During this time of not being able to visit our friends, Dann and I have been playing quite a bit of JackBox — a party game that turns your phone into a controller and allows you to play with your friends locally or over the internet. Only one person playing needs to own the game, so we’ve been exploring many, many of the packs through our friends.
There are a bunch of JackBox Party Packs (a couple of which our Rob has reviewed in full), which is what most people get instead of the individual games. We have played so many of them, so I wanted to share my favorite games from within these packs and my favorite overall pack.
Quiplash
Quiplash is the first JackBox game I had ever played and fell in love with. Everyone will get to see the same question or sentence, typing in their thoughts or answer into their phone. Once the timer has run out or everyone has submitted what they think — then answers are pitting against each other and other individuals can vote on what they think is best. It’s a simple game that has no wrong answers and changes depending on who you play with. You can also have an audience who votes, of up to 10,000 people — which is a huge plus if you are streaming or have a super large number of friends who don’t want to directly play.
Various versions of Quiplash can be found in JackBox Party Pack 2 and 3.
Trivia Murder Party
Trivia Murder Party and Trivia Murder Party 2 is a slightly creepy, pretty funny group game that contains lots of little mini-games as well. This game comes with a creepy narrator and each character plays a voodoo doll! The narrator picks different mini-games to face off against and kills players who fail to answer questions correctly or kills players if they incorrectly answer a few questions in a row.
The quests are nearly impossible, giving you multiple choices so that you can try your best at guessing. You could end up actually losing your fingers — or one of the answers for the questions, which continue to make the game more challenging. There is a lot of pressure in Trivia Murder Party and I also love the narrator as well.
Various versions of Trivia Murder Party can be found in JackBox Party Pack 3 and and Trivia Murder Party 2 in JackBox Party Pack 6.
Push the Button
Push the Button is a new favorite of mine — where you and your friends are trapped on a ship. A specific number of these friends are aliens, while the rest are humans. The humans are trying to get the aliens out of the ship by picking the same number of aliens there are and putting them in isolation, before having a vote and sending them into space if the vote is unanimous. If one human ends up making it out into space or the timer runs out, aliens win!
You need to figure out who the aliens are by doing a bunch of little tests and tasks. When it’s your turn (alien or not) you’ll pick an area and put two people to the test inside. They will be given a question or prompt and everyone will be shown the question and responses. Aliens are given false versions of the prompts, meaning that their answers are just slightly off — but there is a catch. Aliens can also hack humans, which gives them the ‘alien’ question as well. People can then talk to explain why they picked their answers or simply claim they are hacked, but at the end of the day, someone is going into the pod and being blasted out!
This game is really quite fun and all of the different zones in the ships provide a good variety for players to explore.
Push the Button is on JackBox Party Pack 6.
Dictionarium
Dictionarium is for a more adult audience and feels like a game perfect for writers like Dann and I. The game really builds on itself, allowing everyone to create a new word based on different definitions before the best one is voted on. Then a synonym is created for that word by other players before an example sentence is made using the synonym. All of the best information that’s created, making up your own word, is then added to a dictionary at the end, which is pretty beautifully presented.
I really enjoyed how fun this felt — it was really silly creating our own words and trying to understand what other people picked and why. Dictionarium does take a few plays for some people to really get the idea behind it, but once you get going it’s really fun!
Dictionarium is on JackBox Party Pack 6.
Guesspionage
Guesspionage is based on statistics, where one player will decide what percentage of people fit the brief and then set that on a pie chart. The rest of the players will decide if that percentage is too high or too low before the results are shown and points are awarded depending on who is the most accurate. These stats are on pretty funny topics and nobody could ever know the real percentage, but it’s pretty fun learning about each one.
As the game progresses, you soon can select the percentage is very far off or very close, which will then award you even more points if you have guessed correctly. It’s hard to tell who’s going to win, even if they are well ahead, as this second stage of the game awards a lot of points!
Guesspionage is on JackBox Party Pack 3.
The best JackBox Party Pack is pack 6, beyond any doubt. It’s the newest pack, so it has the best versions of the games that are on it and most games I’ve personally enjoyed.
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