The Jackbox Party Pack 8 is a strong selection of multi-layered amusements. The game provides an interesting variety of games, but the lack of variety in terms of gameplay makes it hard to recommend.
The Jackbox Party Pack 8 is a strong selection of multi-layered amusements that can be enjoyed by all.
Any game, video or otherwise, may put a prospective player under a lot of stress as it attempts to get you to understand its particular rulebook. Every yearly pack released by developer Jackbox Games has five opportunities to persuade you that the material is not only entertaining, but also educational. Each subsequent pack has included increasingly difficult minigames, yet The Jackbox Party Pack 8 has enough notable hits to make it accessible.
Animate using Drawful., The Enormous Proportions Wheel, Job Job, Mine at the Pole, and Drawn Weapons are the five games included in this compilation. Although the appearance of these party packs has reached a limit in terms of how elegant and attractive it may be, Jackbox Games continues to improve the quality of life. For starters, accessibility settings are now system-wide rather than game-specific, which addresses a criticism from last year’s collection. The following games will all be judged on their concept and general enjoyment factor.
Drawful: Animate
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Drawful, like with Quiplash and Fibbage, has long been a Jackbox favorite as an utterly cursed version of Pictionary. Players will have to attempt to throw everyone else off the trail, much as in Fibbage. Each player will be given a ridiculous, incongruent prompt to draw, and then have to come up with a false prompt after viewing each piece of art. Players will then attempt to guess the true prompt, earning points for deceiving others.
The aspect of “animation” is the twist here, as the title suggests. You are just sketching two frames, so it isn’t anything extreme. Having some movement, though, allows for more vivid suggestions and accompanying amusing drawings. The artist may change the animation speed using a slider, but otherwise, this is a pretty conventional Drawful. The sole new feature is a Friends Mode, which, like Fibbage: Enough About You, focuses the suggestions on the real participants, making it an entertaining alternative for small groups of friends. Just be careful to make the most of the limited area – there are no undo or erase choices.
The Wheel of Enormous Proportions
Image courtesy of Jackbox Games
This party bundle becomes a little more difficult after the second game on the list. Granted, the tutorials in this pack are extremely clever, easing you into how the game is played as you play it, but the first few minutes of The Wheel of Enormous Proportions will leave you perplexed. This is basically a quiz game, and as you win more points and “slices” of a wheel, you can use your phone screen to spin a huge wheel. The winner will have a question put in at the start of the game “answered” by this all-knowing wheel after reaching a certain point threshold.
It’s unusual, and whether you find it annoying or not is completely up to personal preference, since the Wheel is always quipping. The questions themselves are pretty typical trivia questions with a unique technique for responding – you’ll sometimes be mixing and matching names with titles or choosing several answers from a large list. It’s an excellent method to ensure that everyone earns points in some manner. The act of spinning the wheel is enjoyable in and of itself, but the element of chance, along with the almost incomprehensible scoring system, evokes the unpredictability of Mario Party. It puts up a good show, but you have to put up with a lot of crap.
Job Job
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Job Job, a wordplay game with the most potential for comedy, is clearly the obvious favorite of the four. All participants will be given typical icebreaker questions to answer on their phones in a “job interview.” All participants will be given a random jumble of words depending on everyone else’s answers in the next round, and they will have to answer fresh new questions. There’s also a lot of flexibility: you may use the same phrases several times, and you can even utilize terms from the question.
It’s similar to Survive the Internet from the fourth pack, in which you use the words of your other players to construct amusing (and generally inappropriate) phrases that are totally removed from their original context. Job Job has the advantage because it enables players to be more creative than any other wordplay-heavy Jackbox game in recent memory. Though it was certainly more enjoyable with more people, which clearly offered more material to work with, this game generated the most chuckles and pictures of anything else in this bundle.
The Pole Mine
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While I’m not sure whether The Pole Mine qualifies as an RPG, the charming fantasy aesthetic of this team-based game was a wonderful way to get things started. Because it is based on the participants’ views on certain relevant subjects, this is a more successful version of Split the Room from the sixth pack. Players will be surveyed and asked to rate a variety of choices, such as which school topics they struggled with the most. As they advance through the dungeon, two teams will take turns selecting which door to unlock depending on the many choices. The doors reflecting the top three chosen school topics across all players are the safe doors to enter in the school subjects example; selecting the incorrect door loses your team a light.
It’s an interesting and multi-layered game in which you must consider not just your own preferences but also those of the rest of the group. It’s a game that requires a thorough understanding of your target audience, as well as group conversation. And your approach will have to change if you are forced to choose the second, third, or fourth most popular choices in subsequent rounds. It should elicit some lively debates, however due to the scoring system, we found ourselves tied at times, resulting in dissatisfaction.
Weapons Drawn
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It would be deceptive to describe Weapons Drawn a “simplified version of Clue,” since it is difficult in its own unique manner. There’s a lot to understand in this murder mystery game that combines sketching and deduction. Each participant will be given two things to draw, both of which will turn out to be murder weapons; they must include a letter from their username as a hint. Following that, each of them will bring a “partner” that they will name — a wonderful chance for cheap jokes — and the lights will be turned out during a high society party. The players will then attempt to assassinate the companions, but they must first correctly identify which companion belongs to which player.
To add to the intrigue, many of these friends will be discovered killed in cold blood once the lights are turned back on. The players will then have to work together to determine the culprit of each crime by observing the “murder weapons.” The game gives players two options and asks them to choose which one is simpler to solve, after which they must cross-reference all of the drawings to figure out who drew the murder weapon. It’s a clever game, but it’s also a long one. Later in the game, you play a lightning round in which you estimate all of the murders, which may have been preferable to the slow burn deduction. You can’t see who’s ahead, which might be a fun aspect, but it’s impossible to determine how far along the game is.
The final decision
Image courtesy of Jackbox Games
With a variety of theme tunes with witty lyrics, these games all feature unique and quirky visual styles, and there’s always something enjoyable to look at or listen to. Since the early days of You Don’t Know Jack, Jackbox Games has worked out its rhythm, and the pleasure of each year’s party pack is learning what strange ideas and bizarre characters they’ve come up with this time.
Random characters from past Jackbox packs will make cameo cameos throughout Job Job rounds, demonstrating how large the company’s library of games and characters has grown. Even if the games in today’s packs are much more complex than those in previous packs, iteration is the key to an enjoyable pack of games. Gather your buddies (if it’s safe) and start delving into the complexities and tactics of these games, ideally with a lot of laughing in between.
| + | Innovative gaming concepts that build on prior themes |
| + | Colorful music and art creations that never cease to amaze |
| + | Games like Job Job are pure comedy. |
| – | Some games are more difficult to comprehend and access than others. |
| – | Some games have perplexing outcomes due to strange point systems. |
I was given a game code in exchange for an honest review.
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