It’s time for yet another entry in the long-running Mario Party series! Super Mario Party Jamboree adds its own twist onto the formula with the new Jamboree mechanic and takes us beyond the board game with several new modes.
It’s-A Me, Mario!
For newcomers to the series, the main mode in Mario Party involves four players rolling dice and battling their way through a board game to win the most stars. Spaces you can land on have various effects and items can be bought to improve your chances or mess with your opponents. Between each turn, you’ll compete in 1 of 112 possible minigames in Super Mario Party Jamboree to win coins used as a currency to buy stars and items.
While the best experience may be playing locally with friends, you can also play against the CPU or against others online (playing full boards having been local play only until the previous title, Mario Party Superstars). This is the sort of game where there’s a lot of fun in cursing your friends and laughing as you screw them over though regardless. Indulging your evil side and using an item to move the star just before someone else gets to it is a great feeling and very much in the spirit of this game.
While there’s certainly skill involved, both with simple tactics and winning minigames, there is quite a lot of luck involved in Super Mario Party Jamboree. It’s the sort of game that involves last-minute twists as someone lands on a trap that steals a star and gives it to another player. It’s open to all, and a great one to play with players of most skill levels because of that. If luck isn’t enough, you can even choose to give out handicaps at the start. There are a good amount of options when setting up, so you can customize games quite a bit.
Want more of a challenge and to determine who is the real Mario Party champion? There’s a ‘pro rules’ setting which removes a lot of the luck-based factors along with certain minigames. I found these changes made for a fairer game, but it is a pity that it takes away certain other options that can be customized in other modes like the number of turns per game.
Many Minigames
As mentioned, there are 112 minigames…at least, those are the ones found in the main board game mode, and there are a few more elsewhere. There is quite a variety, and while some do use similar mechanics, they all feel unique. The minigames cover a range of genres including platforming, rhythm, puzzle, and more. There’s even a pinball one. It certainly never gets repetitive and this also adds a level of fairness, since it won’t always be the same type of minigame that one player is particularly good at.
To give a few examples, you might find yourself playing the bongos while Donkey Kong sends notes your way to hit with the right timing, dodging falling sandwiches then climbing on top to make sure you remain at the highest point of the stack, mashing the button to set up a line of Thwomp dominos, throwing snowballs at opponents to knock them out, or spotting the difference in a brief second where you can see an image on a moving ball. Some of the minigames are more skill-based and rely on quick reactions, timing, or pattern recognition among other skills, while others are more luck-based such as guessing what other players will choose and hoping you don’t choose the same.
If you’re familiar with the franchise, you might have noticed some of these sound familiar. While some minigames are variations on old concepts, there are also several minigames lifted directly from previous Mario Party games, although not as many as Superstars had.
Minigames can get quite chaotic at times. They’re all very short taking a minute or two at most (outside of a few rare exceptions) and may lead to scrambling to get the points in whatever manner is needed for the game. Tactically stepping on other players’ heads or knocking them out the way if they’re doing well is often a valid tactic in many of the games too, which is always amusing.
The Board Game
Super Mario Party Jamboree comes with seven boards to play on. Five of these boards are new, while two boards return from classic Mario Party games (one from Party 1 and one from Party 2). Three need to be unlocked first, but gaining the achievements required to unlock everything isn’t particularly difficult or time-consuming.
The boards more or less follow the same rules, though sometimes a few basics will change like not having the star appear in randomized places on the board but in set locations. Otherwise though, spaces have the same effect, item shops are occasionally found, multiple paths can often be taken, and there are occasional hazards to be found. In terms of mechanics, everything feels more or less balanced on each of the boards, despite their differences.
Outside of the layouts and appearances (both of which do differ quite a bit), the main difference are unique mechanics of each board which can make them feel distinct from each other. A couple of examples might help to illustrate this.
One board has train stations. The train can take you to other stations on the board and runs over anyone in the way, returning them to the starting spot of the board. In some instances, you can also call the train to other stations if it’s not at that one. I once went through half the game without anyone reaching the space with the star because we all kept using the train to run each other over. It was both frustrating and hilarious.
Another board has a circuit of spaces in the middle where you can circle around and go in different directions on the board. It’s a junction that can’t be avoided. If you land on an event space, the direction of travel reverses. In addition, as the game goes on several spaces in that area turn into Bowser spaces, and landing on them can lose you a star. The stars then go into a vault where people can try to guess the password to get it (along with some bonus coins). Add in some players throwing star-stealing traps into the same circle and it became an incredibly dangerous area that items were needed to try and avoid, with the chance for a lucky break if you guessed the password.
Jamboree Buddies
The new mechanic highlighted in Super Mario Party Jamboree is Jamboree Buddies, which I have mixed feelings about. The idea is that a character will appear on the board. If someone reaches them within a few turns, a longer-than-normal minigame will begin to determine who can recruit them to help. Whoever reaches the space gets some advantage to this depending on the minigame, like speed boosts in a race, more points in a quiz, and so on. They stick around for a few turns after recruiting them.
Each one has a different ability, such as copying items from opponents that you pass, extra coins, higher dice rolls, and so on. I liked this, as while some abilities never become useful at the time (due to no opponents being near enough in front of me for example), the added element of chance kept things fresh.
The downside, at least to me, was that anyone who passes you can steal them without a challenge. While it keeps to the same feeling of anyone being able to win, this made winning the lengthy minigame feel a bit pointless.
Outside of their special ability, perhaps more importantly, they let you buy twice the stars or items at a shop if you have the coins. This is incredibly powerful. That they disappear after a few turns is probably a good thing, as this can turn the game state around quite a bit in theory, but practically you’ll likely only have the chance to reach one star unless you’re really lucky, and you’re limited on the items you can carry anyway. There are also some other minor benefits that pop up situationally.
More and More Modes
While the board game mode is the main attraction, Super Mario Party Jamboree does include quite a few other modes. Most of these are just various ways to play mini-games, from free play to a few modes where it lines up several minigames in a row under different conditions. It’s fun if you want to play a specific minigame or just jump into something short, but nothing new for the series.
Somewhat more substantive are modes like Party-planner Trek, Paratroopa Flight School, and Bowser Kaboom Squad. These are the most notable examples.
Party-planner Trek has you move around a board (no dice or other players involved), earning mini stars by winning minigames and completing small quests. The quests tend to be basic ones along the lines of finding an item on the board and then delivering it to someone. More of the board unlocks as you do this. Earn enough mini stars and you can challenge a boss, optionally with recruited characters who you’ve helped along for the ride. There are several boards to progress through and it’s a fairly simple mode which felt like a good way to get to know the minigames while feeling like progress is being made.
Paratroopa Flight School lets you physically flap your arms (joycons in hand) and fly, with motion controls to steer. You can either participate in free flight, play a sky battle to collect (and steal) ‘Para-Biddybuds’, or play a taxi game where you pick up and deliver characters. I found the flight experience fun in itself, though carrying Bowser from place to place did tire my arms out after a while.
Bowser Kaboom Squad is an 8-player “versus giant Bowser” mode. Bowser is stomping around with other dangers like bullet bills and fireballs flying around, while the players need to work together to destroy crates, grab bombs from within, and send them flying at Bowser. There are some 8-player co-op minigames not found in the board game mode between rounds to earn items, which give you abilities like carrying more bombs or placing revive points. It ideally involves a lot of communication, which is where the in-game system to send phrases like ‘Crate!’ helps. I was surprised at how extensive this mode is.
Super Mario Party Jamboree really packs a lot more into the game than I expected. I came into it thinking it’d be the board game and a minigame selection, but found much more. I’ve not even mentioned the smaller extras like other separate minigame modes, daily challenges, and unlockables in the shop.
Sights and Sounds
Unsurprisingly for a Mario title, the presentation is charming and feels high-quality. Everything is vivid where it needs to be, the character models and levels all look great, and while the style is relatively simple, everything looks detailed (the meat in one minigame oddly so, following the Mario Party games that came before it).
There’s quite a large selection of music, which you can purchase and unlock in one of the shops. Each board has a collection of tracks of its own, helping to give it its own identity.
Verdict
Super Mario Party Jamboree is great fun with friends, with a core experience that works incredibly well, but allows the flexibility to tailor it to your own preferences. There’ll be laughter and perhaps more than a few four-letter words flying around in each match. The fact that it has so much beyond the core experience is just icing on the cake.
SUPER MARIO PARTY JAMBOREE IS HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
If you are looking for another colorful Switch game full of antics, you might want to check out Super Monkey Ball Banana Rumble.
Many thanks go to Nintendo for a Switch review code for Super Mario Party Jamboree.
A gamer since the days of Amstrad and DOS and someone who has dabbled in a variety of professions. He enjoys a wide variety of genres, but has been focusing on visual novels and virtual reality in recent years. Head Editor of NookGaming. Follow him and the website on @NookSite.