunes, which means older participants may feel a bit left out. There are odd choices, too: if you’re going to have Disney songs, why include Colors of the Wind from Pocahontas but not Part of Your World from The Little Mermaid or Let it Go from Frozen, for pity’s sake? We also had problems with delay – our voices coming in fractions of a second after actually singing, which calibrating the microphones didn’t solve.
But, this was the hit of the evening as far as the over-20s were concerned. Almost everyone got up to perform and it was a truly wonderful spectacle. At one point, a friend turned to his wife and said, “this is the most fun I’ve seen you having in 25 years of marriage”, which is either a glowing endorsement of the game or a damning indictment of their relationship. Let’s go with the former.
Volley Pals (Nintendo Switch, Windows, Xbox)
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Created by Turkish indie studio Naisu, this is an incredibly simple take on volleyball for up to four players. You only need to learn one move – pressing a button to hit the ball – which makes it ultra-accessible for non-gamers. It’s all about timing and positioning, and there are things like troublesome ceiling fans, wormholes and a naughty ghost who steals the ball to add to the challenge. This was really popular with the younger guests, who loved the weird characters and fast-paced, unpredictable action, while older players were lulled into teary reminiscences about the Atari classic Pong.
The Jackbox Party Pack 10 (PlayStation 4/5, smartphone, NintendoSwitch, Windows, Xbox)
The latest in this long-running series of multiplayer quiz games features five events for up to nine players. Once again, each participant uses their mobile phone as a controller, but this is via a website so you don’t have to download an app, and the process is really smooth and intuitive – lots of brownie points for developer Jackbox Games.
The rounds are varied, imaginative and often hilarious. Timejinx is a trivia challenge where players have to enter the year they think a series of historical events happened – these were quite US-centric, but not impossible for British players. Hypnotorious gives each player a certain trait or personality type then asks questions that have to be answered in character, and there are others based around texting and T-shirt design that encourage guests to be more creative. The most fun we had was with Dodo Re Mi, a rhythm action-style game where each player is assigned an instrument and has to play it in time to a set song. The best part is when the game plays back the resulting track and it’s a cacophony of missed beats and wailing trombones.
However, in a slightly raucous party environment, it was really hard to get people to concentrate on the rules of the games, which were sometimes quite complex. Jackbox is great, but it needs to be the focal point of your get-together, and it’s best for groups of 10 people or fewer.
What we learned
If you can, it’s smart to set up two rooms – one for performative party games (ie singing and dancing) and one for more traditional video games where people have to actually concentrate. For games that require smartphone apps, get your guests to download them in advance and remind them to charge their phones before the big night. Also, make sure you have a backup plan in case your broadband goes down. Monopoly, anyone?