Machine Party

Machine Party has seven negative reviews in English. Not seven that I sampled — seven in total, out of 917. I read every one of them, which makes this the most complete negative coverage I've managed for any game in this library.

They say the same thing the positive reviews say.

Top positive, 164 votes: "Pretty great for the price, really hope it gets matchmaking and or local multiplayer in the future." Third positive, 68 votes, in capitals: "MAKE SURE YOU HAVE FRIENDS — THERE IS NO MATCHMAKING." Top negative, 23 votes: "make sure you have friends to play with as right now, it doesnt have a multiplayer lobby to select game sessions you can join with." Another: "there is no matchmaking. you can only play by sharing invite codes. that is crazy to even release a multiplayer only game without matchmaking."

That's the review. Everything else is whether ten dollars is worth it, and it is.

What it actually is

Fifteen minigames in which failure is fatal. It's Mario Party with an industrial-horror paint job and a body count — forklifts, tunnels, a dinner scene — made by Mike Klubnika, whose Buckshot Roulette earned a following for exactly this sort of grimy, mechanical cruelty, working with GDeavid.

The presentation carries it. Alex Peipman's industrial soundtrack, deliberately ugly machinery, a sense that the room you're in was not built for people. Reviewers describe the tone accurately: "an absolute laugh-riot with friends — especially if you are into f\*cked up humour."

It is also short. The most useful positive review, at 97 votes, is precise about it: "A super fun bundle of 15 minigames. Playing each one at least once will take about an hour, so it is great for a quick one-shot session." Median playtime across recent reviewers is 2.1 hours. At NZ$10.19 that's a fair trade, and the review scores reflect people who knew what they were buying.

The answer to the complaint

Here's what makes this review possible to write with confidence. On 4 August, in the v1.5 patch notes, the developers addressed matchmaking directly:

Since the beginning of development we've designed and written the game for groups of friends due to the nature of party games, so while we hear your requests for public matchmaking and lobby lists, it was unfortunately not part of our core vision when we set out to make this game… as far as in-game matchmaking functionality goes, we're unfortunately unable to support it due to how we envisioned the game.

That is a clear, honest answer, and it changes the recommendation entirely.

Yesterday I reviewed Big Walk, which shipped without a working voice volume slider — a flaw the studio acknowledged within a day and is fixing. I scored it expecting improvement. This is the opposite case: the single unanimous complaint about Machine Party has been answered with "no", politely and permanently. So a reader shouldn't buy it hoping.

The mitigation is real but partial: there's now an official looking-for-group Discord linked from the store discussions, and reviewers do report success with it — "Played it with a group of four randos using Discord," says one; another finished the whole game with strangers. You'll also need that Discord for voice, since there's no in-game chat of any kind.

What else they've done in six days

Quite a lot, actually. A hotfix on 1 August, then v1.5 on 4 August adding an Arcade mode — ten random simulations with the intro and outro stripped out, which is a direct answer to the "great for a quick session" use case — plus a Godot engine bump that fixes graphical issues, a Direct3D 12 launch option, and fixes for players clipping out of the map.

Couch co-op is announced as "coming together nicely" and due "in the next few weeks", which will matter a lot for a game like this.

Two updates and a new mode inside a week is a good sign, and it's the reason I'd trust the roadmap here even while noting that matchmaking isn't on it.

The verdict

Machine Party earns a 7.5. It's inventive, mean, well-presented and absurdly cheap, and the developers are shipping quickly and communicating honestly — including when the answer is one players don't want.

It's held back by being about an hour long on first pass, by a few minigames that reviewers correctly call thinner than the rest, and by a multiplayer design that requires you to bring your own group, forever, with your own voice chat. That's a legitimate design position for a party game — it's how Overcooked 2 and plenty of others work — but it is a hard gate, and it belongs at the top of a review rather than buried.

If you have three friends and ten dollars, this is one of the easiest recommendations I've made all week. If you don't have the friends, this is not the game that will find them for you.