Developer: BreakFirst S.A.R.L.
Publisher: Just For Games S.A.R.L.
Platforms: Switch
Tested on: Switch
INSTANT Chef Party – Review
Nintendo consoles have always been known for the ability to play fun simple competitive games with friends that are designed to be played by anyone. Games like Mario Party and Mario Kart will always put a smile on many faces, even of inexperienced players. Nowadays, with the Nintendo Switch offering a great multiplayer experience, more and more party games have been released in the last few years. Now, developer BreakFirst S.A.R.L. has released INSTANT Chef Party, a party game that combines food and cooking with minigames into a party experience for young and old. You won’t even need cooking skills to be good at this game!
Story
Like in most party games the story either takes the backseat, or it is omitted from the game entirely. This is also the case for INSTANT Chef Party where it’s all about competing against your friends in fun minigames.
Graphics
INSTANT Chef Party looks quite good compared to similar games. The characters al have their own unique appearances so everyone has a funny-looking character to play as. The two boards available in the game look very colorful and also very detailed. One is designed with a lot of candy, cakes and other sweet stuff and the other looks like a park filled with many sweets cakes and other yummy-looking food.
Sound
The joyful music used in INSTANT Chef Party is perfect for this type of game. Most of the tunes are short tracks used in explanation screens before you start playing one of the game’s minigames. Both boards have their own background music that fits the setting of the game board quite well and won’t bore you all that much as it will constantly change as you switch from the board to minigames.
Gameplay
INSTANT Chef Party is a party game designed specifically for the Nintendo Switch as this console is perfect for playing this type of game with your friends locally. As with most party games, this one is also very similar to Mario Party with players needing to throw a dice each turn and after everyone has had their turn, a minigame will start. INSTANT Chef Party features two boards you can play on with your friends and thirteen minigames to compete in.
This game features two game modes. The game mode ‘Fun’ is the typical board game mode where you and your friends compete to win the game and ‘Quick Play’ lets you choose the minigame you want to play. In the Fun mode, you can play every minigame at random whenever someone steps on the VS. space or at the end of each turn. In Quick Play, you can choose which minigame you want to play and you can choose in which type of matchup you want to play, be it free-for-all or 2v2. Keep in mind, however, you need to have played the free-for-all version first before the other ones will be available. The Fun game mode requires two players to play, so this game mode can’t be played in a single-player format. You can play the minigames alone in the Quick Play game mode, but these won’t even be fun to play as you won’t have an opponent to win against, as the game doesn’t have any AI enemies.
With having quite some resemblances with other party games, this game also has quite some differences in gameplay. In Mario Party, you need to end up being the player with the most stars, but in INSTANT Chef Party, you win the game by reaching the end of the board first. This being said, the way the results of minigames influence the board game is different as well. Whenever a board game starts, the winner of the board game will move on a couple of spaces while the one who loses will go back a few spaces. This makes winning the minigames much more important than in Mario Party where you can still win even if you haven’t even won a single minigame. All this makes this game more reliant on skills than on luck, which definitely makes the game a lot less fun to play for those players who aren’t the best in playing games.
The minigames in INSTANT Chef Party are based on activities cooks do in and outside of the kitchen. These minigames will let you wash dishes, count living fruits, water plants, and so on. The game features thirteen different minigames to play, which isn’t a lot. These minigames are quite fun to play, but some minigames have controls that won’t work all that good. For example, the ‘Spin to rinse’ minigame needs you to spin objects under a running tap to fully clean as many dishes as you can within a minute. The game won’t fully recognize the movements you make with your Joy-Con, leading to a lot of frustration due to dishes not getting clean and as a result, losing the minigame.
Conclusion
INSTANT Chef Party can be fun to play with friends, but as it only features two boards and thirteen minigames, you will likely have seen everything the game has to offer in one or two hours. The game has no AI enemies, which makes the game mostly require a minimum of two players to play it well. Playing the minigames alone in Quick Play is possible, but is rarely fun as there are no opponents to play against. The buggy usage of the motion sensors in the Joy-Cons doesn’t really help the game as well. INSTANT Chef Party is a great throw at trying to create a good party game for the Nintendo Switch, but it just falls short in multiple areas.
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