Instant Chef Party

Genre: Party Game

Players: 1-4 Competitive (Local)

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Review:

Instant Chef Party is a Party Game released on Nintendo Switch in 2020. This game takes the Mario Party route to doing a Party game, complete with a game board you roll dice to move on and ending each round with a minigame. However, this game’s gimmick is that everything is food-themed, from the minigames to the boards you play on, to the chefs that you play as.

The presentation here is actually surprisingly good, with some nice, colorful stylized 3D visuals with some good lighting effects and animations that have a good amount of personality in them. This is backed by an energetic soundtrack that’s forgettable, but works well for this sort of Party game.

The gameplay here has players all using only a single Joy-Con, and minigames sometimes use traditional controls, but often they’ll be using gyroscopic motion controls to perform actions ranging from chopping fruit to pouring water to rotating dishes you’re washing. Personally I found these motion controls to be hit or miss – sometimes they work great, but other times they don’t seem to properly register your actions. I suspect a part of the problem here might be inadequate instructions – the game shows you the motions you’re supposed to be making, but don’t clearly indicate how you’re meant to hold the Joy-Con.

Another issue here is that the minigames themselves have a lot of uninventive filler. One minigame is basically just a shell game, and another is just a “Concentration”-style match game. Often minigames will have you performing a repetitive action with one small twist, such as repeatedly chopping a cake with a “red light green light” twist. Overall, while I did enjoy some of the minigames, there were many more I found to be mediocre, and some that just outright didn’t seem to work properly.

On top of these minigame problems, the game only has two game boards, and both of them are strictly linear – players make zero pathing choices and are purely at the mercy of the dice they’re rolling. At least in that respect this game does something noteworthy by having minigame winners get first pick of which dice to use in the next round, but this hardly seems to matter when an opponent can just randomly propel themselves forward an extra eight spaces or toss you back just as many if they happen to land on a lucky space.

In the end, I understand the appeal of Instant Chef Party as a low-cost alternative to Mario Party with a foodie focus that may appeal to some players. But this game has all sorts of flaws that make it nowhere near as fun to play as Mario Party, and a lack of content to boot. Plus some Mario Party games have food-themed maps if that’s really the selling point for you here. It may cost you more, but I do think you’re better off saving up for a Mario Party game rather than getting this.

tl;dr – Instant Chef Party is a Party Game in the same style of Mario Party, but with a food theme. There are some elements this game gets right, but its motion control is hit or miss, there are only two game boards (both strictly linear), and this game makes multiple decisions that are sure to frustrate players. Even as a low-cost alternative to Mario Party, this isn’t worth getting – save your money and wait until you can buy a Mario Party game instead.

Grade: D+

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