Jackbox Party Pack is one of those multiplayer games that my family and I play constantly. Every major holiday we spend together, many of our Friday Night Magic game nights, and so many family get togethers are anchored by playing Jackbox Party Pack. It literally brings my family together, and is one of the few games everyone in my family can enjoy without worrying about a high barrier of entry. Got a phone and a sense of humor? Boom - you can play Jackbox.
We're on the cusp of Jackbox Party Pack 10 releasing this month, and the inevitable game nights I have to plan around now, I was happy that back at PAX West, the team at Jackbox invited me to play a build of the party game with some other journalists. What ensued was nothing short of the wacky fun that I've come to love about Jackbox over the years.
Being The Center Of Game Nights Everywhere
Jackbox has this uncanny ability to take relatively simple party games and make them the center of game nights everywhere. For my family, it started years ago with Jackbox Party Pack 3 and the game my mother in particular likes, Fakin' It. Quiplash is another that really has my family flexing its creative muscles (and since we have to play with the family-friendly setting turned on, really constraining mine). These are just the preludes to the game that I like the most: Trivia Murder Party, where I can finally put the obscure history and cultural knowledge I spend my downtime learning to use.
At PAX West, I asked Jackbox Games CEO Mike Bilder about what it was like knowing their games are quintessential to family game nights everywhere, especially as a way to get kids involved.
"It's been great," Bilder told me. "We intentionally have been designing these games so that they're accessible to all age ranges. [...] Your story is very familiar, as you would imagine. Holidays come about, families get together, they play our games a lot during that time frame. So it's nice when kids and adults comingle and play together. Some games can't do that trick."
"I think especially, not only content-wise but just being able to jump in and join and quickly understand is a huge thing, too," creative director Brooke Breit added. "That's why it works so well for families and groups to get together. Not everybody has to be a gamer to kind of jump in and have a good understanding of how to play."
Content-wise, Jackbox Party Pack 10 is basically has something for everyone as well. With a sequel to my daughter's favorite game, Tee K.O. 2, a game where you design a T-Shirt and really break out your drawing skills, as well as four completely new titles, there doesn't seem to be a shortage of content coming from the Jackbox team.
A Musical Number
Jackbox Party Pack 10 has a game that, I honestly think, might become my favorite since Trivia Murder Party. Dodo-Re-Mi is essentially a hand-held rhythm game that has you pick an instrument, a royalty-free song, and then try to survive being eaten by a hungry, hungry, Dodo-eating plant. The key is to get as many notes right and in time - together - as you can.
In our play session at PAX, I assumed, given my musical background, that I would be excellent at this. Man, was I wrong.
While you can calibrate the notes on your phone before the song properly begins, once it's going, the chaos of the room kind of takes over. Hearing all the other journalists around me try to keep time and perfectly tap the phone screen produced a cacophony of sound that I just was not prepared for, I think. Depending on the instrument you choose too the song can be quite hard actually to hear as you're tapping out the notes.
But when it's over, the song replays based on how well you and your team did. We, um, did not survive, not helped at all by my own inability to keep time in the large room. I'm usually so good at these games, and I cannot wait to get another crack at it - especially knowing my family are masters at phone rhythm games.
Hypnotic Feelings
Another game we played was Hypnotorious, a game that is going to likely get as much play as Fakin' It does in my house. Instead of someone trying to blend in a fake it, Hypnotorious gives everyone a secret character and a list of questions to answer as if they were that character. All of them are connected - except for one, the outlier.
The task is to work together to try to sort players by their character and what connects them. In the Press Play Hour at PAX, we were separated into Weddings, Halloween, and Christmas. As a result, the items our characters represented were tangentially related, but just enough wiggle room there to help the outlier escape detection.
One of the best twists about Hypnotorious is that the Outlier themselves don't actually know they are the Outlier. Unlike Fakin' It, where the Faker does know, the Outlier is as much in the dark and is working with the rest of the group to try to suss themselves out.
We worked together in our group to try to find the Outlier, yet in the end, they managed to escape detection, taking all the points with them in the process. I really enjoyed this - it honestly felt like the best of both Fakin' It and Quiplash, and I can't wait for the shenanigans that my family brings to bear to ensue. It's going to be fun.
Timey Wimey Trivia
Timejinx fits the role of the trivia game this time around, and it was probably the most fun I had, mostly because I had been terrible at Dodo-re-mi. I swear I'll get better.
Timejinx sees each player try to guess where on a timeline an event occurred, getting as close to it as possible if you don't have the correct answer already in your head. This is right up my alley as remembering obscure historical dates is something I find myself doing without even really trying.
The scoring is a bit like golf, where you want the lowest amount of points possible, as you gain points based on the number of years away from the correct date you are. In our session, this was one of the few where I felt like I was near the top of the pack, correctly guessing some dates early on.
However, it only takes one wrong answer to royally screw you up - which is what happened when I guessed something that was 30 years apart from my actual answer. See, Timejinx does try to play with your mind a bit here as well by giving you a timeline to choose from - and sometimes, these timelines are a bit too generous.
That said, I can't wait to get another crack at it and play against someone like my Dad, who has the same affinity for obscure historical trivia as I do.
Crafting The Content
After ten years and 50+ individual games, you'd think that the Jackbox team was running out of ideas. Thankfully, they aren't, as evidenced by the fun new games that Party Pack 10 has brought to bear.
"We're definitely not," Mike Bilder said with a smile when I asked him this question. "There's always been a backlog of games that have been pitched in the past that have never been greenlit or needed a little more time to cook to decide if they're ready for the next party pack. So we always fall back on those. We always do a big ideation phase where new concepts come up, and everybody gets a pitch. So I don't think there is a shortage of ideas."
One of the new games that made it through to Party Pack 10 highlights that creativity - Fixy Text. The pitch: we've all collaborated on Google Docs before, but what if we all had to collaborate on a certain point, in real-time, without the ability to delete or change what we've previously typed?
Fixy Text was a roaring good time during the play hour at PAX. A group of people who literally write for a living trying to answer a text prompt in a living document would always end hilariously, and it didn't disappoint. We ran over each other's sentences and words, creating long, incomprehensible words that elicited laughs all around.
It's these types of games, and the fact that Jackbox does it so consistently each time around, that makes it so I'm not too worried about future installments either. According to Brooke, the ideas come from all over the company as well, meaning there is a large pool of creative talent to pull from as well.
"Ideas come from anywhere in the company. So it's not exclusive to a certain department, anybody in the company is encouraged to pitch."
Brooke mentions that these pitches come in different ways as well, with some building digital prototypes and holding playtests before pitching them to the Greenlight committee. And while the Greenlight Committee ultimately will decide which games move forward, sometimes, according to Bilder, those pitches need to be explored a bit further to see if they will work before fully greenlighting them.
"If the mechanic requires a digital prototype, we'll usually do a yellow light instead of a green light or red light. And that means we need to see how this will work."
So What's Next?
So, ten years of Jackbox has brought a lot of party games into the mix, yet the studio doesn't really show signs of slowing down, either. It does make me wonder whether or not Jackbox will look to stretch its wings a bit more outside of just party games, though.
"We're not really announcing anything, so I can't give you inside details," Bilder said when asked what the next ten years look like. However, he did leave me with a tidbit to chew on.
"The Party Pack franchise has been successful for us and our fans really enjoy it. So it's safe to say we'll keep making party games like this.
But we've also kind of grown the studio larger than it has ever been. We have more creative folks that can do things. so we're looking at doing more than just being a one-game studio."
As someone who busts out the Party Pack at many a family gathering, I can only say that we'll keep playing them as long as they are being made, but I can't wait to see what else the team ends up doing in the long run.
