Jackbox Party Pack 11: There ain’t no party like a Jackbox party, ‘cause the Jackbox party is BACK
Jackbox Party Pack is BACK baby! After a year away from party packs, the Jackbox team has come roaring back into the world of party games with Jackbox Party Pack 11. This party pack features five brand new games, all with that Jackbox quirkiness and sense of humour we’ve come to know and love. Whilst I don’t love all the games in this new pack, the ones I do love are absolutely frickin fantastic.
Legends of Trivia is basically Jackbox’s answer to the question “what would happen if pub trivia and a fantasy rpg had a baby?”
This. It would be this.
This game takes you on a journey through trivia, where you encounter monsters and bad guys that require a sound grasp on trivia knowledge in order to beat them dead. Every correct answer causes damage, and every wrong one leaves you open to attack. By working together with your team and drawing on the different pools of random facts you know, you rally your knowledge to deliver devastating attacks to your foes…. If you have any knowledge that is.
The questions are a good mix of genres, however if you don’t surround yourself with a diverse team that knows a bunch of different things, you’re going to get your ass kicked. Whilst I know a lot about 90’s sitcoms and The Simpsons, that’s about where my trivia skills end – and my husband’s knowledge of random crap only got us so far. It got to the point where we really had to brute force our way through some of the questions (damn you American sports teams) and that took a loooooooooong time.
I think this one would be great to play in a bigger group, or even as an icebreaker or team builder style activity – but it’s not going to be one I come back to quickly.
Hear Say, on the other hand, is one of the new games I loved. It’s an audio recording game, one which the team was super proud of for its accessibility – and they’re not wrong. Hear Say is the kind of game that anybody can pick up and play without ever having played a Jackbox game (or any other video game) before. The aim is simple: you’ll be given a scenario and asked to make a corresponding noise to go along with it.
Some of the scenarios we got given were “New rules all houseguests must follow” and “the sound you make going down a big slide” – prompts that, by themselves, are not funny, but once you add in ridiculous noises, become hilarious.
The one drawback to this game was that playing in-person was really difficult. A lot of the prompts require the players to record sounds at the same time, which means if you’re all sitting in a room together, the different sounds will get picked up in each other’s recordings. When I played this, I kept leaving the room to record my sounds, and even that wasn’t enough to stop my voice from carrying into other people’s recordings. (In before the ‘har har Jenn is loud’ jokes).
Though in-person proved to be difficult, this is the absolute perfect game for playing on discord with people, or even on stream with viewers. It’s simple, fun, and with the right people can be oh-so-funny.
Some of the scenarios we got given were “New rules all houseguests must follow” and “the sound you make going down a big slide” – prompts that, by themselves, are not funny, but once you add in ridiculous noises, become hilarious.
The one drawback to this game was that playing in-person was really difficult. A lot of the prompts require the players to record sounds at the same time, which means if you’re all sitting in a room together, the different sounds will get picked up in each other’s recordings. When I played this, I kept leaving the room to record my sounds, and even that wasn’t enough to stop my voice from carrying into other people’s recordings. (In before the ‘har har Jenn is loud’ jokes).
Though in-person proved to be difficult, this is the absolute perfect game for playing on discord with people, or even on stream with viewers. It’s simple, fun, and with the right people can be oh-so-funny.
Like Pictionary if it was drawn on cookies, Cookie Haus is a cosy little game where you fulfill prompts by decorating different cookies. Customers will come in and ask for a cookie that looks like “Something you’d see in a rainforest”, and you then have to choose your cookie shape and decorate it accordingly. The feeling of drawing on these cookies is incredibly satisfying – it almost has a haptic feel to it that makes it seem like you’re actually decorating a cookie. The icing also looks just like royal icing, and the variety of decorating tools you have gives you just enough freedom to showcase your creativity.
Like in Tee K.O (one of my favourite Jackbox games ever), Cookie Haus has a mode where you build on the designs of the people in your group. This is, personally, where I had the most fun as this is where this cosy cookie game becomes absolute chaos. You take a beautiful cookie your friend created and you wreck it (well, ok, you don’t have to wreck it… but I did).
Cookie Haus is another one of those games that anybody can pick it up and play – the prompts are simple enough, and if your cookie looks like crap it doesn’t matter – you’ll get some points just for trying.
Suspectives is the brand new mystery game where you play a detective tasked with solving a crime… unless you’re the filthy scoundrel who committed the crime, that is. You start by filling out a survey of seemingly random questions – some personal, some general knowledge, and then you’re told of the heinous crime that has been committed by someone in your group.
The game progresses in rounds where you’re basically either interrogating someone or blaming someone. The questions you answered at the beginning form the basis of your investigation, and you go through the different rounds trying to sniff out the criminal amongst your group of friends.
Through your excellent powers of deduction, some lie detector tests and being able to see the look of guilt on your friend’s lying criminal faces, you have to decide who among you is the criminal, and who is innocent.
Suspectives heavily favours the detectives, as there’s only one criminal per round and it can feel a little hopeless at times – but even if you get found out, it’s still an enjoyable ride the whole way through.
Whilst all of the games in Party Pack 11 have their ups and downs, Doominate is one where I saw only positives. I freaking LOVE this game.
Hosted by the lovable Jim Reaper, Dominate is a game where you ruin things. And oh boy do I love to ruin things (a note to my editor, no smartarse comments, thank you).
Doominate is the tried and true “try to write the funniest prompt you can” game and it’s the frickin best – probably one of my favourite Jackbox games in a while.
You and your group will get given prompts such as “a brand new car” and then have to ruin it by saying, oh I don’t know, something like “but someone gave birth in the backseat”. You then go head to head against your mates and vote for the one you liked the most.
The second round gets you to create the prompts yourself, by answering pretty generalised questions, such as “name something you like to eat”. To that you might answer “chocolate cake”, and as your thoughts fill with cake, you have to watch in horror as someone wrecks it by writing “but the chocolate is made of little bits of human crap”.
The last round has you try and redeem all the awful things you’ve said by spinning the prompts from trauma inducing, to wholesome. This round is all about fixing what you wrecked… if possible. You might be able to take that chocolate cake made from bits of human crap and put a positive twist on it like… “so you ate a salad instead”.
Ok that’s a bad example because who the heck looks at salad and goes “oh boy that’s definitely better than cake” but you get the idea.
Party Pack 11 really feels like a return to greatness for the Jackbox team. All the games are fresh, new, and super easy for anybody to pick up and have a play. Whilst I didn’t love all of them, the ones I did love are ones I can see myself coming back to time and time again (Doominate I’ll be back for you). I can’t wait to see which ones Jackbox builds into sequels and expands on, but in the meantime I’ll be over here with Jim Reaper, wrecking things and dooming stuff.
Player 2 reviewed the Jackbox Party Pack 11 using a code kindly provided by the publisher.
