The Jackbox Party Pack 6

Genre: Compilation / Party Games

Players: 1-10 Competitive (Local) (4 Recommended)

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Review:

The Jackbox Party Pack series of games are a collection of various Party Games that generally fall in the realm of trivia games and social silly-inducing games much along the same lines of physical games like Cards Against Humanity. In every game within these collections, players play not with a game controller, but with their smartphone or internet-connected device with a current browser. The game creates a private room on the Jackbox.tv website that players log into using a four-letter code on their own personal devices. This way, every player has their own private screen to feed them information, input responses, and even make crude drawings in some games.

This method of play means that even though the game is played locally, the Nintendo Switch must be connected online to work properly, and every player must have their own browser-capable internet-connected device, although on the bright side, it is a multiplayer game that does not require more than one single controller.

I should note that while some Jackbox games offer options to play family-friendly versions, many of the games in these collections either contain mature content, or will likely prompt players to create their own mature content, so this may not be the best game to play with little ones.

While not quite as bad as Party Pack 4, Party Pack 6 was nevertheless seen as a disappointment by our group, with only one actually good game, two mediocre ones and two bad ones. What’s more, that one good game, Push the Button, is the first Jackbox game that actually requires four players, really limiting the appeal of this collection.

In reviewing these games, I did something a bit different than usual – I got together a group of players and we all graded these games individually, averaging together our scores. Our group included both expert gamers as well as casual players who don’t usually play videogames, but our assessment of these games was usually pretty close to one another. Here’s what we thought of each game in this collection:

Game	Genre	# of Players	Score
Trivia Murder Party 2	Party Game (Trivia)	1-8 Competitive (Local)	C+
tl;dr Trivia Murder Party is, like its predecessor, a Trivia-focused Party Game. And also like the first game, this game absolutely delivers in the presentation department, with great theming referencing some classic horror films. Unfortunately, it still suffers from the randomness that limited the appeal of the first game.
Role Models	Party Game	3-6 Competitive (Local)	C
tl;dr Role Models is a Party Game where players vote on which traits or descriptions they would assign to other members of the group. It’s a decent enough game if a group knows each other well, but less so if they don’t, and while the game is technically playable with only three players, it really needs more to be worth your while.
Joke Boat	Party Game	3-8 Competitive (Local)	D+
tl;dr Joke Boat is a Party Game that’s basically like playing Mad Libs with predictable joke templates. For a game with “joke” in the title, this game is dreadfully unfunny, although I suppose that could have just been our group. In any case, we found this game to be really boring.
Dictionarium	Party Game	3-8 Competitive (Local)	D+
tl;dr Dictionarium is a Party Game where players come up with fictional words and fictional definitions, then vote on their favorites. Our group found this game to be dull and pointless, working out to be just a popularity contest for nonsense.
Push the Button	Party Game	4-10 Competitive (Local)	B
tl;dr Push the Button is a Party Game in the realm of social deduction games like Werewolf and Mafia, where a few of the players are secretly aliens trying to blend in with the crew. This is a decent but not great game in this style, although the high player requirement restricts how playable this game is.

While this isn’t the worst selection of Jackbox game, this package may nevertheless be the least appealing, with no truly great games here, and with the best game of the bunch limited in appeal. Party Pack 4 may have been worse than this, but that at least had one great game to tempt players to get it.

As before, each game has its own distinct presentation, making this really feel like five distinct games instead of one game segmented into five sections. The $30 price tag is pretty steep, especially with so little in this collection to really entice players to buy into it.

Jackbox Party Pack 6 still has some good Party Gaming, but there’s nothing truly great here, and overall the quality of games here is fairly low. If you’re looking for a good selection of Party Games, you may find some of what’s here worth playing, but nearly every other Jackbox collection has more to offer you than this one.

tl;dr – The Jackbox Party Pack 6 is a Collection of Party Games that includes five games that players play using their Smartphone instead of a controller. While this isn’t the worst collection of games Jackbox has put out, it is still a pretty terrible selection of games with little that stands out. I recommend you get one of the other Jackbox collections instead.

Grade: C

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