Our opinion on Smurfs Village Party, a party game before the next adventure

The village party!

Once is not customary, it is quite rare in a party game to offer a short story that justifies a series of mini-games. And yes, Smurf Village Party offers a scripted single-player campaign where everything will be explained to us. In the midst of developing a glory filter, the evil Gargamel realizes while leafing through his grimoire that he is only missing one element to prepare his potion: the Smurfs!

For their part, the little blue men are busy organizing an extraordinary party in order to unite and strengthen the bonds between the inhabitants of the village. To do this, you will have to go through it to mobilize your comrades by completing challenges or collecting items for the event. Well aware of the project, the sorcerer Gargamel is determined to cause trouble!

Gameplay and content

Immediately disappointing to young audiences (remember that the title is recommended from 3 years old and from 5 years old it can be easily mastered), the game does not give the player the opportunity to try the 50 mini-games. games before having completed the solo adventure!

As with Inspector Gadget, you will therefore have to complete the solo adventure before sharing the game in multiplayer with 2 to 4 players. Where Mad Time Party was completed in 2 hours and this served to guarantee a little lifespan for the title (which remained ultra-weak let’s be honest), here, the player will be immersed in a large open map where it will be possible to explore up to ten regions ranging from the heart of the village to the forest, or even the mountain and even Gargamel’s house.

During this campaign, you will provide services to your peers, solve small puzzles, complete challenges and collect items for the party while meeting up to 100 different Smurfs. The open map will take you a little more than 4 or 5 hours to complete if you are an adult!

To cross it, you can use your gyrosmurf, fast travel, and a slingshot. If everything can be activated and deactivated on the map in order to facilitate navigation between quests, collectibles and others, it remains at least quite complicated to read for the youngest who will be content to take the quests one after the other in having difficulty in finding your way with the arrow which points to the objective and the flying creature which is also supposed to show you the way.

During the different meetings or by entering the various houses in the village, you will be able to experience the various types of events that Smurfs Village Party offers. These remain very easy for the seasoned player but will work on the skill, memory and speed of the youngest with varied challenges very inspired by Mario Party.

We will therefore find sporting challenges, rhythm, observation, racing, puzzles and shooting. To conclude, the game offers 19 different playable characters in multiplayer and offers 31 costumes to collect during the adventure.

Technique and soundtrack

Not the most technically successful, the game created under Unity suffers enormously in the Switch version that we were able to test. Let’s move on to the loading times which we are not too used to if we are not used to the support to approach the framerate of the game. It is not very fluid, there is still a lot of aliasing and clipping omnipresent in docked mode. Fortunately, the title makes up for it by being impeccable on the mini-games, fortunately you might say!

To summarize, it is better to play solo in nomadic mode and switch to the TV for multiplayer, this is how you will enjoy the game the most. Traveling through the open world is quite tedious with a camera that is a little too close to ‘a stiff character on these jumps and movements and not extremely fast.

The game is certainly colorful and faithful to the universe but once again, it is cleaner in the mini-games than when exploring the map. For the rest, real efforts have been made in terms of the soundtrack in order to offer music and dubbing in French in addition to numerous cutscenes.

Not a scam but 3 to 5 years max…

Available for €39.99 on Switch, which remains quite correct in relation to the content of the game and its replayability, we recommend the title to children who appreciate the license and who are not too particular about the technical aspect.
Accompanied by an adult for the single-player mode, they will probably have a few pleasant moments if they manage to get through the sometimes somewhat repetitive quests and will certainly want to return several times.

Everything has been done to deliver a complete product, respectful of the universe but we especially regret the obligation to finish the single player to have access to multiplayer. This point almost got the better of the patience of the two children who accompanied me for the test. At 10 and 6 years old, they largely found more immediate fun elsewhere, even in small, much more confidential experiences!

To know

► Release: 06/06/2024
► Platforms: One, Series, PS4, PS5, PC
► Genre: Adventure / Party Game
► Publisher: Microids
► Developer: Balio Studio
► Age: From 3 years old

WE love

► Loyalty to the universe, soundtrack
► An effort to propose something

We regret

► Multi available after completing the game
► Technically very weak
► There’s more fun for young audiences!