Watch Party Review (PC)

I’ve just logged on, and already it seems as if I’ve just swindled my way into a front row seat for “the kill of the year” on my all-time favorite streamer’s merciless slaughter web series. The Watch Party comment section, oh — it is getting better with each passing minute, more so now that the hooded villain has just about reached the door to this seemingly perfect home. To say that I’m on tenterhooks would be an understatement, and yet, in spite of all this online traffic egging them on to knock, I can’t help but ponder a bigger question in the heat of this delicate moment: Why does that door look an awful lot like my own, and why, particularly when I flicker the lights, do they project on the monitor in front of me, as if to warn me of an unsuspecting stranger gradually approaching from the sidewalk?

Watch Party is, to some basic extent, a game of hide-and-seek in the dark with the addition of a live stream and faithful audience of thousands of blood-addled fans. The only major difference here, of course, is that it doesn’t involve a squadron of giddy family members and some well-deserved post-event cocktails down at the local eatery. No, what this is, is something a little more sadistic—a game of life and death, if you will, and a testament to the importance of a particular childhood memoir. In this faithful incarnation of the schoolyard game, you don’t hide from your friends; you hide from your online hero. And as the saying goes, folks: you should never meet your heroes — especially if they’re the ones knocking at your door asking for an autograph.

Always Watching

In a nutshell, Watch Party more or less puts out the red carpet for a traditional, albeit slightly overused psychological horror experience. It’s a game that takes the usual cat-and-mouse approach and rolls it into its own melting pot of moving pieces. In a similar vein as Five Nights at Freddy’s, you could say, the game takes full advantage of a camera feed—a tool that allows players the opportunity to examine the streamer’s actions and whereabouts as they gradually progress through the protagonist’s home, ransacking rooms and leaving no stone unturned as they fight tooth and nail to whittle down their prey. Lo and behold, that’s you. Shock horror.

Watch Party is all about using the tools at your disposal to avoid being caught by the streamer who stalks your home. It’s about alternating between a camera feed—a screen that effectively displays the location of the foe, along with some fairly useful comments on the chat room itself—and whatever items you find dotted around in your relatively large estate. Of course, there is a flaw in this case: the lack of connectivity between your device and the live stream. Disappointingly, this feed has a habit of not working properly, which means that you do have to keep your wits about you as you traverse the world and tiptoe through rooms.

Disconnected

Unsurprisingly, Watch Party has a built-in timer—a clock that whittles down as you progress deeper into the home. With this timer hanging over your head, the objective becomes abundantly obvious right from the get-go: survive until the police arrive. But as for how you choose to spend your time, however, is entirely up to you. On the one hand, you could choose to hide in a bathtub while the streamer and its accomplices stalk the corridors. But on the other hand, you might prefer to examine the environment with a fine-tooth comb to, well, not fight back, but uncover underlying items, puzzles, or narrative-driven crossroads.

While the storyline itself is relatively short, it does offer a few different endings for you to unlock. It doesn’t alter a great deal of the experience, I’ll admit, but with several diverse paths to experiment with, you might be able to find enough of an incentive to rewind the clock and jump back into the stream for a second or perhaps even third session.

As a single-player game with no online presence or PvP mode to onboard, there is still a lot to be desired here. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still an enjoyable indie horror game with some genuinely unsettling moments, but I’d also be lying if I said that it had enough replay value to warrant an entire weekend of your time.

Verdict

There’s something oddly special about having to examine an online stream in order to keep track of your enemies’ movements. Sure enough, this isn’t the first we’ve heard of such a thing, what with Five Nights at Freddy’s having already pioneered the idea just shy of a decade ago. And yet, even without the same level of clout as its competitors, Watch Party still manages to keep the fire alight with a convincing representation of its most significant influences. It isn’t perfect, but it does capture the essence of what it is like to be on the run and a stone’s throw from an untimely death. It’s certainly a dime-a-dozen concept — but as the saying goes, if it isn’t broke, don’t fix it.

With the welcoming addition of a sombre ambiance and a strong cast of characters (for the few it has), Watch Party has the potential to be something of a staple in its chosen genre. The world is a little barren, I’ll admit, and it could certainly do with a few more intricate fixtures to help bring it to life, but for what it’s worth, it’s a lot better than your bog-standard indie horror flick. If only there were a few more things to enjoy—an online PvP mode, being the most popular choice amongst players, presumably.

To put it simply, you could certainly do a lot worse than Watch Party. I can’t say that it’ll be enough to keep you hooked for hours on end, what with it being more of a solo endeavor than a communal one, but for a single-player game, it will surely keep you on the edge of your seat for a short while, and perhaps even longer, depending on whether or not you’re willing to soak up the three possible endings.