Bringing The Party: Local Multiplayer For Your Holidays

Perspectives

The holidays are here! Hopefully you find yourself among family and friends. As much as you love those people, slow moments happen. At least in my experience, when the going gets slow the slow get gaming. Wait, maybe that didn’t come out right.

Growing up in the 90’s I never felt in dire need for great local multiplayer games. Whether they were on Super Nintendo, PlayStation or N64, all you needed was a couple controllers and you were bound to have at least a game or two that worked well in a party setting. Split-screen, shared-screen, whatever. Every household had their own suite of go-to party games. In mine, it was Mario Party, Crash Team Racing, Soul Calibur, Kirby’s Air Ride and Super Smash Bros. And oh what fun those games could be.

As I’ve written about here before on The Impact Factor, local multiplayer games are becoming less and less a part of modern gaming. So much so that my fiancée and I have had to look for other options for couch co-operative games. And we’ve found some good options to get in our co-op gaming fix. But what about party games? Sadly, those too are released in fewer numbers these days. Nintendo still champions the idea of local gaming, but their struggles with the Wii U has made it not the most compelling purchase. So what do people with the other consoles (like PS4) have as party game options? I’m here to tell you, there’s surprisingly quite a few. All thanks to indie developers.

I’ve chosen five great local multiplayer games that will work well at any holiday party. So don’t let boredom win! Don’t default to just going to see Star Wars again or wander aimlessly around a mall. The Impact Factor is here to say that you have options! These five games run the gamut of experiences: from geometric zone control, to goofy pole-riding completion, to trivia, to soccer with cars, everything you could want is here. So grab your family & friends, a controller, your smartphone (!?!), and be prepared to have a blast.

Towerfall Ascension

Enjoy Super Smash Bros? Like manic 2D pixel-art fun? Towerfall Ascension is there for you. Like all the games I’ll write about today, Towerfall Ascension is a perfect game for anyone of any skill level to pick up and play. And have fun. The premise is simple. You play as an archer. You try to hit your opponents with your arrows. Jumping around the 2D area is intuitive and easy. Aiming and firing your bow just as simple. There’s a wonderful depth to the game, too, in managing your quiver (you have a set amount of arrows you can fire before you need to go collect them again) or in playing with screen wrapping (falling down the bottom takes you to the top of the map). Generally though, Towerfall Ascension is just a zany, chaotic flash. It takes the idea of something like Super Smash Bros. and makes it even easier to digest. Towerfall Ascension is great.

Nidhogg

Though 2-player only, your whole party will be entertained by this one. Each of the two players plays as a fencer. The objective is to move past your opponent to get to the far side of the map. To get past them you’ll generally have to clash, however, and that’s where the party goofiness and fun comes in. The sword fighting is so simple: one button attacks with your sword, and using up / down allows you to attack at different levels. This makes each encounter a cheerful dance. Where will my opponent attack? Should I prepare to block a sword throw? Or should I try to roll towards their feet to sweep kick them? The back and forth in this game is probably the best of any game on this list. You’ll be cheering and screaming before too long as your tiny pixel swordsman lives, dies & repeats. And then gets swallowed by a gigantic mythical worm. Yep.

Rocket League

If you’ve been following The Impact Factor over the course of 2015, you shouldn’t be surprised at all to see this one here. Rocket League is just fantastic. Again, it’s dead simple. It’s soccer but instead of people you play as a car. But this simplicity is the best kind of simplicity and a cornerstone of great game design: easy to learn & difficult to master. Getting perfect control of your car, especially when it comes to huge aerial hits or jumping off walls, can take some time. The good thing is that Rocket League is fun at all levels of play. Zooming around the gorgeous stadiums is fun. It’s satisfying in a backyard party kind of way bouncing around the gigantic soccer ball. The forceful explosion when you score is spine-tinglelingly satisfying. Rocket League is pure joy, stuffed into one compact and awesome package.

Sportsfriends

You’re not going to get much better value out of a party game than Sportsfriends. This package contains 4 (5 if you include a secret mini-game) games that are wholly different from one another and all exceptional party games. They’re goofy, easy to play, easy to understand, perfect for pick-up & play, create crazy party game moments, and so on. Super Pole Riders has you pole vaulting to kick a ball, and other players, as you try to score a goal. Barabariball is a charming fusion of Super Smash Bros. and rugby. Hokra is a hockey-esq zone control game. And J.S. Joust is a crazy hybrid of physical and digital that has to be played to be understood. Sportsfriends has a perfect presentation and more than enough party silliness to keep you and your group occupied.

The Jackbox Party Pack

Jackbox is my final, and strongest, party game recommendation. Holy moly is this fantastic. I’ve always been a fan of the Jack games. I spent a lot of childhood hours playing the classic You Don’t Know Jack on the family computer. But The Jackbox Party Pack is so much more. It comes packed with a ton of great party games: YDKJ, Fibbage and Drawful in particular are great. Why is Jackbox my highest recommendation? Jackbox is a game anyone (yes anyone) can play. As great as the other four titles on this list are, they all require using a game controller. For some, being asked to use as PS4 controller can create a lot of anxiety. It’s a complicated little thing that’s wholly unfamiliar to someone who doesn’t game. For Jackbox though, your controller is your smartphone. Each game creates a room that can be joined via the Jackbox website. Interfacing with the game is just typing, drawing or touching. It removes essentially all barriers to playing a party video game. And then on top of all that, of course, Jackbox is hilarious. It creates perfect party moments where you can laugh with, or at, your guests. All games included are clever and fun. I had heard Jackbox was good, but didn’t expect it to be as great as it was. It will be a party staple for years to come.

Home For The Holidays, On Twitch

Perspectives

Essentially all of my friends live thousands of miles away. The path to my Ph.D. has taken me across the country and far from home. I’ve always been an insular person, but the few connections I’ve made over the past 10 years or so are incredibly strong. I try to take a step back every once in a while to give thanks to the era I was born in. No longer does geographical distance sever bonds. With e-mail and Facebook and Twitter and so on, there is no shortage of ways to keep your relationships strong. What I never expected when I started The Impact Factor, and Twitch streaming specifically, was that it would be the flash point that rekindled the flame of my time worn bonds.

The Impact Factor started as, and still largely is, a passion project spurred from my love for video games and the dire need to do something that takes my mind off the more stressful parts of my biomedical sciences Ph.D. work. Ask anyone in my field and they’ll probably tell you that 3^rd year is the most challenging & frustrating & stressful & psychologically traumatic of the bunch. You’ve finished most of your classes, you are in your thesis lab, and have a decent idea of what aims you wish to pursue. Sounds great, right? But third year is also the time where you need to figure out what works, a.k.a. what’s worth pursuing. You can find yourself spending weeks, even months, at a time chipping away at something that for one reason or another you need to abandon. It’s a horrible feeling. Luckily my PI is an excellent mentor & boss, I have a friendly lab and, most importantly, I have the most wonderful and supportive fiancée. The Impact Factor was there for me, too. It’s been a great creative outlet.

As the year has gone on, The Impact Factor has grown. And man has it been a lot of fun. In late Spring I began recording a gaming podcast. In the fall, and inspiration behind this article, I began regularly streaming my gameplay on Twitch. Twitch has been a pretty new thing for me. Despite having close friends who are also into gaming, the actual act of playing video games has been a totally closed off experience for me. Throughout childhood and, let’s not lie here, college too, there was nothing I liked more than to shut myself off from the world and play some video games in the quiet of my basement/room respectively. The thought of broadcasting my gameplay while providing commentary seemed to be a massive undertaking. It would be wholly dissimilar to how I traditionally experience games. Streaming on Twitch is all about finding an audience, too. Who would watch me play? Would they want to have conversations with me? I feared harassment from trolls, I feared spamming from bots, I feared I would be terrible at commentating my gameplay and (most of all) I feared I’d be streaming to no one at all. What happened has been miraculous, though.

 

I had no idea what I was getting myself into when I first started streaming to Twitch.

I’m no big Twitch streamer. Far, far from it. In the roughly 4 months that I’ve been streaming I’ve amassed 23 followers. My record simultaneous viewership is something like 13 people. What those numbers don’t show, however, is how engaged those 23 people are in the stream. What they also don’t show? Essentially all of those people are close friends. They are people that I know in real life. For some of them, our friendship goes back over a decade. Others, since I started college. But all are people I consider my closest (and only) friends. This has made streaming games on Twitch more like sitting down on the couch to with friends nearby, rather than sitting down alone in my apartment with a microphone and a controller. Twitch streaming is me and my friends talking about the day, the latest game announcement, trials & tribulations of the adult world, and more. I’ve found Twitch streaming to be transportative in all the best ways. For brief moments, it opens a portal to an alternate reality. A reality in which somehow all of my close friends and I have found a way to live in the same city, and are hanging out for a game night. It’s a feeling I never expected to be honest, especially after what I’d seen from many of Twitch streamers I follow.

 

My Twitch page. Numbers never tell the full story.

More than just having company, Twitch streaming with friends has provided a perfect outlet to strengthen our friendship. People’s lives get busy. Despite having unprecedented access to any number of communication methods, it’s so easy to fall out of the habit of keeping in touch. Everyone has their own schedule and often schedules don’t align well. Setting a regular stream schedule on my Twitch, however, has let people know where, when & how they can talk with me if they feel so inclined. Once there, talking gives me a good chance to see how things are going, what’s good and what’s bad. The routine nature of my stream gives me a view into their life in quasi-real time and without the formality of something like a ‘So this is what’s been happening over the past few months’ e-mail. Or the sometimes-tedious texting back and forth. I say without exaggeration that streaming has brought me closer to people I care about than pretty much anything I’ve done since being in graduate school.

Would I like a big Twitch viewership one day? Maybe. If for nothing else how killer would it be to have custom emotes? For now, though, I enjoy the size of my channel and love the people who come to watch. When a channel gets above a certain size you often see some sort of detachment form between the streamer and the audience. Whether it be putting on a persona, a palpable disdain / disinterest, or whatever. My experience as a hyper small streamer has been exactly the opposite. I feel at my most real. I feel connected and interested. I want to build bonds and strengthen friendships. I treat everyone like a long time friend because, a few exceptions aside, everyone in chat is. I hope to make new ones, too.

 

Playing games with my best friends is awesome.

The Impact Factor and streaming to Twitch has given me a creative outlet, helped to relieve stress, and most importantly, make me feel closer to the people who matter most in my life. On Twitch, I’m home for the holidays.

Thanks RADTrooper, lrota4509, darkemblem3, Tetris4me, Flissofthenorthstar, InsertFail, and of course kitty_jus. You’re the best. Happy holidays!

Thank you everyone. You're the best. Happy Holidays!

TIF Plays: Heroes of the Storm! [1]

Gameplay

I decided to do a double whammy of new: streaming Heroes of the Storm and playing with friends! This will continue in the weeks ahead, so be sure to let me know if you want to play together. Check out an archive of my stream linked below, and be sure to catch me when I go live by following me on Twitter (@alexsamocha) and Twitch (MegalodonPhD) Enjoy!