After Toad has welcomed you to the Party Plaza and you have chosen who to party with, you will be left to decide how to spend your time with Super Mario Party.
You can choose to play the standard Mario Party mode, pair up in Partner Party, work cooperatively to brave the rapids in River Survival, pull off your best moves in Sound Stage or jump down the Warp Pipe to check out Toad’s Rec Room.
There’s one mode that Nintendo’s party planners have kept locked, and that’s Challenge Road. You will need to unlock every minigame before you will be able to enjoy this single-player mode, which, with little guidance, can seem slightly baffling as to which you need to play.
You will want to use the Minigames menu to help give you pointers, which is the turquoise screen to the right of Party Plaza. Choose Free Play and you will see all 80 minigames on-screen, with those left to unlock hidden with a question mark.
And then, to make it easier, you can use the SL and SR Buttons to scroll through different categories. There are Free-for-All, 1-vs-3, 2-vs-2, Team, Co-op and Rhythm minigames, that will indicate which mode you will need to spend time in. For example, the Co-op minigames relate to those that you play in the River Survival mode, whereas the 2-vs-2 and Team minigames will largely be in Partner Party.
The bottom line? Keep regularly swapping between the different modes to cover the categories, and use the Free Play screen in the Minigames menu to work out what you have missed. You’ll need to spend time in every mode to be rewarded with the five Gems that you will need to become the Super Star, so Challenge Road will naturally unlock over time in any case.
Super Mario Party is now available exclusively for Nintendo Switch worldwide.
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