Panty Party

The game opens with anime girls in what looks like a destroyed schoolyard, and you realize pretty quick that they’re not the characters—the underwear is. The actual combatants are panties. Cute girls’ panties fighting it out in a 3D arena styled after Tekken. I’m not making this up. The game is real, it’s on Steam, it’s on the Switch in Japan, and it exists because someone genuinely made it.

I’m not sure how to categorize this thing. There are the obvious AAA titles burning millions of dollars. The clever indie games that do a lot with almost nothing. And then there’s that weird pocket where something exists and you can’t tell if someone was joking or if they actually believed in the vision. Panty Party lives in that third space, except the strange part is that it kind of works.

The premise is stupid on purpose: cute girls’ underwear fights each other to save humanity from evil. But the game is committed to that stupidity. The 3D world is deliberately sparse and a little depressing. The music is synth and bouncy, the colors all candy bright. Up to four players can beat each other senseless with their panties while anime girls cheer from the sidelines. And the longer you play, the more you find yourself emotionally invested in a pair of pink underwear with little red bows.

What gets me is that someone made this instead of something else. They had the time, the talent maybe, probably some money, and they chose to make a fighting game where the fighters are panties. That’s either the most pointless decision ever or the most honest. I haven’t figured out which. The game is exactly what it promises to be—no irony, no winking at the camera, just committed to its own weirdness. If that appeals to you, you’re probably going to have fun. If it doesn’t, you’ll hate it in five minutes. I’m still not sure which one I am.