The Jackbox Party Pack

Genre: Compilation / Party Games

Players: 1-100 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.

The first collection in the Jackbox Party Pack series includes entries in three of the series’ most iconic series of games: You Don’t Know Jack, Fibbage, and Drawful, making this a good package to choose for anyone new to these games, since it also has some decent variety.

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
You Don’t Know Jack 2015	Party Game (Trivia)	1-4 Competitive (Local)	B-
tl;dr You Don’t Know Jack is a Trivia-focused Party Game, an entry in probably the best-known series in the Jackbox roster. It’s a grab-bag of odd trivia questions with a scatterbrained presentation that’s a part of its charm, but under the eccentricities what’s here is a fairly standard trivia game.
Drawful	Party Game	3-8 Competitive (Local)	A
tl;dr Drawful is a Party Game that challenges players to use their touchscreens to sketch out various prompts and then vote on what other players’ prompts are depicting. It’s a delightful game that anyone of any level of artistic skill can play, and it makes for a lot of hilarity while at the same time still being a good challenge to convey ideas visually.
Word Spud	Party Game	2-8 Competitive/Cooperative (Local)	D-
tl;dr Word Spud is a Party Game where players each take turns adding words onto an increasingly ungainly sentence. Unfortunately, it all feels aimless and ultimately pointless, with players’ ratings of others’ words feeling completely arbitrary. This might be interesting as a short novelty, but it doesn’t have anything to keep you coming back.
Lie Swatter	Party Game (Trivia)	1-100 Competitive (Local)	B+
tl;dr Lie Swatter is an extraordinarily simple Party Game where players are presented with a series of statements and must determine whether they are true or a lie. This extreme simplicity makes it a game capable of supporting a massive 100 players in one session, but it also made it fairly divisive – this is one of the games that most separated casual players from more serious gamers, with the casual players liking it far more.
Fibbage XL	Party Game (Trivia)	2-8 Competitive (Local)	A-
tl;dr Fibbage XL is a Party Game where players are given an obscure question and prompted to create their own fake answer. Then players try to guess the correct answer from within all of the fake ones. It’s a hilarious spin on the trivia game that means that even if you’re not a trivia master you can still score big by fooling others. This is an all-around fantastic game, and it touts an additional 50% more questions than the original Fibbage.

All in all, this is an excellent selection of games, with Drawful and Fibbage XL being the real standouts, although the only real stinker of the bunch is Word Spud. Each game has its own distinct presentation, making this really feel like five distinct games instead of one game segmented into five sections. The $25 price tag, even now multiple years after launch, is a bit steep, but given the good amount of fun content here I’d argue it’s probably worth it on the whole, even more so if you can catch it on sale.

All in all, The Jackbox Party Pack is an excellent collection that includes some fantastic party games, with a few of the titles being some of the best games they’ve ever made and only one dud in the group. If you’re looking for a great party game to share with casual players that will never even need to touch a Nintendo Switch controller to play it, The Jackbox Party Pack is a great choice.

tl;dr – The Jackbox Party Pack is a Collection of mostly Trivia-focused Party Games that includes five games that players play using their Smartphone instead of a controller. Two of the games in this collection are phenomenal, and only one of the games here isn’t worth trying. Plus, many of the games included here represent some of Jackbox’s most iconic series, making this first collection one of the best packages they’ve released. All in all, this is a fantastic Party game well worth getting.

Grade: B+

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