The Jackbox Party Pack is a selection of party games suitable for fun in a variety of situations, wether for a family gathering at christmas after dinner, or down to simple weekend gatherings with friends for a little extra entertainment there are games suitable for all.
To play along you simply need only one copy of the game for all players no matter where they are based in the world, and they join in by entering a room code at jackbox.tv, from there they are given the appropriate tool for the game wether it be the choices or a drawpad. With this working on google chrome you can turn any mobile device, laptop, pc or pad into a platform for joining in, wether in the same room or on the other side of the world.
Although the games are suitable for all family members there can be more adult humour based upon the answers and mindsets of the contestants playing, with obvious blanks for inuendo’s in fibbage xl that could be answered very innocently but this will often not be the case. This game is perfect for playing over streams also because there is no timing element involved and filling in blanks and choosing the correct answer from those proposed is a fairly easy going way of playing with audience members or other youtubers, and with up to 8 players the answers you have to choose from could truly be anything.
The five games included in the pack include a highly polished multimedia quiz experience that contains 50 episodes which last anything from 15 to 20 minutes long each and can be played from one to four players. The quiz itself however has a twist where often the questions are concealed in some way wether it be a hidden question within a question or a pupper and old man who speak in such a manner that the question is very distinctly obscured. Points are awarded based upon how fast you answer, and also taken away if you get it incorrect in equally measured scales so often if you don’t know jack the best option is to sit back and wait for your opponents to answer.
Wordspud is the most adaptive game where you can set your own rules as points are awarded by the players themselves, and you can set themes and punishments of your own devising or just cheat and award nobody any points and hope not to get noticed depending on how mean you’re playing.
Drawful tends to be everyone’s favourite game of the pack where you’re given something to draw and then one by one your pictures are put up for other players to place titles they think other players will choose in order to steal the points, bear in mind that the game will deliberately mask answers sometimes with typo’s or really obscure answers so it won’t always be the simple and easiest answer provided.
Lie swatter is the final game in the pack, where the question is sent to all players and with up to 100 players is the most stream friendly game for audience interaction, however you will most likely lose everytime to an audience which always seem to know more than the streamer in every instance, especially when you have a lot of viewers taking part the chances become ever slimmer that you’d succeed in being number one. The challenge has been set.
Although there is no DLC at present this game could easily adapt the quiz standard expansions such as themed question packs following common tropes like movies, sci-fi and even video games (ironic) This would be easily transferred into most of the games in the pack and perhaps give some people with a less broad knowledge a better chance of success, especially with you don’t know jack which often the challenge is simply completing the game with a positive score.
I even have the idea that any future games developed by jackbox games could potentially be added to the pack as dlc for convenience and one idea I had that would be rather difficult to code would be a version of family fortunes/family fued where the viewing audience fill the blank for the answer pool and the main players on teams could then pick the answers to win from those, this would make it immensely difficult especially if you have a viewer audience of trolls or there are common themes and tropes in your audience like “dongers” “fred durst” or other commonly used tropes.
Without any expansion though this game still has enough to last you for pretty much your whole partying life, even if you are a hardcore gamer and hold many parties in the pack you’d never get through the entire content to have to worry about duplication too much, the only issue would be if you’ve played on someone elses pack but that has been addressed with an episode select feature so you can skip past the questions that your guests may have already played elsewhere and have everyone on an equal footing for playing along.
I’ve had a lot of fun with the game and for a price of £18.99 I think its well worth the investment, because it can become a good escuse to hold more social gatherings and spend time with friends and family.
http://store.steampowered.com/app/331670/?snr=1_1050_1051__1050