Smash Boats is a brand new multiplayer arcade party game from developer Smash House Games. The game features boat-on-boat combat, but in a fun playful way where you play as tiny toy boats. Your goal is to smash everything and everyone and be the last boat standing. Smash Boats can be played solo or as a party game with up to four players. You can even play the solo game as a couch cop-op game which is exclusive to the Nintendo Switch version. More on that later.

Smash Boats is mainly an arcade game with no story. You either choose regular Smash Boats mode, Co-Op, or Party. Regular and co-op are basically the same, just with extra players. Party mode allows you to battle others with two game types – Booty Bash and Pool Crash. Booty Bash is a race to see who can collect the most coins while Pool Crash sees who can sink the most pool balls.

For most players, you’ll be heading into the regular Smash Boats mode to play solo. This is basically campaign mode where you do from level to level completing challenges and sinking boats. At each level, you can collect stars that go towards unlocking new arenas. To keep things feeling fresh and challenging, each new stage you play introduces newer and more difficult enemy boats to defeat. Not only that, the number of them that also spawn increases.

The gameplay is relatively simple with the overall objective being to just sink all the enemy boats. You do this mainly by ramming into each of the boats or hitting them with any special attacks each boat has. It’s also possible to slam them from above. The game also has a nuke power-up. If you collect the letters SMASH, you get a nuke that will destroy all the boats on the field. If you want to evade an attack, you can submerge your boat for a couple of seconds and you can also brake or boost.

In terms of fun, I’d say that Smash Boats is very fun. It’s definitely different and I like how they use toy boats as a theme to make it more lighthearted. That doesn’t mean it’s light on the action and competitiveness. There’s plenty of action in the game and you’ll end up having tons of fun playing with your friends as well. This is the type of co-op and multiplayer couch game that I love because it means my whole family can enjoy Smash Boats together.

Smash Boats is available now on the Nintendo eShop.