How Does Sweet Home's Party System Work?
Five people, two parties, one tool each, and death that does not undo.
Sweet Home runs five playable characters at once, split into two parties exploring one mansion. Each character owns one essential tool, and the mansion's puzzles are built so that all five tools matter. It plays less like a Dragon Quest party than like a rescue team you are slowly, permanently losing.
Combat is menu-driven and seen from the first person, against ghosts, zombies, and dolls met in random encounters. The system's real subject is not fighting. It is attrition: every room asks whether you can still afford the people you have left.
THE FIVE
One person, one toolKazuo · the lighter
The crew's leader carries the lighter, used to burn away what blocks the mansion's paths.
Taguchi · the camera
The photographer. His camera flash exposes what the dark hides, including the frescoes the crew came for. In the fan translation his name is shortened to Taro.
Akiko · the medicine box
The healer. Her kit cures the party's ailments, and she is the character the design protects least and needs most.
Asuka · the vacuum cleaner
The art restorer carries the vacuum, clearing the dust and debris that cover the mansion's secrets.
Emi · the key
Kazuo's daughter carries the key that opens the mansion's locked doors. Lose her early and the house stays shut in places the substitutes only partly fix.
THE RULES
How the system bitesTwo parties, switch freely
The five move as two independent parties of up to three. The player switches between them at any time, and when one party is caught in a battle, the other can be called in, so all five can fight together, unless the mansion's traps have split them beyond reach.
Death is permanent
There is no revival and no inn. A character who dies is dead for the rest of the game, and the story continues without them. Health comes only from tonics scattered through the rooms.
The substitutes
The design refuses to soft-lock you. For every essential tool there is a weaker stand-in hidden in the house: matches for the lighter, a broom for the vacuum, a wire for the key, a Polaroid for the camera, cookies for the medicine box. A dead specialist makes the game harder, never impossible.
Items belong to the house
Anything can be dropped anywhere and picked up later by someone else. Inventory is a shared, spatial problem: who carries what, and where you left the thing you now need, three rooms and two parties away.