For the last month me and my brother have been playing a lot of the original Super Monkey Ball, especifically the monkey target mode, and I think it's the best multiplayer-party-game-mode-thing that I have ever played while being extremely chill.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElySg0iJCTo
You take turns to roll your monkey down a Ski Jumping style ramp to then open your monkey-ball midair and use the opened ball as wings and try to land on differently shaped targets. While flying you can grab floating bananas to fill a gradius style power up bar, and that's what makes the game extremely interesting. There's a lot of cool decision making in trying to decide where, when and what power up to use. All of this while having a very chill sega vibe.
Some of the sequels also have this mode, I have only tried it on Super Monkey Ball 2 but it is not nearly as good as the Money Target on the first one, the most recent Monkey Ball game [(Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz HD) ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWsfosNVInQ) also has this minigame but it looks like they sucked all the life and soul out of the original one.
After trying all of the minigames/party games on the first two mokey ball games, Yakuza's minigames being so excellent makes a lot of sense, because Toshihiro Nagoshi is also the director of the Monkey Ball series. Most of the other party/minigames are also pretty good but not nearly as good as monkey target.
We are getting ridiculously good and we are currently competing to see who figures out/has the skill to max-out the score.
I have been thinking a lot about multiplayer/party games recently because my brother has been hosting covid-safe gatherings with 3 of his friends, in which he takes a projector and a projector screen to the backyard and they play games and watch mvies on there, outdoors, all wearing masks and safely distanced. They have been playing a lot of multiplayer/party steam games since they were on middle school and they were getting tired of some of them, so my brother asked if I knew some ps2/gamecube era multiplayer games that they could easily emulate and play. But what actually inspired me to make this thread is that yesterday they were playing Videoball and one of them said something like "man, this is to stressful, let's play something more chill", my brother inmediatly knew what to do, and he launched super monkey ball on dolphin.
So with some if not most people here already getting vaccinated, I thought it would be nice to have some chill multiplayer game recomendations because irl hang outs are becoming a reality again. [URL=https://i.imgur.com/48OvVHy.jpg][IMG]https://i.imgur.com/48OvVHy.jpg[/IMG][/URL]
I discovered a while back that Mario Golf is one of the chillest couch multiplayer experiences that can be had by a human, and the first home console entry since the Gamecube is arriving this summer…
I’m suddenly realizing how multiplayer/party games are typically fast-paced and hectic by design, so finding ones that can be accurately described as “chill” is actually pretty hard! _Mario Golf_ is easily the first (and, off the top of my head, only) game like that which comes to mind. Granted, I’ve never played _Super Monkey Ball_!
i‘ve been having a good chill time with Super Mario 3D World as of late, but assuming they’ve played the more obvious stuff…
i think turn based games are particularly well suited to this kind of play. **Hogs Of War** (PS1) is Worms, in 3D, with pigs, in a WW1 setting, with potentially offensive British humor; it's a memory of a nice summer for me so no idea if it's actually any good. **Advance Wars 2** (GBA) would be the surefire choice, but on the other hand, it doesn't feature fully voiced 3D pigs in lil army uniforms. also had a blast playing **Final Fantasy Tactics** (PS1) all the way through w/ some friends before the pandemic. it's not technically coop but you can make it coop by taking turns or playing one battle each, and just _offering supportive advice_ whenever you're not holding the controller! it holds up perfectly and the story is surprisingly good. pretty sure all of these have VS modes as well as campaign modes.
another chill option are interactive story games, like Wolf Among Us/The Walking Dead s01 by Telltale, Until Dawn, Firewatch, Heavy Rain... where the experience of watching it isn't that different from playing it, and again, you can berate your friends about their choices -the optimal way to play these imho.
@tombo#29059 I’m not sure I’d call 3D World “chill” once you’re a few worlds in… the ease with which you can accidentally (or not-so-accidentally) murder your friends is guaranteed to test friendships.
Talk of _Worms_ though does remind me that yes, they are still making _Worms_ games! They are all pretty much identical as far as I can tell, but that is in fact a pretty chill game that can be played with a handful of people.
@2501#29066 true, true. we are at world 7 now and our rate of progress per play session has steadily declined. however, the relatively low consequences of failure (levels are very short and game overs seem to have no impact) have meant that we‘ve just accepted it’s not gonna go smoothly most of the time (and i've had to repress my completionist impulse to find all the secrets on the first run). i think the level of coordination it requires is a surprisingly good challenge xD
cool thread idea. really looking forward to some irl hangouts.
i think neo turf masters is a good ole chill time. it's snk's take on golf. it's 2 player, but you can finagle some team play. the matchplay mode keeps score on a per hole basis as opposed to by strokes, so the scores are close regardless of skill.
nine parchments is frozenbyte's (trine series) calmer take on something like magicka. it's still chaotic in that you can accidentally kill your buds and heal enemies, but the pacing was smooth from what i remember. seems like it's always on sale for $5 too.
mario tennis on the switch is the kinda party game that can bring out relaxed drinking and bantering or heated, competitive battles. i've had both experiences with the same group of people. might not work out if videoball was too stressful, but i think it's worth mentioning anyway. we play without using the powered up super shot to keep things relaxed.
Along with monkey ball, Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour was one of the first games that I had for the gamecube as a child though I haven’t played it in a long while. might as well revisit it
THPS 1+2 is actually the multiplayer game that me and my brother used to constantly play before we got into monkey ball, even the score attack 2 minute rounds are pretty chill, because you eventually lost track of how many rounds have you played
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@tombo#29059 i’ve been having a good chill time with Super Mario 3D World
around 4 years ago, there was a time where my aunt would frequently drop my little cousins at my house, and i had to help my mom in watching over them, one day it occured to me, that the older one may enjoy 3D World, (he must have been like 4 years old at the time), and I was right he loved it!! He was obsessed with mario, and we completed the game like 5 times in a span of a couple of months, at first he wasn't very good at it, so I did the infinite 1-ups exploit. That way he could die as many times as he wanted to, and still keep respawning as long as I wasn't dead. It was also fun for me becasue if there was a part that he couldn't do I had to carry his character accross the stage. Eventually he got better at the game and his little sister (who must have been like 2 or 3 at the time) also joined us. I haven't seen them in more than a year because of covid (and also because i've been avoiding my family because i'm too afraid of coming out as trans to my catholic relatives). I miss my little cousins.
A couple cool multiplayer indie games that I would recomend
https://store.steampowered.com/app/437920/Tricky_Towers/
This one may get a little bit too intense depending on the mode, but I still think it can be a chill experience, it is basically tetris+jenga
https://store.steampowered.com/app/386940/Ultimate_Chicken_Horse/
this can also get chaotic but still chill, I think its pretty good and the steam description does a better job on describing it than I could.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/303590/Hidden_in_Plain_Sight/
probably most of you already know about this one
oh, can‘t forget protect me knight on the 360. fun little co-op tower defense game but the tower is a princess. it’s supposed to get a switch release at some point. yuzo koshiro did the music.
@ana-yipyip#28972 why do you prefer the first monkey ball‘s monkey target game? me and my friends got really into the smb2 version a couple of summers back, but that’s only because I own smb2 and not the first. if i'm specifically in the market for monkey target, should I grab smb1?
My friends and I put a ton of time into Super Monkey Ball [1]‘s mini games. I cannot tell you why because it’s been nearly 20 years, but Super Monkey Ball 2's minigames were not as good. Monkey Target and Monkey Bowling were the highlights for us.
@antillese#29180 hmmm i‘ll suppose i’ll just have to give it a shot myself. we really havent ventured beyond the monkey target in 2, but from the video in the first post it doesn't look too different
@rarya#29173 I think that the gradius style power up bar on monkey target 1 makes the game a lot more interesting,
each banana you grab advances the power up bar and you may choose to use or not to use the power up in the next round, also there arent as many floating bananas, which encourages the players to get more creative in the way they get to the target.
When you get really into mokey target 1, the decision process of each round involves thinking of wether to use your current power up or wait and grab more bananas to get a better power up next round, how many bananas do you need for next rounds ideal power up, if its worth taking the risk of trying to get the bananas for next round or trying to get a better score this round, and on top of that having to deal with the wind.
In monkey target 2 I feel like the floating banana paths and the position of the floating power ups encourages the players to always take the same paths.
can‘t attest to it since it just released and may be more adrenaline pushing than chill but if you can’t wait for this game mode in mario golf this seems fun as heck
this is the best and closest to Frisbee golf you can get afaik , played a lot with plenty of different friends in different group sizes and it always impresses everyone
@seasons#29081 Yes, Protect Me Knight! Played the 3DS version the most as it was a fun/easy to jump into game for my friends and I when we were standing in lines at PAX or various concerts.
I also was recently introduced to [Conduct Together](https://www.nintendo.com/games/detail/conduct-together-switch/#:~:text=Conduct%20TOGETHER!%20is%20an%20addictive,in%20increasingly%20challenging%20action%2Dpuzzles.) for the Switch. It's couch co-op only and the learning curve is pretty gradual as well. It's really a matter of coordinating with friends on which train you want to follow or which switches for the tracks you want to manage etc.
I was thinking I was going to bounce off of it fairly quickly but the 3 of us ended up spending an entier evening playing it to see what was next.
It's a tad pricey for $20 but if you can catch it on a good sale, and it looks like it's worth your Jam, I certainly would play it more once I'm able to get a group back together.
