Multiplayer games that support more than 4 local players are not exactly a common thing, so whenever one comes along, it’s a cause for celebration for those of us with a gaggle of friends who don’t want to leave anyone out from a party. Luckily, the Wii U has blessed us with a quite a few great 5-9 player local multiplayer games, including the likes of Super Smash Bros for Wii U and Runbow; so can the appropriately titled Chompy Chomp Chomp Party muscle its way into the club?

Nine Players, One Sub.

Chompy Chomp Chomp Party is a game with a good idea at its core. Imagine a game of Pac-man where everyone’s out to eat each other, rather than dots and ghosts and you’re on the right lines. Of course, that would just be complete pandemonium, so the developers at Utopian World of Sandwiches (and here’s where I have to point out how fantastic a name that is for a game developer!) rather smartly based the game on a colour coding system whereby you are tasked with chasing down (and chowing down) on a specific player, denoted by a circle below you. Every few seconds, this colour changes and so does your prey; so you've gotta keep a close eye on it to know who to chase next. Of course, you have to do this without getting chomped by the jerk who happens to be after you…

It’s a simple idea that is used to make three different game modes. In addition to the standard Chase & Chomp mode, you also have Keep the Thing, which awards victory to the player who holds The Thing for the longest amount of time before being munched on, and Zone Dash, which sees players racing to capture areas in their own colour while avoiding every other player; with the successful muncher becoming the next in line to capture zones and avoid being munched. All three modes are equally fun and feel sufficiently distinct from each other to provide some variety to a good party.

The basic controls couldn’t be simpler really, you move with the d-pad/control stick and use items with but a single button. That means that this game is very pick-up-and-play friendly to newcomers, making it very well suited to parties; it also means that, just like Runbow, you can use any combination of controllers you can imagine (with the sole exceptions being the Gamecube controller and the Pokkén controller, which are obviously not usable outside of their intended games) to reach up to 9 players; so chances are that you probably already have enough controllers for everyone. Well done on that one Mr and Mrs Sandwich!

And like any good party game, there’s a decent amount of options on display as well. Taking a cue from Bomberman, you can change the game type, the time/score limit, turn on and off as many CPU players as you like, turn on and off items as you so wish and change their frequency. Useful in setting up custom made games that can lead to some pretty hilarious results…

Springs only. Very Frantic item frequency. Level with normally impassable walls that can now be jumped over with Springs = One really peeved light blue Chompy…

So it all sounds great right? The basic idea is sound, the core gameplay is fun, there’re plenty of stages on offer (20 in all, and they all have their own little design gimmicks that spice things up nicely. Very impressive!) and the game is highly customisable, with plenty of items on offer to spice things up. Sounds like a sure-fire winner, right? Unfortunately the game suffers from a significant flaw…

It’s like real-time Where’s Wally? Where the hell am I!?

This game is probably too hectic for its own good, with it being far too easy to lose sight of yourself in the midst of things, especially when you consider that the re-spawn points are random; meaning that when you get chomped and come back, you completely lose sight of yourself as your eyes frantically rush across the screen to try to find where your little Chompy has ended up. Thankfully, the developers seem to have noticed this and have included a little highlight button that you can press to make your character glow, indicating where you are. But while it does indeed help a lot, it doesn’t completely eliminate the visibility issue and with 9 players on the stage, it’s also very hard to keep track of not only yourself, but the Chompy that is after you as well; especially since the game lacks any sort of indicator that denotes which Chompy is currently after you. Hope you’ve got a keen eye!

The performance issues don’t help either, as the game can struggle to keep up with the action when it gets hectic, particularly in certain stages like the one with falling snow, making it that much harder to each player to keep up with what’s going on. It feels a bit mean to rag on about a lack of polish, when you consider that the development team consisted of pretty much just two people, but the performance issues do get in the way of the fun, as do the long loading times and some unfortunate bugs… including an oversight that renders the highlight button on the Wii Classic Controller/Classic Controller Pro completely unresponsive. However, the game’s programmer has actually gone onto Miiverse to state that an update is in the works to fix this issue and improve the experience overall in that regard, so here’s hoping that he manages to patch it up nicely.

Chompy Chomp Chomp Party is a good game that was clearly a labour of love for the loving couple that made it. If you have a gaggle of friends who can barely squeeze themselves onto your couch and you’re looking for an accessible, pick-up-and-play multiplayer game in the vein of Bomberman that offers a surprising amount of customisation and fits nicely into a party setting, give this one a shot! Chances are that you’ll be left screaming and laughing too much to care all that much about its flaws.