Party Versus cracks the formula for social mixed reality gaming and is out now

Schell Games has just launched its new game, Party Versus, and in my opinion, it is the first game to find a great formula for multiplayer social mixed reality. It uses a genius idea to make people feel connected in the same mixed reality even if they are remote, and I’m pretty sure that many will copy this concept in the future. I’ve gone hands-on with this revolutionary title in a dedicated press preview and I want to tell you everything about it!

(And I also want to offer you a giveaway… be sure to read all this post!)

Gameplay

Room setup

Party Versus requires you to scan your room to play: it relies on Meta Scene Setup, so if you have not already performed a scan of your room, it will ask you to do so. In this first version, the game assumes you have a room with four walls meeting at 90 degrees circa and with inside at least a place to sit, like a sofa, but maybe in the future, these requirements will be relaxed.

After you have scanned your room, the game shows you how your room appears in virtual reality. All the furniture that has been detected in the previous step is transformed into some cartoonish virtual counterparts that don’t aim to be identical, but just to represent the same room layout. For instance, my beige sofa was transformed into a cartoonish azure sofa with the same dimensions, my transparent small table into a wooden small one, and so on. After having had this preview of my “virtual room”, the game showed four ropes hanging from the ceiling at the four corners of my room and invited me to pull the one located in the corner that was the freest from furniture and other stuff. This was meant to become the main corner of the game in my play area.

After the configuration was over, I was invited to sit on my sofa.

The sofa lobby

As soon as I sat down on my sofa, the game showed me its main menu. But exactly like the “corner choice” moment, it was not a simple 2D menu, but a full 3D interactive menu. There was a box with a little fissure and three cards with written on top what I could do: host a match, join a match, or enter a party code. Matches can be both public and private, so you have full control over what you want to do: you can either just hang out with your friends or make new ones.

I had a code, so I physically grabbed the card related to that and put it into the little hole of the box. The box unveiled a 3D numpad where I had to type the code I had been given and then the menu disappeared. As soon as the multiplayer connection happened, I started seeing my sofa populating with the virtual avatars of the people from Schell Games I had to play the game with. We could see each other, and we could also talk.

In Party Versus, the main sofa of your room becomes your game lobby and you can hang there with the other players, chatting and having fun as if you were in the same physical room. As we will see in the paragraph where we will dive deeply into the mechanics of social mixed reality, this creates an intriguing sensation of having your friends really at home with you. The other people appear as their Oculus Avatars and since my avatar is in a suit, everyone complimented me for my style.

The game implements some smart safety mechanics, so as soon as I tried to touch one of the other players, his avatar disappeared and was substituted with a 2D photo of his face. This is to prevent other people from harassing you. You can access the game settings and tune the safety level you want: you can disable this “safety bubble” in private parties or even in all matches, including the public ones. There are also other mechanics to guarantee the players’ safety: for instance, it is possible to kick out players who are trolling in the lobby. I sincerely appreciated the attention to player safety that Schell Games put into this experience.

In the lobby, the players have to choose how they want to play their session of Party Versus. There are two modalities:

Party Playoffs: Players compete against their friends for the Party Crown with over six varieties of minigames. Winner-takes-all in both free-for-all and team minigames.
Quick Party: Choose any of the minigames for everyone to play together

Basically with Party Playoff, you make a little tournament with your friends, while with Quick Party you just do a quick match.

I already told you about the physicality of the interactions for choosing the corner and for selecting the type of game. Well, choosing the mini-game to play also features an immersive interaction. When you are in Party Playoff mode, at every round of the little tournament the players are offered a few options about the game to play next and they have to reach a consensus. Every player can select his/her preferred game by putting a hand over the name of the chosen game. Only when all the hands are together on a single name, one on top of the others, that game can start (if an agreement is never reached because someone is trolling, you can kick him/her out of the room). I loved this mechanic because it created a sense of group belonging with the other people there.

Quick party does not feature this, because it has to be “quick”, so it is just the host deciding for everyone else by scrolling through all the game names, but since everyone can see what the host is seeing, this creates a social mechanic anyway, because all the players on the sofa start discussing about the game to play anyway. I remember that when the people from Schell games had to choose the game to make me try, they were all talking with the host, by saying “oh no, this no”, “wait, let’s play that game type, which is fun”, and so on. So even if the game is not enforcing a group decision, actually I’ve noticed the players are having a sort of group decision anyway even in this scenario.

Whatever the mode, as soon as a game was selected, my sofa friends disappeared and the game could start.

The mixed reality space

Room layout of 4 people playing together, with 2 having inverted gravity. Notice how the four rooms are united to form a single mixed reality space (Image by Schell Games)

The people that disappeared from my sofa transformed into three spheres which went to the corner I chose during the room setup. At that point, the two walls of that corner opened up into portals to the rooms of the other three people. One room portal was on the left wall of the corner, another room portal was on the right wall, and the third room was carved from the virtual continuation of my walls into a virtual space. Basically it was like our four rooms were all attached by a common corner, so that to form a big mixed-reality space. Our play area was represented by a big room which was composed of one fourth by my room, and of three fourth by the rooms of the other three players. I could see my room in passthrough, while I saw the rooms of the other people as virtual elements. This is what happened with 4 players. With three players, instead, I had just a portal opening up on one wall, and half of it was occupied by one virtual room and the other one by the other virtual room.

The layout of their virtual rooms reflected their real room layout, but in a simplified way, exactly as I saw my own virtual room layout after the room setup. So I could see where their sofas or TV were, but I could not see their actual appearance. This was intriguing because I could see a bit how the rooms of my new friends were, but I couldn’t perceive any detail which would have been a problem for their privacy. It hit a sweet spot.

This was the playground of all the games and it was fantastic because it let us play in a way that made us feel connected in a common mixed reality space, even if we all were in different parts of the world, with everyone of us in his own room. I will talk about this in more detail in a later section dedicated to mixed reality, and to why this solution for social MR is fantastic.

If you want to see a video of how this worked, check out the trailer above or this early version that Jesse Schell teased at GDC a few months ago:

This is an incredibly cool idea for mixed reality social interactions! Four users play together in MR, and every player has his room joined with the rooms of the other players to create a big hybrid room. Thanks to the scene understanding of Quest, you can also have a rough… pic.twitter.com/cjsDuHgbhc

— TonyVT SkarredGhost (@SkarredGhost) April 21, 2024

When I saw this video, I immediately understood how fantastic this solution was

The mini-games

Once we were in this common space, every one of us could read the instructions of the selected minigame and then signal the game we were ready by pulling a rope. After that, the minigame started and usually lasted something like from 30 seconds to 2 minutes. Every game was very simple and easy to understand, but also fun: the classical party game.

There are 16 minigames available, made for 2-4 players. Let me describe to you three of them (I’m copying the official description so I’m sure I don’t write anything wrong):

Hot Potato: Rush to get hot potatoes out of your room before they explode! Since your friend’s room is now part of the game, toss one behind their bed or over their couch, make them work for it! The potatoes keep multiplying, guaranteeing a frantic finish.
Spike Attack: In this dodgeball-like minigame grab your ammo from spawn points all over your room but be ready to take cover! As soon as your opponents throw at you, the balls sprout spikes and can’t be caught anymore (only deflected!). Keep an eye out for high value Golden Balls that spawn near the center of the four rooms and time it right so you can grab them without being hit.
Pop Pals: In this fast-paced team-based balloon popping race, work together to pop your balloons faster. Order matters and the numbered balloons are split between your room and your teammate’s, so communication is key. Each balloon is worth points, but complete a set to get a bonus and trigger the next higher group to spawn

Apart from the standard versions of the minigames, there are also some possible twists that you can add, for instance:

You may have two of the four people in the room that have an upside-down room, and so also reverse gravity. This makes tossing objects on the other side more difficult
You may have a hot potato that is sticky, so it attaches to the walls, or also to yourself (!) and so it is harder for you to get it and throw it on the other side on time
Pop Pals may have you pop the balloons in a certain order.

Some games are to be played alone in your room, so you have to just make a higher score than your friends. Some others require you to compete with all the others: for instance, in Hot Potato you have to throw your potato in the room of the other people. Some others let you collaborate in 2 vs 2 teams (of course they need 4 players). The team-based games entice collaboration between players in a fun way: for instance, team-based Pop Pals make you see the numbers on the balloon of your team-mate, but not the ones on your balloons, so you have to coordinate by telling each other which balloon to pop to respect the numbers ordering.

Coordination is also needed in this game where you have to tell the other player where to put the cow to let the alien (that she does not see) grab it

The games exploit the known layout of your room: the hot potato that is thrown in your room may bounce on your sofa and end between your chair and your desk, making it difficult to grab it. Thanks to the room setup by Meta, this is possible and enforces your belief that you are actually playing in your room.

The post-game meeting

I actually managed to win a game session! I’m so proud of this

When the time is up, a sound plays, and the mixed reality space “disappears”. At this point, you are back to your standard room and you have to sit down again on the sofa. When you sit down, you see the other players again (like in the initial lobby). You can chat about the past match, and you can see who has scored the most in the last game, and what are the current standings of the tournament (if any).

The winning player is awarded some gadgets (e.g. firecrackers or a magic wand) and he/she can use them to trigger some special effects, or he/she can also donate it to the other players so that everyone can have fun. Players can also fist bump and high five. There is also a menu button associated with the thumbstick that lets you change the face of your avatar to reflect your status. The angry face is actually hilarious and we loved to just set it up.

The winner of the game earns a crown and can show a happy face (Image by Schell Games)

After the players hang out a bit, they can select a game again, and the loop restarts.

Graphics and sounds

The multimedia elements of the game were well-made, but there was nothing mind-blowing in this sense. Party Versus is a big party game, so the style was cartoonish with very bright colors (e.g. violet and yellow). The purpose here was not to surprise the player with amazing landscapes like in Half-Life: Alyx, but to make the player have fun with nice social interactions.

This means that there is no needed wow effect from the visuals. They just had to be polished and give a fun mood, and they worked very well in this sense. The same held for audio.

Controls

As you have read in the section about gameplay, this game tries to make interactions as physical and “realistic” as possible. So most of the interactions in the game work by just grabbing, touching, or throwing objects. These actions are carried on with the usual suspects: the grip button to grab, and the trigger button to activate elements. For this reason, there is not a complex input scheme to learn and the game results very natural to interact with and easy to play also from people who are not VR veterans.

The menu button on the controllers can open a menu with some options (e.g. to change your safety settings) and you can use the thumbstick during the lobby time to select the face of your avatar.

Room requirements

Sharing your room with other people (Image by Schell Games)

Party Versus requires a room that is at least 2m x 2m or 6.5ft x 6.5ft to be played comfortably. You must have completed Meta Room Setup in your room. You must have a room with a somewhat regular shape with a place to sit (for the lobby).

I asked the team at Schell Games how they managed to make a game that works well with all the possible room shapes. They told me that first of all, they did a lot of testing, and this let them improve all the games so that they work on all the conditions. Then they said that making a game that is perfectly balanced for all the room shapes is difficult, so what they did was try to create a balance among all the minigames. This means that some games may still give an advantage to people with a small room, but other minigames will give an advantage to people with a big room, compensating the previous advantage.

Comfort

The game does not involve any artificial locomotion so can not cause motion sickness. I have to add anyway that it is pretty intense to play, because some games are very hectic, since you have to move in your room very quickly to score as many points as possible (e.g. to pop the balloons). Luckily the games are short and they are interspersed with moments you sit down on the sofa and you can rest a bit, so this game never feels uncomfortable or too much tiring.

Immersion and retention

Playing a dodgeball-like game (Image by Schell Games)

The minigames are fun and they suck you in, also because there is a very limited time in which you have to make the most points possible, so you enter in a full status of flow.

I’ve found them very fun, but I also questioned if such simple lightweight games are also fun in the long run. I had a lot of fun playing them for a few minutes, but what about playing them for many months every day? I asked this question to the people at Schell Games and they gave me a few insights. First of all, they told me that in the beginning, they thought about building more complex games or creating a progression system, etc… but actually, they realized that it was not useful. The minigames are fun as is, and the killer feature that makes them fun is the sociality aspect, the people you play with. They noticed that their testers kept playing the game over time because it let them have fun with their friends. They used Party Versus as a way to hang out with their friends. The people playing the games also started developing strategies to make more points, so they started to take the most of these simple games, too.
And then having simple games also means that everyone can play them, and the barrier to enter Party Versus is very low.

These statements make sense, but of course, they have to be verified with the actual statistics of the game in the next months. I had only one single play session with it, so I can not comment on my own retention experience.

Seeing each other in the same space (Image by Schell Games)

The game design is literally genius in how to manage to achieve a social mixed reality. As I’ve written in my post about social in AR/MR, you can not just see people in passthrough in your space and call it social AR, because you would see them in your space, but they would not see themselves in your space, creating an incoherence between what the players perceive. You are not together in the same space.

Party Versus is fantastic because, during play time, it makes people see each one in its own room, but it merges the four rooms together in a common shared mixed reality room. You see your room in passthrough, as it should be, and you see the other rooms in virtual reality because they are not really there. And the rooms are close to each other, so you feel close to the other players. Everything is coherent, the four players are in a consistent big mixed reality space.

I can confirm the illusion works: I could feel I was in this mixed space with the other players. The illusion was so good that when there was an object to grab at the edge between my room and another (virtual) one, I went there to take it, sure that our rooms were connected, only to hit the wall with my hand, because actually the portal didn’t exist in the physical reality and at its place there was a physical wall.

Anyway, I didn’t perceive the space as a single big room, but as a mixed reality space with connected rooms… as we all decided to move our rooms and put them one close to the other. The connection I had with the other rooms and the other players made me want to go into the other rooms to meet with the other players. Unluckily, this was not possible.

It’s also super smart that after each mini-game, the players all meet on the sofa. If everyone is seated on his/her own sofa, the sofa acts as a common context, so it makes sense that every person sees the other ones seated close to him/her in mixed reality on his/her own sofa. This integration was a bit buggy during my play tests, and some people were floating over my sofa, but apart from these glitches, it was good to see the people close to me, after they were distant inside the portals.

The lobby area also features a very good design, because as my UX designer taught me, what is important in a social experience is not only the experience itself but also the discussion that you have after it. So it is amazing that after you have played a minigame, you can chat with the other players and talk about the fun you just had in the game, and maybe recall a fun episode that happened. This helps a lot in creating a social bond between the players. Also the modality of choosing the game to play together in the lobby by touching each others’ hands helps in creating this bond.

The game is really well crafted to create social interactions and to bend reality to favor them. I’m really amazed by what has been done.

Price and availability

You can get Party Versus now on the Meta Horizon Store for $9.99 or for free with a subscription to
Meta Quest+.

I asked about the release for other platforms, and I’ve been told that the game is available only for Meta systems, also because it has been developed with the Meta SDK. Theoretically, a porting to other systems that support passthrough and scene setup could be possible, but it should be worth the effort, and in any case, it is not planned to happen anytime soon.

Final considerations

Party Versus logo (Image by Schell Games)

I loved Party Versus. Not only because the game was fun, and I spent a cool half hour with the devs at Schell Games. But also because I think it is innovating the mixed reality space, offering a new way of enjoying social mixed reality. This is a game that makes people feel like staying in the same space even if they are remote. And especially, it is a game that tries to foster social interactions between people: after my trial with the game, I felt a bit more friend with the people I played with, even if I had never spoken with them before. I don’t know about the long term replayability of this game, but for sure for a quick session, it was fun.

If you are looking for a party game, or for a social game to have fun in mixed reality, I think you should buy it.

Party Versus Giveaway!

People at Schell Games were so kind to give me two keys for Party Versus! Participate in the giveaway and get a chance to win one!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

And that’s it for today! I hope you liked this post, and if this is the case, consider subscribing to my newsletter, joining my Patreon, and resharing this post on your social media channels!

(Header image by Schell Games)

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This article was originally published on skarredghost.com