Introduction

Welcome to Crazy Party! The completely crazy game! No...This isn't just crazy - it's the craziest party around!
Crazy Party is not one, but two games! On one side, there are many mini-games to discover and unlock in order to compete online; and on the other, there is a battle game with cards to win by facing the gyms in order to beat all your friends in the online mode.

Operation

Concept

The concept of Crazy Party borrows very heavily from Mario Party (minigames, adventures and boards) and Pokemon (battles).
The game is unordered, so you can play games and stages in whatever order you like, as long as you have unlocked them.
This is an audio game only. There are no graphics. In fact, nothing appears on the screen except the game's title. This makes it highly suitable for gamers who are either blind, or sighted with a good imagination for picturing objects based on sound and verbal information.
There are three different components to the game.

Adventure

The adventure consists of several worlds where the goal is to play and unlock minigames provided by those worlds.
The mode provides a total of 14 worlds and over 180 minigames giving you hours of fun.

Boards

If you prefer a quiet board game, then this mode is for you. Be careful though - certain squares on certain boards will more than likely challenge you to a minigame!
Crazy Party comes with 4 boards.

Battles

If you're the rough-and-tumble sort, Crazy Party has you covered there too, with 18 arenas to test your fighting skills and Pokemon knowledge.

Extras

During the game, you will accumulate various statistics and items. Certain items will help you to purchase and unlock those tricky little extras in the Reward Room.

Statistics

As you play the game, you will earn several statistics. If you are familiar with RPG adventures and the like, you will no doubt be familiar with some of these terms.

Experience

Experience is a score you get for accomplishing certain tasks. In general cases it sometimes allows you to unlock other statistics. In Crazy Party however, it is used for determining your experience online.

Level

When your experience reaches a certain score, that will increase your level. The higher your level, the more experience you will need to reach the next level.

Coins

These cannot currently be spent, so instead they represent your total game score, including bonuses and box rewards.

Minigames

This tells you how many minigames you have unlocked.

Worlds

This tells you how many worlds you have unlocked.

Boards

This tells you how many boards you have.

Arenas

This tells you how many battle arenas you have unlocked.

Items

Items are given to you throughout various games. It is possible to receive coins, crystals and gems, all which have a different purpose in the game world.

Rewards

Rewards are small extras that you can purchase. These include boards, game sessions, on-demand games, and custom settings. Each reward costs a certain number of gems. From cheap rewards that cost a single gem, to those grinding expensive that cost somewhere in the hundreds.

Input

The game makes use of the keyboard for input.
Here are the keys to know to play in Crazy Party. Generally the useful keys in a minigame are precised in its instructions, so you are not forced to learn the whole list.

Global

Menus

Games

Note that these keys are not available in all minigames.

Arenas

Battles

Online

Output

Crazy Party uses text-to-speech to relay information, and sounds to represent areas, items, characters and maps, and provide cinematic activity feedback.
All information spoken throughout the session is logged. When you close the game, this log will be written to a file named log.txt, which can be found in the Crazy Party directory.
The game works with NVDA, Jaws, System Access, Window Eyes, and SAPI.
The JAWS screen reader is known to interfere with the arrow keys. To overcome this problem, Crazy Party intercepts the keys when this screen reader is detected. Sometimes, however, this does not work well, and if you have trouble, it is recommended to unload JAWS and allow the game to use SAPI.
Unfortunately, the game prefers screen readers over SAPI and doesn't provide a preference to override this. Screen readers are not recommended for gaming unless there is actual navigable text output to the screen. Therefore, the following is recommended in any case, whether experiencing screen reader/keyboard issues or not.

Progress

Crazy Party automatically saves your progress periodically. Such times may include:
The save file is contained in a file named sauvegarde.dat in the Crazy Party main directory.
Everything is saved here. Statistics, progress, unlocked and obtained items or games, preferences etc. It is strongly recommended that you back up this file if you wish to restart or otherwise change something.

Menu

The main menu allows you to do several things.
  1. Go to the Adventure
  2. Face the Battle Arenas
  3. Play a Board game
  4. Reward room
  5. View Statistics
  6. Manage your Decks
  7. Online play
  8. Options
  9. Exit...Do we really need to explain that?

Adventure

In the adventure, your goal is to cross different worlds that contain many trials, which we will refer to as minigames.
The worlds are played almost as bets. Once you start, you are given 10 coins. Depending on how you do in the minigames, you could receive a positive or negative score. A positive score will increase your coin balance and unlock the next path, while a negative score will decrease it. If you lose all your coins, the world ends as a defeat.
To play a minigame, you will move on the world's map, and once you're on a minigame then just press F or ENTER to try it.
When you hit a minigame square you will hear a beep, followed by a message informing you of the game's title, which is usually a terse summary of the objective.
Sometimes, you will play a game that involves collecting bonuses. These generally require you to have a minimum of 20 points to open another path. In most cases, these paths will lead to bonus boxes.
There are 14 worlds to unlock, and over 180 minigames.
Each world records statistics about any previous playthroughs:

The Combat System

The combat system is a vast world of strategic attack and thus is much more detailed than the rest of this guide.

Glossary

In combat, you are likely to come across the following terms:

Concept

Battles

Battles in Crazy Party have the same objective as battles in any other game, whether action, RPG or adventure. That is to say, you have to let your opponent lose all of his health points, but at the same time, without losing yours.

If you win the battle, you will win 20 coins and the next enemy, or stage, will be unlocked.
If you lose the battle, you will lose 20 coins.
If you are both defeated at the same time, it is a tie and you neither win nor lose.

Battles in Crazy Party are duel-style, I.E. turn-based, and thus you are given a list of available moves you can choose from.
Either player can be chosen to make the first move, however there seems to be no discernible pattern as to how the game determines who it will be.

Types

Crazy Party has a battle system which has seen very few equivalents in the audio gaming world.
Any combattent characters, their associated moves, and the battlefield itself, is all dependent on a type system. To explain this, let's look at a real life concept.

On this huge floating lump of space dust we call Earth, we have life, environment, nature, force, and science. Not to mention man-made things like history (which would otherwise be forgotten), geography (which would otherwise remain uncharted), and our strange fascination with our brains (from which our imagination thrives).
For certain, we know that fish do well in water, we walk and work the land, birds thrive in the air and polar bears love ice.
We like to think that dragons worship fire, demons possess our minds, spirits are classified as ghosts, and darkness leads to terror.
These notions have all been grouped into many games, and the Crazy Party combat system happens to be one of them.

Crazy Party happens to have 18 different types, and the consequence of every move depends on the types dictated by the battlefield. That is to say, the types of the combattents themselves, and any effects, environmental or otherwise, that may be active.

Some types will be stronger or more useful than others. For instance, it isn't that good to use fire against water (Water can put out fires), but electric is excellent against it (Water conducts electricity and so is disturbed by the current flow, and can even be decomposed by it if powerful enough).

The following are all assigned a type.
Skills
Each move, or skill, is assigned a type. Depending on the skill's properties and purpose depends whether or not the skill is playable.
Combattents
As a combattent can have many moves of different types, combattents, in fact, have the welcome gift of polymorphism. Based on their deck, they may be allowed to switch their type.
Once a type is changed, generally it cannot be changed again until after four turns, unless a card is played that will lift this restriction.
The natural, or primary, type of the combattents, determined at the start of a battle, is assigned based on the number of skills he has available that match the type. For instance, a player with 40 water skills and 20 flying skills will be assigned the water type.
It is important to note that, just because the combattent's type is one thing, doesn't mean he can't play a move of a different type. For instance, if you have water and flying moves, just because you may be water type doesn't mean that it would be impossible to play Blowing Wind. However, equally important is the fact that, if you are a different type to the move you play, that move will be slightly weakened.
Arenas
The arena's type gives a vague indication as to what types the challengers of that arena will be. The normal arena will generally issue normal challengers, however it is important to remember that these challengers will, more often than not, have secondary types they can change to.

Levels

Each combattent has a level attached to their available types. Each move may or may not also be attached to a level. This means that, to make that move, your level in that type must be that move's level or higher.

Levelling works as follows:

Cards

We have worlds, we have boards, why not cards?

Before we get into how the card system works, it is important to note that this is nothing like an ordinary card game.
Forget Uno, Blackjack or Poker. This is totally different, hence the reason it can be confusing at times.
Concept
For people who have played physical card games, the card system helps to explain the game logic of how battles operate. for those who haven't, it can be extremely confusing, hence this section.

The cards are nothing more than conceptual decisionmakers. They allow you to have a limited number of available moves in any given turn, and a limited amount of usage points for each move, thereby giving the battle a sense of fair chance as well as strategy.
Each card names a battle skill, or move. These will be discussed later.

When you use, or play, a card, that is an instruction to the game that you want to perform the move named on that card.

When you unlock enough cards (skills), you can create your own "decks" (packs). For instance, for playing the normal arena a few times, you can unlock all the normal cards and create a full set of normal type cards that you can use in other areas.

During a battle, your cards are divided into four piles.
Deck
A deck is simply another word for a pack, or set, of playing cards. Battle decks consist of between 40 or 60 skill cards.
All the cards you use are taken from the deck, from the cards you are given at the start of battle, to the cards that you pick up throughout the battle.
Hand
In a physical card game setting, the general objective is to rid yourself of all your cards. Because this involves strategical thinking in conjunction with luck, the general idea is that you hold the cards that you are given, or dealt, with their values hidden from the other players.
Holding your cards also helps to separate the piles more easily. Let's face it: A team of ten players would find it difficult to have ten piles of cards on the table without wondering which pile is what. Each pile is with its respective player, preventing confusion and cheating.

Although Crazy Party's objective is slightly different, to be consistent with other card games, your pile of cards are still referred to as your "hand".
Discard
In both standard card games and Crazy Party, the discard pile is the name given to the pile of cards that have been used by players. Since these are the played cards, they need to be separate from both the player and the deck to avoid being replayed inadvertently.
On the rare occasion that you run out of cards in your deck, then the discard pile is reshuffled to create a new deck.
Exile
Sometimes you will be forced to discard cards on this pile rather than the discard pile, as the result of an opponent's move. Unlike the discard pile, these cards cannot be reused in the battle, regardless of circumstances, unless you have a card that specifically allows you to reclaim cards from that pile.
Playing
You will always start a battle with 6 cards in your hand. During the course of the battle, you may play cards that allow you to add to your pile, and your opponent may play cards that force you to junk a few.
If you have no cards in your hand, and you are not allowed to take any new cards, you will suffer damage.
At each turn, you'll automatically take a card from the deck. You will then choose your move. You can do the following:
There are also special actions that you can perform:
As the battle progresses, depending on how your cards map out, certain areas will strengthen, while others will weaken. Part of this procedure is the level system. The higher your level, the more likely you will be able to play stronger cards.

Starting Out

All Crazy Party games start out with a dummy move for battles called Idleness. This is only used as a filler, and has no effect whatsoever.
When you start the battle system for the first time, these "idleness" moves are wiped out and replaced with moves based on your choices.
You will then be asked to choose a primary type, for which you are given 6 sets of 4 cards pertaining to that type.
You will then be asked to choose a secondary type, for which you are given 4 sets of 4 cards pertaining to that type.
This is so that you can have a decent mix in the battles.

Arenas

In order to battle, you have to face different arenas.
Each arena is designated a type. The arena's type will, to some degree, give you a clue as to the types of the enemies you will face.
When you unlock 4 arenas, you can launch online battle parties.
If you beat the arena, you will be able to choose 5 cards of its type, hence the reason it is a good idea to play each arena multiple times to gain as many cards as you can.
If you get defeated too many times and lose all your coins, you are thrown from the arena and it counts as a defeat.
Each arena records statistics about any previous playthroughs:
Grand Council
After you have beaten all 18 arenas, you will face the Grand Council. This is the final challenge.

Combattents

Most arenas have 3 enemies who you must battle and defeat to unlock the next arena. Each battle in that arena adds 30 healthpoints to you and your opponent.
Generally, the challenger you face will be the same type as the arena you are fighting in, but remember that challengers can also have secondary types they can change into.
Each battle is always a one-on-one fight, and always start with you and the opponent with equal health and statistics.

Skills

Each card contains one skill. A skill is an action. It can attack, weaken, or otherwise exploit the opponent, or it can strengthen or otherwise benefit you.
Generally, most skills can have one of the following outcomes when used:
Each skill has a set of properties.
Type
The type of the skill, such as fire, water, flying or ground.
Power
Determines a base value for the number of healthpoints to remove from the opponent. These can, of course, be changed by certain effects.
Level
Determines what level the user has to be in the skill's type in order to be allowed to use it. The user's type level must be equal to, or greater than, this level.
Success
Provides a base value that determines how likely the attack is to succeed. This can be changed by certain effects.
Critical Hit
Provides a base value that determines how likely the attack is to hit critically. This can be changed by certain effects.
Critical Fail
Provides a base value that determines how likely the attack is to fail critically. This can be changed by certain effects.
Manoeuvre
Describes what the card is used for, such as offensive, parry, reaction etc.

Attacks

Attacks are what you would expect. They actively attack the opponent, either knocking off healthpoints or manipulating statistics and effects to cause them to become weaker or otherwise more vulnerable.
Unlike most battle environments in audio games, though effects may modify statistics which will affect the attacks, for the most part they are consistent in their damage. For instance, Big Flood of Energy (Normal type), with no stat changes or type advantages/disadvantages, will always cause the opponent to suffer 19 damage.

Defence

The only way of defending yourself is by using skills. Certain skills will strengthen you or weaken the enemy.
The closest thing we have to the true concept of defence are parry and reaction skills, which automatically trigger in certain scenarios. However these require a great deal of strategy and planning to be used correctly and effectively.

Effects

Each player has effect points that can be raised or lowered. Effects can be positive (for instance dodge or success), or negative (for instance burn or poison).
Effects include sleep, poison, curse, confusion, paralysis, burn, freeze, physical and special attack and defence, success, dodge, critical hit, critical fail etc.

Postures

Postures are similar to effects, apart from the fact that they target the launcher, rather than the opponent, and are used to manipulate the power of attacks rather than statistics.
At the start of all battles, the postures are set to "Neutral", meaning that all attacks work in the way that you expect.

Environments

Environments are similar to postures, apart from the fact that environments target all combattents, rather than just the launcher.
At the start of all battles, the environment is set to "Neutral", meaning that all cards work in the way that you expect.

Board games

Crazy Party currently comes with four board games, one unlocked by default. Others can be purchased in the Rewards room.
The idea is the same as any generic board game. The board has a certain number of squares, and a dice is thrown to determine how many squares you can move.
Each square is associated with an event or instruction, as outlined below.
Once you reach the end of the board, you have no choice but to turn around and head back the way you came.
Because of the back and forward nature of the game, there is no real end. Therefore a board game will ask you how many turns the game should generate. After this number of turns, the game will end and the scores enumerated.

Square Types

Each gameboard has a predefined number of squares. Each square has a number, starting from 0, in sequential order, with the final square being numbered one less than the number of total squares.
Most squares only trigger an event when landing. That's to say, when the dice gives you a number that would cause you to end up on that square. There are a few exceptions, where squares will force you to do something if you pass them.
All gameboards may come with any combination of the square types listed below.

Boundaries

The boundaries are the start and end of the gameboard, and as such all boards have these. If you land on them they will give you a 10 point bonus.

Blue square

A common square to all boards, this will allow you to win 3 coins. If you have a blue crystal you will win 6 coins but lose your crystal. You cannot choose whether or not to use the crystal.

Red square

A common square to all boards, this will cause you to lose 3 coins. If you have a red crystal, you will lose 6 coins and the crystal.

Neutral square

A common square to all boards, you don't win or lose anything on these squares.

Game square

A common square to all boards, this will allow you to play a minigame. A game will be picked at random, whether locked or unlocked, that is associated with that board for you to play.

Gift square

You will be given a random gift, either points, gems, or crystals.

Bank square

If you pass, you will have to pay. The payment is equal to 5 times the bank's factor, which usually starts at 1.
If you land, you will have the option of either taking all the money from the bank times the bank's factor, or keeping the money in the bank and increasing the factor by 1.

Roadblock

If you do not end up landing on this square, the number of coins you have must be equal to, or greater than, the number of the associated roadblock square, in order to continue in the current direction. If you don't have enough coins, you will be forced to come back the way you came. Note that, should you be allowed to pass, you don't actually lose the coins.
If you land, you will be allowed to continue your path unconditionally..

Online Party

The best part about Crazy Party is the ability to play online.
When you first start Crazy Party, you are asked to enter a username. This is displayed during online games and also acts as the name of your server, if you choose to start one.

Connecting to a server

There are three ways to find servers on Crazy Party. In all cases, if a game is already in progress, you will be placed in a queue of waiting connections and entered into the next round.

List

You can list all the servers that are currently active and listed as public on the Crazy Party directory.

Search for servers

This allows you to choose a game mode that you wish to play in and will regularly check the directory to see if any servers come online that match those criteria.

Enter credentials

If a server is private, you can manually enter their credentials into the game and connect that way.

Creating a Server

Crazy Party can create two types of server.
Public servers are listed on the Crazy Party directory and are searched by other clients. This means that your username shows up as a server when a client does a server search.
Private servers are not listed on the directory and thus have to be accessed in the traditional way, with a host address and port.
The online party mode works with UDP, on port 2500 by default. This can be changed from the options menu.
If you wish to open a server, check that your firewall does not block the game and that the port is properly redirected in your router.
If applicable, Crazy Party may attempt to redirect the port with MiniUPnP.

Playing Online

When playing online, there are various games, modes, and extras that the server can choose to set.

Party type

Minigame
The server chooses a number of random minigames from its unlocked selection and the party begins.
Note: If you have unlocked the very expensive custom settings, you can choose how many you want to play, all the way up to your whole shebang of unlocked treasures. Otherwise, the default is 10.
Minigame+Battle
The server chooses a number of random minigames from its unlocked selection, with the possibility of a battle, and the party begins.
Microgame
Six tiny games, where your objective is to find the ruby.
Battle
Square up to your enemy and fight a number of battles!
Cooperative Battle
Fight battles with teams. If there is only one team in the online party, the other team will be filled with arena challengers.
Board
A turnbased board game. Nothing more relaxing.

Teams

Teams allow players to compete alongside, as well as against, others. When working in team mode, all the people who have allied themselves to a particular team will be treated as a whole. Those who have chosen not to attach themselves to a team will be playing as individuals, as if teams were disabled.
No Teams
This means that teams are not even allowed in this game.
Team scores average
At the end of each round, each individual's score is tallied and averaged to become the team's score.
Team scores addition
At the end of each round, each individual's score is tallied and added together to become the team's score.

Modes

Quiet
In quiet mode, all the games progress as they would offline. The games are determined by the server and the clients deal the gameboard. Scores are then ranked at the end of the party.
Competition
In competition mode, the server sets the playing field, and all the games where there is a specific goal to be met in a certain time limit are played as a race. The first person who reaches that goal not only wins their points, but also completes the challenge, meaning everyone else's game is cut short.

Settings

Special bonuses
Available in the minigame and board parties only. In this mode, rubies are laid out randomly on some maps. At the end of the party, bonuses are rewarded for:
Joker
The joker allows you to avoid a minigame when one is announced. Hold J down to activate it after the game is announced. In this case you will play a microgame instead.
Moderation
When moderation is enabled, chats and team swapping is disabled to avoid spam.
Player location
When player location is enabled, the game will represent each player on the gameboard with a blip sound. If a player is near you, you will hear this blip every time the player takes a step, and thus be able to track the progress of others.

The Deck Manager

The Deck Manager shows you all the cards you have unlocked, and allows you to add them into up to 12 automatically created decks, numbered 1 to 12, without the need to create them with the old text file method.
Simply choose the deck you wish to manage, and press enter to look through your available cards.
By default, the decks are simply given numbers. But they can also be named.
  1. Highlight the number of the deck you wish to rename.
  2. Press enter, as if to display the deck.
  3. Before the deck shows up, I.E. while the activation beep is playing, hit the N key. A window will appear asking you for the name of the deck.
When you are inside the cards list, up and down arrows move between combat types, while left and right move between the cards available in that type. When you select a card, you will be asked how many you want to put in the deck. Again, these are saved instantly.

Options

Crazy Party allows you to configure various options, as described below.

Select the Language

Crazy Party is a multilingual game. As of Beta49, you can choose the game to speak to you in English, French, Spanish, Portuguese and a few others. Once you have selected a language, the setting is saved and takes effect immediately.

Change your Username

So that you can be easily identified online, the game will ask you for a username when you first start. You can change your username from here. As with the language, once you have entered your new name, it is saved immediately.

Check for Updates

The game will check the server for the latest version and notify you if an update is available.

Generate the Battle Cards Reference file

Generates a file giving you information about all the battle cards you have unlocked.

Try to redirect the port using Mini-UPNP

Some people are unable to forward ports directly using their router, either because of their environment, technical knowledge etc. Crazy Party comes with a utility called Mini-UPNP which can help, in certain circumstances, to resolve this issue.

Choose your Server's Port

If you don't want to go messing with port forwarding, but you know that you have a certain port open, you can change the game to use that port instead of the default. The option is saved and takes effect immediately after the new port is entered.

Save the Current Sound Settings

Sound settings (such as music and master volumes, pitch and movement settings) are not automatically saved. Instead, if you know that you will be constantly using these or similar settings, you can save the settings here. As with all options, this takes effect immediately.

Reset the sound settings to their factory defaults

If you have saved custom sound settings, this will reset them to defaults.

Minigames

The minigames are small trials. Each game is either played in 1D (as a sidescroller), or 2D (from a top-down point of view). Still others don't have any map at all, and some have maps where movement is automatic.
The easiest way to play them is to select the adventure mode, allowing you to browse worlds with minigames. But you can also play minigames on a board, by playing online, or by unlocking a reward.
To unlock a minigame, you must get a score of at least 10 points. When you unlock 10 minigames, you can launch online minigames parties.
Each game records statistics about any previous playthroughs:

Glossary

The game will refer to various terms which may be difficult to understand for people who have never had vision.

Microgames

Microgames are extremely small games, 20 seconds long, in which the objective is to find a ruby. These are only playable online.

Credits

Game credits

Documentation credits