When the Nintendo Switch launched in 2017, 1-2 switch arrived alongside it and served as a showcase for the console’s new Joy-Con controllers. 1-2 switch turned the Joy-Cons’ HD rumble and motion controls into minigames that didn’t offer much replayability. As a system showcase, Wii Sports It was not.
On the other hand, Everyone 1-2-Switch! – a game announced just weeks before its release on June 30 – feels more sustainable, based on half a dozen minigames I played at a recent Nintendo event in New York City. Everyone 1-2-Switch! definitely goes beyond the two player games of 1-2 switchwhere up to 100 players are invited to join the mini-games.
That is because Everyone 1-2-Switch! can be played not only with Joy-Cons, but like the Jackbox Party Pack games also with smartphones. There’s a mix of gameplay styles here. Some minigames are Joy-Con controlled only and support up to eight players at a time. Some can be played with both input styles. Some are smartphone-only, such as one where players are shown a color on the screen and must take a photo of an object that most closely matches that color.
One of the first minigames I tried was simply called Balloons. My team of four competed against another team of four in an attempt to inflate a Mylar balloon on screen using a Joy-Con like the handle of a bicycle pump. The goal was to inflate that balloon to its largest size without popping it. The motion-controlled input from me and my teammates was combined, which meant we had to quickly communicate with each other when we needed to stop frantically mimicking our pumping movements. It was a fun, fast-paced burst of gameplay, as we raced to fill our balloon to the near breaking point.
As a Nintendo representative scrolled through the minigame menu, I noticed multiple variations of Balloons: one in which the on-screen instructions indicating the maximum size of the balloon were disabled; one that instructed players to inflate a slowly leaking balloon; and another where the goal was to pop your team’s balloon as quickly as possible.
Everyone 1-2-Switch!Joy-Con based mini-games like Balloons are very physical. Another, Samurai Sword Fight, has players imitate unsheathing a katana as fast as possible and compete for the fastest sword draw. Hip Bump is the dumbest game I’ve played, asking players to bump their butts – with a Joy-Con behind their hips – at each other in a mini-game reminiscent of sumo wrestling. On the screen, people in rabbit costumes are banging their tails together.
Games inside Everyone 1-2-Switch! that can be played with smartphones include a bizarre alien summoning experience where players perform rhythmic movements to entice a flying saucer full of aliens to visit them. I was one of 16+ players pushing my arms up and down (up, down, up, down, up, down, upwards, down) in time with alien chants, in one of the weirder competitive video game moments of my career. I felt the burn in my shoulders (and the burning desire to win) in the most physical of the phone-based games I’ve watched.
The aforementioned color-matching game was easily the most fun and creative of the bunch. It is presented to players as an editor of a fashion magazine talking about the latest trend colors. One is shown on the screen and players must find an object in the room to take a picture that matches its color. I ended up taking pictures of a monstera plant to match green, a piece of colorful carpet to find a blue, and the hair of my former Polygon colleague (now at Wired) Megan Farokhmanesh, looking for the perfect bright red. I can imagine players scrambling through rooms in a friend’s house to find just the right hue.
The most practical demo of Everyone 1-2-Switch! what I saw was a simple quiz game. It can be played with a Joy-Con or a smartphone, and it asks players to answer questions as quickly as possible. The general knowledge questions are multiple choice questions, with only two options; there’s nothing quite as challenging as, say, Trivial Pursuit. Everyone 1-2-Switch! even lets players create their own custom quizzes, a feature Nintendo showcased by creating a quiz themed around the hands-on event. That quiz included some light Nintendo trivia and a question that asked us to remember what floor we were on. (Almost everyone present got that answer right.)
Everyone 1-2-Switch!thanks to its variety and inclusiveness, looks much richer than its Switch launch predecessor – and is well priced, just $29.99 (compared to 1-2 switchlaunch price of $49.99). It’s coming to the Switch this week, if you’re looking for the next great party game for you and 99 of your closest friends.