Fibbage XL

Genre: Party Game (Trivia)

Players: 2-8 Competitive (Local)

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Review:

Fibbage is a Party Trivia game that actually first released on Amazon Fire devices in 2014 before being ported to other platforms, with the XL version of the game (which includes 50% more questions) having previously made it to the Nintendo Switch in The Jackbox Party Pack in 2017. For those who are curious, you can see my review of that collection here, but the short version is that I found Fibbage XL to be one of the best games in that package. However, for players not wanting to take the plunge on a $25 collection of five games, they can now instead opt to buy just this one game for $10, since it has been released separately for the Nintendo Switch in 2020.

Visually, Fibbage XL is fairly simple, mostly just showing text questions with various backgrounds and transition animations. It never looks visually boring, but doesn’t do anything impressive either. For a trivia game, it’s fine though. It’s the sound where the game puts most of the effort of its presentation, with all of the game’s questions read to the player, often with quippy little comments, by the game’s host, Cookie (of You Don’t Know Jack fame… and who I’m pretty sure is not related to Cookie Monster). This bit of light-hearted joking really helps to keep the game moving.

However, it’s the gameplay itself that’s the real draw here. While players use a traditional controller to set up the game’s lobby, the majority of the game is played using a smartphone or some other personal internet-connected device. Basically, playing this game requires each player to have their own modern internet-capable device, and for most this means the Smartphones the majority of us already own, with this game supporting up to eight players at a time. The game creates an online lobby with a room code, and players use their internet-connected devices to go to the Jackbox.tv website and enter the code to join the room.

It’s an unusual setup, to be sure, but it’s one that ensures that each player has access to their own private screen, which is a necessary element of this game as players will be not only answering questions in private, but doing so with the goal of tricking other players.

See, the idea of this game is that it’s a trivia game where players probably won’t know most of the answers, but that’s okay, because the first part of the two-part process is answering the wacky questions with something that sounds like it could be a plausible answer to that question. For example, you might get the question “Marcella Hazan is the culinary guru who pioneered the unusual technique of cooking duck with a ________”, and your first job is to answer with something that sounds like it might convince the other players it’s true, usually a “so crazy it must be true!” sorta’ answer. Flamethrower? Jar of pickle juice? Turbine jet engine? Hey, the question did say it was unusual.

After players have answered with their (probably) fake answers, players are then shown all of their answers mixed in with the real answer, and must sniff out the real answer among the fakes, with players getting points both for guessing correctly and for successfully fooling other players.

As such, each round becomes a contest not only about picking the right answer, but of designing a wrong answer so convincing that it fools the other players, and given the off-the-wall nature of some of the questions, you’ll find players coming up with all manner of hilarious answers. Er… and pretty much every group is probably gonna’ come up with some funny off-color answers too (but hey, occasionally the off-color answer is the right one.

It is this atmosphere of wacky fun and clever trickery with a smidge of insight into real-world knowledge that really makes this game shine, and even if you’re not a good trivia master, you can still win just by knowing how to fool the other players or create a convincing answer.

There are a few areas where this game has a few necessary drawbacks. Firstly, if spelling and grammar aren’t areas you’re very good with, you’ll find it difficult to craft a convincing lie – the game doesn’t misspell its answers or use poor punctuation, so any user-submitted lies that make these mistakes will stick out like a sore thumb. Also, while Cookie makes for a decent host, I did find a lot of his jokes fell a bit flat.

Overall though, Fibbage XL is a fantastic party game, and one that’s pretty easy to invite just about anyone to play (as long as they don’t mind occasional questions that insinuate adult answers). However, whether it’s a good value is debatable. Is it more worth your while to get the full Jackbox Party Pack with all five games for $25, or one of the better games in that collection for a mere $10? I’ll leave it to you to decide that one.

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. Having said that, this game is already included in the first of the Jackbox Party Pack series on the Nintendo Switch, so players might want to weigh the value of this game against that package.

Grade: A-

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