Highlights
- Party Animals has a fun and cute aesthetic, but its achievements in particular are worth celebrating because they offer in-game rewards, making them more desirable for all players.
- The game has 93 achievements, and each achievement is assigned a reward, including various cosmetic items for the game's cute characters.
- By tying rewards to achievements, Party Animals motivates players who wouldn't normally care about achievements to engage with the system, providing an additional in-game challenge that makes achievements worth pursuing for everyone. More games should take this approach.
Party Animals is officially available, allowing players to enjoy some zany mini-game action with an incredibly cute aesthetic. Essentially Gang Beasts with a few extra mechanics and more level types, this Xbox Game Pass title is far from the deepest experience mechanically, even if it is a lot of fun. However, while players will spend most games throwing punches, kicks, and headbutts, there is one feature that should be looked at by games both big and small. Specifically, how Party Animals handles achievements needs to be celebrated.
Typically, since a video game achievement is a reward in and of itself, players do not get anything extra from earning one. Whether they are adding to their Gamerscore on Xbox or building a Trophy collection on PlayStation, players have been trained to expect nothing beyond the digital unlock itself. This means that achievements only hold value for players who care about collecting them, with anyone who has no interest in building a collection ignoring the achievements that a game offers. With Party Animals, though, there is an extra reason to engage with the system.
What Makes Party Animals’ Achievements So Special
Party Animals has 93 in-game achievements to work on, with each of these tied to proper Xbox and Steam achievement unlocks. With no story mode present within the game, players will find objectives that range from making friends to winning matches. Dozens of stage-specific challenges are available to complete as well, meaning that achievement hunters will be working hard to fully complete the list. With some of the achievements requiring a decent amount of luck, too, many players may not be bothered to work on them and could end up ignoring the list entirely. However, they would be missing out on some awesome in-game rewards if they did so.
While in-game rewards being tied to achievements are not a completely new concept, as Overwatch 2’s sprays for completing each hero’s two achievements come to mind, Party Animals goes above and beyond. Developer Recreate Games assigned a reward to every single achievement in the game, meaning that players can collect over 90 items if they are thorough enough. These are not small rewards, either, as some truly great cosmetics can be acquired.
Alongside both forms of currency, which players can use to purchase skins via the in-game store or spin the game’s loot box-style Egg machine, players can get skins for Party Animals’ cute characters. These range from red and blue recolors and gold mastery skins to special designs like a Stormtrooper-inspired duck, meaning players can get several desirable looks just by collecting achievements. Not only does this make achievements as a whole more desirable, but since the game shows players which reward they will get from each achievement, Party Animals fans can pick and choose what achievements they actually want to go for.
Considering that developers put extra time and resources into coming up with Steam and Xbox achievements as well as PlayStation Trophy tasks, it is a shame that so many players will ignore the system and that the developers’ work will essentially be wasted. Party Animals presents a solution to that problem, as it motivates even those who do not normally care about achievements to engage with the system. Players may not have interest in adding to their gamerscore total, but in Party Animals achievements double as another in-game challenge type that provides great rewards, making them worth doing for everyone.
It is easy to think of ways that games could tie rewards to Trophies. For example, Dead Space had achievements for getting 30 kills with each weapon, and if it had a system like this, perhaps players could have gotten a weapon skin for each gun after completing the task that “demakes” it into the style of the 2008 classic. A game like Call of Duty could tie calling cards and emblems to every Trophy, while games that do not offer cosmetic unlocks could give players a piece of digital concept art to view in the menus for each achievement they get. As another option, games like Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 that embrace photo modes can let players unlock more filters and photo mode settings for each Trophy they collect. The list goes on and on, and the rewards could range from big to small, but more games going the Party Animals route and adding in-game unlocks for every single achievement would be terrific.
Party Animals is available now on PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.