The Jackbox Party Pack 8 Review

Developed and Published by Jackbox Games, Inc. The Jackbox Party Pack 8 is the latest instalment of this fantastic party game series. If you are unfamiliar with these then either you don’t enjoy party games or you have been severely missing out. The Jackbox Party games are a joy to most modern-day parties. It is all-inclusive as it only involves each player using their phone or tablet, which most people often have one or the other to hand. This is usually where you discover which of your friends is the most creative, witty, devious or very easily confused.

Previous Jackbox games have been known to have a couple of games that are belters, and a couple of so-so fillers. They have also been known to overcomplicate some of the games and it must be getting increasingly tough to generate new ideas for games that don’t exclude anyone. They also need to make the game simple enough so that some of the unfamiliar topics don’t get lost in the instructions.

So let’s talk about the games on offer. First up is Drawful Animate which is a twist on a regular favourite in the Jackbox series. This one is kind of Pictionary based with a twist. You are given something to draw which is rarely simple; I had to draw “Guy Fieri’s army” which for those non-US based players is going to be a 50/50 chance that you know who he is. But basically, you give it your best go and once drawn the other players see your picture and they have to then guess what your picture is about. The opponent’s guesses are then displayed on the screen as a handful of answers mixed in with the real answer and the game is to guess which is the correct answer. If the opponents get the right answer then they and the artist of the picture get points. If they select one of the other guest’s answers then they get the points. What is different from the previous Drawful games is the animation part. Instead of just one image, you need to draw two images to try and animate your drawing to add a bit of a twist on the game, and it does make things a little easier.

The next game is the Wheel of Enormous proportions which is a game that involves a lot of luck and not so much skill. I feel this is the most inclusive game as the winner will usually be unpredictable. Each round has questions that are mildly obscure like which of these 16 names are types of apples. The game doesn’t tell you how many correct answers there are and the winner is the one who gets most of the correct answers. But as well as points they gain an extra slice for the upcoming wheel at the end of the round. So after a few more questions, you get to the wheel and you have to select where on the wheel you want to place your slices. Then each person takes it in turn to spin the wheel and they need to hope to land on a slice that gives them points. But if you land on an opponents slice then they get the points. The goal of the game is to get to 20,000 points to be able to spin the winner’s wheel. But the winner’s wheel only has a few slices to land on that will allow you to win the game.

Job Job is the third game of the pack is possibly the weakest. Not conceptually as it is quite clever but the pacing is so slow it can suck the mood away and leave people twiddling their thumbs. The game here is that you are at a job interview and everyone is given questions to answer in a reasonable amount of detail – which is important, as once everyone has submitted their answers players then have to answer the next set of questions but only using some of the words your other guests have written. This can be very amusing if played well but chances are not everyone is creative or a wordsmith so the pool of words that you can choose from can be very limiting and will lead to very broken sentences. Your answers are put up against another guests answers and the rest of the other guests have to vote for the best answer. For those familiar with the Jackbox series the game feels like a more controlled and sensible Quiplash.

Poll Mine is the fourth game and this one went down well with my friends as it involves knowing the other guests and good teamwork. You are split into two teams and at the start of every round you are given a list of items. One we had was to pick your top 5 superpowers in order of your favourite out of 8 superpowers. Every player does this individually first and then the game throws a curveball. The game asks you to work out the 2^nd 3^rd and 4^th popular answer from that list of 8 using everyone’s choices. So this is where knowing everyone else you are playing with helps as you can get a gist of what they might have selected. But then you take turns as teams guessing what you think could be the 2^nd 3^rd and 4^th top answer is. If you pick one of the right answers you get a torch which is essentially an extra guess for the final game. Then after a few rounds, the team with the most torches has an edge in the final game. In the same manner, you have to pick your top answers from a random list as every other guest does then as a team you have to pick the order of what you think people voted for starting from the lowest. So if there were 8 choices you have to guess as a team what you think was the least popular answer. Get it wrong you lose a torch, get it right the other team then has to get the next lowest which would be the 7^th. You keep going until one team has lost all their torches, when that happens the other team has to get the correct answer to knock them out. If all answers are worked out then the team with the most torches at the end wins. So it pays to communicate with your team and guess the right answer without giving the other team too much information about what you each voted for.

The last game of the pack is Weapons Drawn which I feel has some good ideas but something to me feels out of place. It has a strong vibe of the game Among Us about it as there is a part of the game where you have to convince your fellow players to accuse another player of murder. But the murderer has to try and steer peoples opinions to another suspect. To start with each person is given a random Cluedo-style avatar but your name that you chose to play with is important here. I entered my name as “Gray” and at the beginning of the game you have to draw 2 weapons which contain a letter from your name. This letter is chosen by the game and presented on your screen to rotate, resize and skew so as to hide it within the drawing. I got the letter A which I had to hide in a candlestick and a ladies razor.

After everyone has drawn their weapons with their hidden letter you have to make up a name of an accomplice. You need to name them in a way that the other guests won’t think is yours. Then comes the murder phase where you see the list of the other guest’s accomplices. You have to choose one from the list and then guess who you think they belong to. If you get it right you murder their accomplice and you gain points. If you get it wrong you have to wait 5 seconds before you can guess again and you are given a hint which is a letter that is in the name of who made that accomplice. Once enough accomplices have been murdered you enter the choice phase where two dead accomplices are put on the screen with the weapon they were killed with which was drawn by the murderer. The idea is for everyone to work if they can spot a letter in the murderer’s weapon to narrow down the list of suspects. If you are the murderer of one of the 2 accomplices you need to persuade the others to pick the other one so you don’t get found out. Then once the accomplice is chosen by a vote, the creator of that accomplice becomes the chief detective. All the guests have to work out who drew the murder weapon that killed the victim. Using persuasion and teamwork you need to find the letter in the picture and have an idea of everyone’s drawing skill, but the actual murderer will try and steer you to another suspect. You earn points for murdering accomplices, for getting away with the murder and for voting for the actual murderer. After a few rounds, the detective with the most points wins.

Some of the games I have mentioned sound more complex than what they are but my friends and I got what we were doing in each game without getting lost. We struggled with Job Job as some of your friends could be slower at answering than the others and those that are quick could easily get bored.

I think the creators of Jackbox games finally heard the call of its players as they have added in 2 great options in the settings that the games have been crying out for. The first is that you can turn off the timer should you need to. Those playing with slower players due to age, disability or just one of those people that just take their merry old time will find this a must-have setting to use. When playing these kinds of games with my dad even the extended timer wasn’t long enough and I would have to continually pause the game so he could submit his answer. So having no timer is a bit of a blessing. The other setting which my family kept bringing up is that a lot of the content was very US-based. Here, they have added a setting to not have so much US-centric content, which for us in the UK is a decent addition.  

Conclusion

Jackbox Games have done a great job with The Jackbox Party Pack 8 as there are no “padding” games. All of them are fun to play in their own way. These party pack games are usually crowd-pleasers at parties as it gets minds working and everyone I played with had fun on each of the games. Job Job might be a bit slow for some and Weapons Drawn might cause some confusion but when you have friends around for an evening this game could be the entertainment that you are looking for.

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.