Everyone has a Mario Party story at this point, and most of them end up with the storyteller either coming from, or being utterly destroyed, because of some questionable Star allocations at the end. If you’re out to relive past stories, make new ones, or potentially alienate yourself from a new friendship group, Super Mario Party Jamboree is the latest in the long-running franchise.
This time around, Jamboree offers up more than 110 mini-games in a variety of different manners including a 20-player online spectacle and a smaller, single-player campaign. For those really wanting a nostalgia hit, former boards from previous Party games make their return.
Apart from the single-player offering, Jamboree has many ways to get into mini-games. The 20-player online offering, Koopathlon, is a faster-paced manner to do so, while a typical game of the titular Mario Party will take you approximately 90 minutes. Playing in a group of two against two AI-controlled opponents, my hubby and I found we could cut that time to about 45 minutes by doing our absolute best to skip all the usual Nintendo hand-holding that explained every minute detail of the game in painstaking fashion.
If you’ve played Mario Party, you know what to expect in the core offering. This time around NPC characters act as allies, though they’re generally placed in positions on the board and times of the larger game that render them useless; of Daisy and Waluigi, no one really benefitted by picking up an ally. Ultimately, it’s all about Stars — they’re obtained by getting to them on the game board the fastest. Dice rolls drive that functionality, and coins from myriad mini-games help to acquire power-ups that’ll get you around the board faster.
You can see me spamming a reaction in the screenshot above, and I largely stuck to negative ones while our duo watched a third, then fourth, NPC character doddle around the map. Is it too much to ask to skip most of those NPC turns?
The usual Star allocations return at the end of a match, awarding mediocrity like low dice rolls and the biggest shopper. Though we were tied because we’d picked up an equal amount of Stars through regulation gameplay, my husband ended up on top because he squirreled away the most coins as we raced around the track. That’s a noble victory in my books.
Over on the single-player side, Party-Planner Trek is a single-player option that tasks you to roam a map in search of items to help its inhabitants. The overall goal — as everything in Mario Party, really — is to meet those with mini-games and come out on top with the most Stars. It’s a nice way of getting to experience Mario Party without playing with a bunch of bots, and it sure as hell takes less time. That said, there are other mini-game modes that’ll get you to the goods faster.
Something I did enjoy about Party-Planner Trek was that it prompted me to opt into or out of Joy-Con motion controlled games — presumably for those playing on a Switch Lite — meaning I could dock my Joy-Cons and play in handheld mode rather than gripping one in each hand. It’s the little things that bring a smile to your face sometimes.
There’s, of course, a lot of variety in the more than 100 mini-games on offer, with some feeling polished and fun and others just a little cheap. Do I mean in terms of design, or in terms of mean mechanics? Yes.
Priced at $80 AUD, you know what you’re getting into with Super Mario Party Jamboree. While Nintendo die-hards will find fun in the single-player mode, most of us will pick this up alongside a handful of friends and a slab of beers. If you need to freshen up your party game experience, this one should be a good fit.
Super Mario Party Jamboree heads to Nintendo Switch on 17 October.
Super Mario Party Jamboree was reviewed using a promotional code on Nintendo Switch, as provided by the publisher. Click here to learn more about Stevivor’s scoring scale.
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Super Mario Party Jamboree17 October 2024, 24 July 2025 (Switch 2)Switch Switch 2
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