I didn’t think Mario Party could get any more sick and twisted. I was wrong, and it wasn’t much of a shock to find out that Buckshot Roulette developer Mike Klubnika was behind it. Teaming up with fellow indie dev ‘GDeavid,’ the pair have built Machine Party, a self-described “collection of violent party games where failure is lethal.” Launched onto Steam at the very end of July, it’s already racked up a cool half a million sales in its first week – and its makers have a new game mode to celebrate.
You might recall 2024’s Buckshot Roulette, which blended the life-or-death ‘game’ of Russian Roulette with a shotgun and a set of Balatro-style modifiers, or Klubnika’s 2025 follow-up s.p.l.i.t. with its psychological horror spin on the MS-DOS operating system. This year, in collaboration with GDeavid, the offering is Machine Party, and while I hesitate to describe anything happening here as ‘upbeat,’ it’s certainly a game that you could have ‘fun’ with your friends in.
Designed to be played with between two and four contestants, Machine Party cycles through a series of vicious minigames ranging from simple tests of reaction and skill to those focused more around social deception. Dodge moving trains, chisel out blocks to match a template, and chow down peas as fast as possible without upsetting the watchful guard with an itchy trigger finger. Attempt to sneak through an alleyway as one player watches the rest through a sniper’s scope, or navigate a minefield, pushing one another out of the way to escape as heavy machinery chases you down.
It’s gleefully violent in that now-familiar style, and yet there’s enough depth to what’s on offer to handily justify the $8 / £6.50 asking price (less if you grab it during the introductory sale period, which runs until Thursday August 13). Clearly, lots of people agree – at least 500,000 of them. “Half a million is a crazy number,” the development duo writes, “thank you for the support, kind messages, and cool clips. It’s been a crazy release, and we hope you’ve been thoroughly enjoying your time with the game.”
The team has also just released Machine Party update 1.5, which introduces a new Arcade mode: ten fast-paced, randomly chosen rounds, with the typical intro and outro sequences stripped away. There’s also some fixes for a handful of bugs and graphical issues, along with the option to run the game using Direct3D 12 if you’re encountering persistent problems.
Next on the cards is couch co-op – after all, isn’t that the true spirit of party games? “Machine Party on the big screen is coming together nicely, and will be released in the next few weeks,” the pair confirm. “We’re almost ready to start testing and polishing all of the simulations, and once that’s done, you can grab a controller, sit back, and try to relax. Thank you for the continued support, and for sharing all of the bug reports.”