Vivitter

Genre: Party Game

Players: 1-8 Competitive (Local)

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Review:

Vivitter is a family-friendly free-to-play Party Game released on mobile devices in 2023 and ported to Nintendo Switch in 2024. This game has players participating in various minigames that all center around one theme – getting as close to your target as possible without going over it. Just to drive the point home, players’ avatars all start the game by being transformed into… chickens. You know, because you’re playing chicken.

Despite the simple setup, this premise is interpreted in a lot of ways, from the simple to the gruesome and even bizarre. In one minigame, you’re trying to slide a glass to a lovely lady at the end of the bar without it crashing into her. In another, you’re trying to stop a falling guillotine blade as close as possible to your neck without actually getting the Marie Antoinette treatment. In yet another, you’re trying to eat as much as possible of a piece of Pocky (the popular Japanese cookie in the shape of a thin breadstick) being held in the mouth of a guy without actually kissing him.

As you might infer, this game’s sense of humor is excellent, with some really silly situations. Everything from the horrified look on the girl’s face when you misjudge and slam the drink into her (accompanied by a Fighting Game-esque “K.O.!”) to the absurdity of an intense ramen cookoff where the only thing separating a great cook from a terrible one is whether you pop the lid of the instant ramen just before 10 seconds or accidentally let it go a millisecond after 10.

The minigames here all have a wacky distinctly Japanese tone to them, which results in the overall game feeling a bit like the WarioWare series. The visuals range from cartoony to anime-styled, to an exaggerated sorta’ realistic style of artwork, though everything here is done using 2D images. This is joined by a surprisingly good soundtrack, in particular the catchy main theme.

Surprisingly, for a free-to-play game, this game doesn’t heavily push its microtransactions at you. However, you still may find yourself considering buying them, as the minigames included here can get repetitive before long, and adding more minigames through paid DLC will help with that somewhat. However, even with this additional content, I can’t help that this game’s “chicken” theme limits it somewhat, resulting in all of the minigames somewhat resembling each other. Also, despite the simplicity of the concept, this game feels the need to thoroughly explain every minigame to players before they start, which really drags on the game’s pacing.

Still, it’s hard to say no to Vivitter. The silly theme, great sense of humor, and fun minigames pair great with the lack of pushy monetization to make for a decent Party game, and even if it’s a game that you may not play for long before putting it down, it’s still a game you’ll definitely want in your Party Game rotation.

tl;dr – Vivitter is a family-friendly free-to-play Party Game that has players competing in minigames that are all a spin on the “get close but don’t go over” concept of “chicken”. Despite the simple concept and some issues with repetitive games and pacing, this is nevertheless a great choice for a game to add to your Party Game list due to its fun and accessible minigames, great sense of humor, and lack of pushy monetization.

Grade: B-

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This game has been nominated for one or more of eShopperReviews 2024 Game Awards:

Runner-Up: Best Arcade / Party Game, Best New Free-To-Play Game, Funniest Game

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