Disco Party review - puzzle-platforming hits the clubs
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iOS
| Disco Party

If you head down to your local club these days, you're unlikely to encounter floating platforms, shifting gravity, and spike traps that'll kill you before you've even got a drink.

This isn't the case with Disco Party, which has you dodging these traps and more as you try to reunite with your dance partner in a series of puzzle-platforming adventures.

It sounds like a recipe for a hit, but frustrating design decisions mean that it's a game that's more likely to clear the dance floor than get everybody dancing.

Warm-up

Your goal in Disco Party is to direct your character to their partner by changing blocks in the environment to alter their walking behaviour.

Your character walks from left to right until they hit one of these blocks, and acts according to whatever action you've set the block to.

One tap sets it block that makes them change direction, two taps makes them jump, a third tap changes gravity so that they walk upside down on blocks above, and a final fourth tap wipes the slate clean and starts the cycle again.

You'll need to use these blocks to manipulate your character around the levels, dodging spikes and a big ol' bouncer who will rough you up if you cross paths with him.

Technical difficulties

It's a neat system, and it keeps things simplistic enough that playing Disco Party is easy enough, but it's not without its sticking points.

For one, it's pretty easy to forget how many taps is required to get to the right block, leading to more than a few occasions when your character will float to the top of the screen, never to be seen again.

They're also not smart enough to turn around at the end of a platform, and you'll constantly remember this only a moment too late as you go plummeting to your death for the third time in a level.

The levels aren't particularly intuitively designed either, with a few leap-of-faiths and luck-centered moments that mean you'll screw the whole thing up because you were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

There's no elegant solution to any of the levels, and any time you do finally solve the puzzle, it'll usually be because you've put down an incomprehensible maze of blocks and just crossed your fingers.

There will be no encore

Overall, Disco Party is relatively clever in what it tries to do, and is certainly fun enough to be worth a quick play if you need a quick puzzle fix.

But with fiddly controls and some frustrating design decisions, it comes off more annoying than is worth the effort to look over its faults.

There's some good ideas here, but it's marred with issues that you simply can't ignore, and you'll grow tired of it faster than the world grew tired of disco.

Disco Party review - puzzle-platforming hits the clubs

Disco Party might scratch your puzzle-platforming itch for a short time, but it's ultimately too frustrating to keep you interested for long
Score
Ric Cowley
Ric Cowley
Ric was somehow the Editor of Pocket Gamer, having started out as an intern in 2015. He hopes to take over the world the same way.