Jackbox Party Pack 9 Review

Developed and published by Jackbox Games Inc, Jackbox Party Pack 9 is the newest release in the series of these wonderful party games. The series over the last couple of years has been a bit mixed in quality but for me they still rule the roost over the interactive party games.

                This latest release has brought back a staple favourite of the series in Fibbage and 4 new games to try and tickle your taste buds; Quixort, Junktopia, Nonsensory and Roomerang.

                FIbbage 4 is a staple of the Jackbox Party Pack games all about fooling your opponents into believing your answers to the question. In short, everyone gets the same question which 95% of the time no one knows the real answer to but you have to submit an answer to try and fool the others into picking your answer as the true answer to the question. You get points for getting the correct answer and more points for anything you fooled into picking your answer. In my opinion, this has always been the fan favourite of the Jackbox selection and this version has a few new tweaks. There are video-related questions where you watch a video clip and then proceed to answer a question about it. There is the last double question where you submit one answer which can be applied to 2 different questions. This was confusing at first but I see it allows more room for error in picking the correct answer which can really swing the game on who ends up winning.

                Quixort is an interesting sorting game where all the players are split between 2 teams. They are then given a choice of a specific subject or a random subject and have to proceed in placing blocks that fall in a Tetris-like manner from left to right onto a factory conveyor belt. An example I had was from your head to your hip place the following organs in order of the height on your body. So the eyes would be dropped closer to the head end and the kidney closer to the hip end of the conveyor belt.  This is a neat idea as you don’t know what the next answer could be and it might fall in between some answers you have already submitted but you also have to agree with your team on where you should be placing the block. The next round gets slightly trickier as they throw in some bogus answers which you need to make sure you dump in the trash and not let it fall on the conveyor belt. You get points for getting all the blocks in the right sequence. The final round gives you 2 goes at getting the order correct but some of the questions can be quite tough.

                Junktopia is a bit of a strange one really and for me, it does not go over well at parties but may have a bit more of a chance with family playing. In this game mode, you have to pick an item to sell from a few options. You then have to give it a name and an interesting story. Players then vote on what their favourite item is which then raises the cost of the most voted-on items and that player then receives a profit. There is a piece in the game about haggling to try and get a better deal but it doesn’t add too much to the game. It does provoke some creativity in creating the story for the item in a similar way that Quiplash does but we never got the same amount of joy from this game.

                Nonsensory is the token drawing game of the pack. In this game mode, you have to put your prediction skills to good use as well as your drawing skills. This game has some interesting ideas but can be quite slow and confusing at times. For example, in the first round, you may get a question that you have to write the first line for someone who is 50% likely to secretly be a bear. Now that’s a lot to unpack before you even begin to write an answer. But the other players have to then guess the right percentage of how likely that someone is a bear by the answer the player wrote.  It makes partial sense but there is a bit of ambiguity about it. The next round may have you draw a toy that is 3/10 lovable which adds a degree of difficulty already when drawing anything on a mobile is usually a challenge. The other players then have to predict how lovable the toy is meant to be from the drawing. The final round usually has you drawing between two things with a percentage leaning towards one or the other. For example, draw a picture that is 30% dog and 70% cup which can be super tricky to do at times.  Predicting the correct answer can be just as tricky and you can also double down and apply confidence if you think you are sure of an answer and you get double points if you are in range or you lose double points if you are wrong. I did enjoy this game but the level of skill involved in drawing can be a challenge for some players, luckily you can choose not to have drawing rounds or vice versa if you prefer.

Lastly is Roomerang and this one feels like a more complex version of Quiplash. You need to have a minimum of 4 players and up to 9 and you each have to select from pre-generated personas or choose to make one up yourself. Then in each round, you are asked to write something about yourself or another player but you need to answer how your persona would. Then your answers are pitted against others and the person with the lowest votes is then voted out but they then come back like a ”boomerang” but as a different persona. When you get voted out you lose points so you need to try and be the funniest or most interesting one to rake in the points. Then at the end of the game, you also get a vote on who you think should win and who you think should lose. This then gives out and takes away a few more points which may swing who wins altogether. The issue with these kinds of games is they do take a bit longer and can become a bit wishy-washy after a while especially if someone isn’t too good at role play and or being creative they could get bored quite quickly.

This isn’t going to be the best party pack in the series but it will be no near the bottom as Fibbage alone will help this party pack sell. There are some interesting ideas with this pack and I like how they are trying to experiment with new ideas. I do feel like some of the games are rehashed complex versions of previous games but that’s not always a bad thing if it works. My only gripe is the pacing in some of the games. Most notably in Roomerang and Nonsensory, there feels like there is a lot of dead time that could be compacted to speed things up. Also, Quixort can be a bit dull for the team that isn’t playing as each round per team can take a good 5-10 minutes so there is a lot of waiting at times. I must admit they have improved the audience participation element so for those who don’t make the main game can still have an impact on the result of the games. I also applaud them for adding so many setting changes to allow a more tailored experience. They added the switch to stop the content from being so US-centric which is great for those outside of the US to get some varied content. As I mentioned in Nonsensory you can choose to have both or just either drawing or writing rounds. You can even allow users written responses to add some custom questions in some games which is also a neat addition.

Conclusion

Jackbox Party Pack 9 is a good, not great, selection of party games. For those who are familiar with these party packs, some games will be a big hit at parties with Fibbage being the stand-out. For those unfamiliar then this is a great jumping-off point as you can have fun with all of these games with the right people. But there was just some work needed with fine-tuning to help speed some of the games up as the constant pausing and fluff can take the life out of the party pretty quickly.

This game was tested and reviewed on Xbox Series X/S. All of the opinions and insights here are subject to that version. Game provided by publisher.