House Party is a 3D comedy adventure dating sim for Windows developed and published by American studio Eek! Games, LLC on Steam in 2017. The game's early access launch was a success; according to the developer, the game sold over 30,000 copies in the first few weeks, and 300,000 total sales during the first year. As of September 2019, the game has sold over 500,000 copies worldwide.
Gameplay
House Party is a point-and-click adventure set in a sandbox style. The player interacts with several different part attendees, each with their own distinct personalities and preferences. Each party attendee offers a series of objectives which can be solved by picking up, talking to, or using items on a variety of other objects and people in the game. Players' actions throughout the game will dictate the gameplay and story direction heavily. Moral choices will yield different outcomes that can either cut off or open up narrative options often leading to risque outcomes. Though players can interact with every character, they cannot build up a romantic relationship with all of them. In order to do so, they will have to complete different quests for them. Due to its strong sexual content and themes, Twitch blocked users from streaming gameplay footage of the title, regardless of which version of the game was being played.
Plot
The player character is invited to a house party at Madison's house and start the game walking in the door of the party already in progress. There are over 25 story opportunities to discover and complete; many of the game's narrative options are risqué in nature and touch on topics of debauchery, sex or violence between the player and the NPCs. Some quests have negative side effects on other characters and not all opportunities can be completed within one gameplay, since several decisions can be contradicting. Additionally, Eek! Games offer tools on their website to craft a custom story including full dialogues, interactions, and logic dictating how the player's night goes and import it into the game.
Development
In July 2018, the game was removed from sale on Steam after a number of complaints over the game's content. House Party is now available in two different versions, the base game is rated "Mature” via Steam in which sex scenes are censored with black censor bars There is an Explicit Content Add-On DLC rated "Adult Only”, that removes the censorship. In 2018, Eek! Games held a competition to invite members of the public to audition to be included as part of the game with the gaming community to vote for their favorite. Of the entrants, two winners would be selected, one from the male entrants and other from the female entrants. On November 2, 2018, it was announced that streamer and influencer 'Lety Does Stuff' and the members of Game Grumps, Arin Hanson and Dan Avidan, were selected as the winners. On April 11, 2019 Eek! Games announced the winners of their indie music artist contest. Popskyy and his song “FUNKBOX” was the winner, along with special mentions to Fokushi and the song “Dreamer”, Treclar and the song “Whip-its”, Kitanic Demon and the song “Chillax with KitanicDemon” and Fletnyx and the song “Chocolate Chip Cookies.
Reception
Because of the controversial nature of the game, it was quickly popularized by gaming streamers and influencers such as The Game Grumps, PewDiePie, Jacksepticeye, NerdCubed, MattShea, and others. The game holds a very high rating on Steam, with a 87% 'Very Positive' overall and 95% 'Overwhelmingly Positive' in recent reviews. The game so far has few reviews by critics, John Walker of Rock, Paper, Shotgun named the game as "Worst Game of the Year" for 2017 citing issues of misogyny. Mark Steighner of Darkstation criticized the game as being "A juvenile take on sexuality, liberal profanity, and objectification of women."
