Operation: Game Night
Travis Smith, Jared Erickson, and Clay Gable get together to discuss the latest and greatest in board games in this weekly podcast. What's hot, what's hitting the table, featured discussions about board games and the board gaming culture, and the primary mission objective- to play more board games!
Operation: Game Night
Debrief: Party Panda Pirates has Mini Games Galore!
Party Panda Pirates tries to bring Mario Party to the tabletop with mixed success, featuring 24 mini-games and adorable panda characters in a pirate-themed package.
• Game includes four phases: dropping pandas to select islands, predicting winners/losers, playing mini-games, and moving on a treasure map
• Mini-games are the highlight - quick, accessible challenges like Buccaneer Bingo, dice stacking, and racing games
• Treasure map phase drastically slows down gameplay, especially with higher player counts
• House-ruling to focus only on the mini-games creates a much better experience
• Great for casual gamers and families who enjoy quick, lighthearted competition
• Retails for around $35-40 with potential for future mini-game expansions
• Testable Games specializes in lightweight, accessible games with cartoon aesthetics
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What is up, my perfectly pleasant people, welcome to the Operation Game Night podcast. Today we are going to talk some Party Panda Pirates. Joining me, as always, is my co-host and co-captain of the ship, clayton Gable. How you doing, clay?
Speaker 2:I'm doing great. I'm ready to talk pirates and pandas and mini games and really let you guys behind the scenes of this new game. It just came out, didn't it?
Speaker 1:uh, yeah, it says 2024, but I I think that was when they like, maybe first debuted it. Maybe they did it at a uh one of the conventions or something but yeah, well, we're in the hotness.
Speaker 2:I'm calling this the hotness we're, we're taking stabs at it and it's party panda pirates. And it's produced by who? This testable games designed by a slew of people. Look it up if you really want to know. But in this game you are playing mini games. So, travis, you're a gamer, a video gamer. Yes, we're all gamers here, but you're a video gamer.
Speaker 2:I am not so much a video gamer anymore, with the one exception that I do love Mario Party. So when I heard this game talked about as Mario Party, the board game again, it's a no brainer. I hear about games, I know I'm going to love them, I get them, and this was no exception I fell right into the trap. But here's the thing it's not all good news on Party Panda Pirates. All right, there's good news, there's bad news. But let's talk about how the game is played. So there's four phases. The first phase of the game you have this turtle ship in the middle and everybody is dropping their little panda meeple down the ship, almost like shuffleboard style, to try and land on a different island around the map After everybody's launched their little panda, whichever island has the most pandas. That's the one you're supposedly going to, and whosoever the party captain gets to look at the mini games available at that island and pick one for you guys to partake in. Okay, so that's the first piece of it, and you do get a bonus coin if you manage to get your panda to land in the center of the island, denoted by like a little small ring, which is way harder than you might think, because these pandas are slicked up coming out of that, coming out of that turtle ship, and did not see a lot of people hitting dead center on that. But anyway, that's essentially how you determine what minigame you're going to play Island with the most pandas. Captain then looks at what minigames are left at that island there's usually two at each island and then you move on to the next phase, which is prediction. So after the captain picks which minigame you're going to be playing, there's either a prediction of you vote for who you think is going to win the mini game, or it'll be who you think is going to lose. And each mini game will tell you whether you're voting on who will win or who will lose. And so everybody goes around. They give their thumbs up or thumbs down chip to the person they think is going to win or lose. You can get a coin if you're right at the end of the mini game for that, and then you play the mini game, which is awesome. That's what it's all about playing mini games. So these mini games are wild.
Speaker 2:So there's ones that are like Buccaneer Bingo, where you're just flipping cards off the top of a deck and you're trying to mark off little spots on your own little map card and the first one to mark off all their spots wins, and then everybody else falls into order after that there mark off all their spots, wins, and then everybody else, you know, falls into order after that. There's ones where you're throwing die up in the air like jacks and then trying to catch them. So you throw one, catch, throw two, try and catch two, throw three, try and catch three, and then as people drop out, you know you you rank yourselves accordingly, trying to think of some of the other ones. There's lots of stacking ones. There's one where you have to flip your die using a card and you're trying to get them onto certain numbers. There's ones where you're like racing down a track and you have to like roll the next number. So everybody's just like quickly rolling and trying to get to the next card and it's just a race to the finish. I mean, there's 24 mini games in this box.
Speaker 2:I bought this retail so I've only experienced, you know, probably 10 of them thus far.
Speaker 2:But they've all been what you would expect. You know they're quick, they're easy to teach. There's a whole little rule book that has all the mini games in them and each entry on a mini game is like one and a half pages on this little mini rule book. So they're pretty easy to understand and get going. Once you decide which minigame you're playing and once you've played them like if you've played this game a lot and you know the minigames it's like a two-second upstart time getting people ready to go and play the minigame. After the minigame you see phase where you're moving along this treasure map, collecting treasure chests and landing on different spaces that might make you lose coins or gain coins. So everybody does that in turn order and then you go back to dropping pandas into the turtle ship and finding which island you're going to go to and the whole thing repeats until you've played six different mini games and then you see as the most treasure chests and coins and they are the winner of mini game party this uh treasure map.
Speaker 1:I'm assuming this is that thing at the top of the image here where you are just kind of moving along these arrows. Is that what you're talking about?
Speaker 2:Yes, Okay, this was my least favorite thing in the game by a long shot. I mean, granted, I stress, tested it. You know it's a what two to six player game? Yeah, and I played with six players. That you know this game should be able to be played with just about anybody.
Speaker 2:And you know it was my dad, my stepmom, my sister and me and my brother, and so we were playing this and when we got to this treasure map phase, it just slowed down so much, like people trying to decide how far they move, like based on your turn order. You get a bonus or two when you do it, and it all just felt so superfluous to like what the game really is. I feel like they wanted to make this more gamery. So there's, you know, this added feature of you know trying to jockey for position around this map, and you know whether you want to re-roll or gain extra coins. You know, jump over people to get the treasure chest. If you land on reds, you know you have to roll a die then and see whether you lose a coin or not. So there's just all these like fits and starts during this treasure hunt phase. That, with six players, was absolutely cumbersome, and so, that being said, after I played that game at six players, I was like this game did the main thing amazing. They made some awesome mini games that are easy to play. People are laughing, having fun. You know you're throwing dice in the center of a board, trying to be the one closest to the middle. That part was awesome.
Speaker 2:But I was the rest of it. I was like what? It literally just took up time, like even the part where you're sliding pandas down to go to the islands. I was like, do we really need this? I mean at the I. So then I played it again and I said I'm not a house ruler. But I was like I'm not playing this game with all that upkeep and four phases. Play a two phase party panda pirates with the prediction and then the mini game. Okay. So I like the prediction part. I like you know that you don't have to win the mini game to get a benefit. You can, you know, just vote on the right person, you'll still get some type of benefit.
Speaker 2:And I like the mini game. So I'm like I don't need the dropping things down a chute that also took way longer than it needed to and then having somebody you know decide which mini game they want. They don't really know. And then you know, read them about the rule book. So I just literally two off the top pick, one when you're the start player, and then we play the mini game and you get coins three, two or one, whether you get first, second or third.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a bastardized version of the game but honestly, I can't ever see myself putting people through that treasure hunt phase again because I honestly don't barely understand it. I read the rule book, I watched videos. This is a 1.6. I shouldn't be confused about the intricacies of how that treasure hunt works. I've I've got no need to go back to that. Love the mini games and I plan to keep playing it the way that I'm playing it and that's good enough for me. I think maybe, maybe, with two or three players, I might try again with the actual flow of the game, with the dropping pandas down, doing the whole thing with the, with the actual flow of the game, with the dropping pandas down, doing the whole thing with the treasure hunt. But yeah, I mean, I feel like this game lends itself to like a party atmosphere with, like you know, higher player count, everybody's having a good time and it just bogged down way too much yeah with the, with the four different phases that you know again.
Speaker 2:Maybe if, for whatever reason, mary and I are like, well, let's just play some mini games, well, even then I probably would still just pull a random mini game off and just read the rules and play it. But yeah, I love the idea, I love the execution, but, as is with many things, sometimes less is more, and I think they went with more in hopes to create something that a board gamer might find more crunch to. But that's not what this is.
Speaker 1:It's a silly time. You know. They're really leaning into their Mario Party inspiration, right, like it says it right here on the BGG page inspired by Mario Party, right in the front description row, right, and it seems like they tried to translate a lot of that stuff one-to-one, like picking your own mini game. They don't even do that in mario party. You get that giant random like here's your 2v2 or your 4v, you know one free-for-all or whatever, yeah, and it just cycles through a random list and you get what you get and you play it instead of do I know the rules of this one? Do Do I think I can win this one? And then same with the like the moving around on the treasure map looking for buried treasure, whatever. That's the same as them like moving along the boards in Mario party, but that's like the worst part of Mario parties.
Speaker 2:Exactly. Why are you? Why are you recreating the worst part of a video game and the video game, at least, does it all for you? Like you barely have to be conscious when it's happening, and, like they, they recreated that in a board game. So now you have to actually manage it yourself and it's just.
Speaker 1:It just is not what I'm there for, and but even like this is made for casual board gamers, potentially video gamers that are looking to cross over, or casual board gamers, right Like 8 plus is the age range, for this Community says 6 plus. So they're like, literally they want everybody to play this game. Yeah, and when you add that like friction in there where things grind to a halt, especially when you're trying to make a party-style game, that's just like it just throws off the whole game flow. Right, even when we play like we just played Mario Party maybe a month ago, right Right before we left Germany, and we don't ever play the board version of Mario Party we go straight to like Minigame Island and we play only the minigames. Right, like, get back to the action as fast as possible.
Speaker 2:So it seems odd that they would add something as not arbitrary but maybe arduous, as, yeah, walking around a board, I don't know. Yeah, I mean it, just it doesn't need it. It's it's yeah, it's fun, yeah, the mini games, this whole book of fun little games like. I just want to read off a couple here. Like we got golf, golf and it looks like you have nine shots to you know, get your little dice across the map. So they just use the same deck of cards and same set of dice to create all these fun little mini games, where there's one like cake layering, one where you have to stack a die on top of a card and then put it on top of another die and you're trying to make a five layer cake before anybody else. And they're just fun, silly little games and that's all it needs to be. It doesn't need to be more. I couldn't have cared less.
Speaker 2:Who had the most coins at the end, like what I mean, when I hit on it again, I could literally see the people I was playing with losing interest as I was trying to be like okay, so, dad, you came in first, so it looks like you get a coin as your bonus and now you roll the die. Okay, okay, you landed on a black so you can get a coin. Okay, now, deb, you got second, so you can either do a reroll or you can get a coin. She rolls, she lands on a red. She's like what's that mean, re-roll? Or you can get a coin, she rolls, she lands on a red. She's like what's that meaning? Okay, now you have to roll again, and you know this is all just getting in the way of the fun of the game. And so take that for what you will. If you get this game, try it the way it is, but if you don't like it, like I didn't just play the mini games because that's a hoot.
Speaker 1:Can I ask where you got this, since you bought it retail?
Speaker 2:yeah, it was just at the local game store here.
Speaker 1:Okay, I think this one is like more pervasive, like this one is showing up in big box stores, because I have somebody in my class the other day that mentioned this game. They first off. He says he's like oh, I'm playing splendor duel. And I'm like I love splendor duel, love splendor. And he's like but the dual version is just for two players. I'm got it and then he goes. He's like yeah, we just picked up this party panda pirates, and I'm like I have heard of that. Like this is out there in the mainstream. This is not just for gamers I.
Speaker 2:I had no idea. It seemed like all the content I saw on it after I picked it up was all like kickstarter preview hype. Sure, I hadn't really seen anything apart from that. So you know, if this is the, this is the first you're hearing about it from a non Kickstarter page review. Hopefully that helps you understand what you're getting into. Yeah, I don't think it's that complicated to understand what it is from looking at the box and reading. That's a bunch of mini games. But yeah, I was super interested.
Speaker 2:I was talking to you, travis, before we started recording about mini game party, which was from big potato, and it seemed like as soon as I saw them put that out there, it was like on Amazon at one point and I had it in my wishlist and then I went to buy it and it was no longer available and so I think you can still get it out there. It looks like it's doing the same type of thing. It says like 101 challenges. So I think this might be another competitor alternative. Does that say Big Potato? Yeah, so it's not even on their website anymore from what I could see.
Speaker 2:So I don't know what's going on with it. But if you really dig mini games and you want more of them. I probably would get this because I like the mini games in this game and I want more of them. I think they're creative, they're quick, they're fun and, yeah, I think we need more of this in board games on like. I don't want to have to sit down, for sometimes 30 minutes is even too long, you know yeah, five minutes.
Speaker 1:Like. I feel like there was a time when a lot of board games were trying this. They were trying to cram as many mini-games into a box and now that I mention that, none are going to spring to mind, they're trying to create a party game night in a box where you can pull it out, anybody can participate, whether it's dexterity games or memory memory games or you know, like lowest barrier to entry is possible. Stuff like that, like especially when you invoke the name of mario party, is going to draw eyes, right, I was reading the stats. I I never looked at stats on bgg, but it's pretty interesting.
Speaker 1:It says, at least logged into bgg, 900 people, as of today, own this game and I imagine that they will sell. They'll sell a lot, right, yeah, a lot of people are probably casual board game players that will go pick this up at target or walmart or barnes and noble or whatever, and they'll own it, they'll play it and it'll live on their shelf because they like family games or maybe they like mario party. So, um, yeah, I I'm really curious to know how this does in the long run. Or if they like family games or maybe they like mario party. So, um, yeah, I. I'm really curious to know how this does in the long run, or, if they like, release expansions with additional mini games or how they I I don't really know much about detestable games, to be honest yeah, that was the first I ever heard of them.
Speaker 1:I have heard of dodo's writing dinos, which is also one of their publications I know nothing about that game, but it sounds like they have a.
Speaker 2:They have, yeah, yes, definitely and dodos.
Speaker 1:Riding dinos is also the same kind of goofy style party game they have, like the little chibi dodos that you put on top of dinosaurs and ride them around a track. So, yeah, they definitely have a type and they're definitely looking for very lightweight games. I think the highest that they have in any of their games listed on BGG is like a 2. 2.3 for Kiwi Chowdown. Yeah, so like there are very, very lightweight and very accessible games that are just fun for the whole family.
Speaker 2:Yeah well, yeah, this is definitely ripe for expansions if they choose to go that way. You know, throw in another little mini game book and maybe a couple more components, you know, to spice things up a little bit. I think in the box right now it's mainly dice, map cards and there's a sand timer that you can use for some of the games and obviously that cool turtle ship. But yeah, I mean, check it out.
Speaker 1:I mean, you're not going to gonna hate it you may ask how much you bought this one for.
Speaker 2:I think it was 35 or 40 dollars, okay, so at least affordable.
Speaker 1:It's not. They're not charging you a thousand dollars for you know yeah, something to play a couple times yeah, it's.
Speaker 2:It was kick-started, you know, and obviously you can feel it feel that they had that influence of the crowd on this game, trying to make it more than what it needed to be.
Speaker 1:Awesome. Anything else about Panda Pirate Party, panda Pirates.
Speaker 2:Party Panda Pirates. Nope, that is everything I have to say about Party Panda Pirates. Ultimately fun time with too much on it.
Speaker 1:Good summation, all right. This has been another edition of operation game night podcast. I have been travis, he has been clay. We'll see you later out.
