The Jackbox Party Pack 11 Review – Starting to Feel Familiar

The Jackbox Party Pack 11 Review

Jackbox Party Packs are collections of casual party games that use people’s smartphones for play. They’re often unique takes on classic games like Pictionary or Balderdash. It’s been a couple years since we’ve received a mainline Jackbox Party Pack. Last year we got the Family Feud-inspired Jackbox Survey Scramble, but that was only one game. Those waiting for a full set of new games have had a bit of a wait. But the wait is over, and Jackbox Games has five new games in the form of The Jackbox Party Pack 11. Read on to find out if this latest installment is worth adding to your Jackbox library.

The way The Jackbox Party Pack games work is the main game is loaded on your console. Every time one of the five games in The Jackbox Party Pack 11 is started, a 4-digit room code is provided. Everyone who wants to participate has to have a smartphone. Participants open their smartphone’s web browser, go to jackbox.tv, and enter the room code. It’s a very simple framework that allows casual participants, without prior video game knowledge, to use a familiar device as a controller.

Doominate

The first of Jackbox Party Pack 11’s games is Doominate. It’s for 3-8 players and takes approximately 20 minutes for one game. Players are given a word or phrase, and they have to type a way that thing could be ruined. For example, some could be given the prompt “boy band” and to ruin it, they could type “but they’re all addicted to meth”. After everyone’s typed their answers on their phones, the game puts two answers with the same prompt head-to-head, and the players vote on who gave the best answer. Points are given to the winners of each head-to-head, and a winner is named after a few rounds.

Jackbox Party Pack 11’s second game is Hear Say. It’s for 2-8 players and takes about 20 minutes to play. It’s similar to Doominate, in that the points center around voting. This time players are given a prompt and asked to make a noise into their phone’s mic. For example, a player could be asked to make the noise of a werewolf eating something. Then all the players’ answers are compared and voted on. Between rounds there are minigames that require players to make noises into their phones to control Angry Birds-like challenges with their volume.

Cookie Haus

Jackbox Party Pack 11’s third game is Cookie Haus. It’s for 3-8 players and takes about 20 minutes to play. Cookie Haus is another voting game, but this time the players are drawing. Everyone has to decorate and name cookies. In the final round players are given the chance to alter a past cookie made by another player.

I really enjoyed Doominate, Hear Say, and Cookie Haus. The problem with them is they all feel similar because they all use the same “players voting on each other’s work” system. They’re all also variations of classic Jackbox Party Pack games, just with more specific themes. If someone doesn’t have any Jack Box Party Packs, then these would work as a great introductory collection of games. But for someone with a collection of Jackbox Games, there’s nothing new here.

Hear Say also doesn’t work well if everyone’s sitting together. Unfortunately, the game doesn’t tell players to scatter into different rooms when recording their sounds. The minigames are completely unplayable without doing this, because phone mics will pick up other players’ loud volume. The game encourages loud volume, but if someone is trying to record next to someone louder than them, their entry will be ruined.

Suspectives

Jackbox Party Pack 11’s fourth game is Suspectives, which is for 4-8 players and takes about 20 minutes. The game begins with each player answering a bunch of personal opinion survey questions. Afterwards, everyone is told that a crime has been committed, one of the players is guilty, and that their survey answers are the evidence. Everyone plays minigames to try and guess which player made the answers found in the evidence.

Suspectives is the first truly unique game in The Jackbox Party Pack 11. It helps to play a few times for people to get the hang of it. Players don’t want their answers to give them away too much, and that can take some finessing. It’s a fun party game because different dynamics are created based on how well the players know each other. I could see Suspectives becoming a great icebreaker for people.

Legends of Trivia

Jackbox Party Pack 11’s final game is Legends of Trivia, It’s for 1-6 players and takes about 30 minutes. It’s a fantasy themed trivia game. Players choose a class, with different stats for attack, health, and gold. The goal of the party is to get enough gold to get to the final boss. Players choose from branching paths, and battle monsters. Monsters attack with different kinds of trivia questions and riddles. Players work together to get as far in the adventure as they can without dying.

Legends of Trivia is worth the price of admission alone. Jackbox Games should be very proud of how they distilled the essence of an RPG and applied it to a trivia game. I tested The Jackbox Party Pack 11 with some elderly players, and they never struggled with Legends of Trivia’s mechanics, because they were so streamlined. Adding riddles shook up the gameplay. And some of the question formats were very interesting, like “Everyone work together to list seven actors who’ve played Batman in live action films”. It was also unique having a co-op game amongst all the other competitive ones.

Connectivity Issues

Like in past games, there were some connectivity issues we had with our phones while playing The Jackbox Party Pack 11. Some of the blame for this was on the users, some on the Wi-Fi, some on the smartphones, but also some on The Jackbox Party Pack itself. If a player’s phone goes dark between taking turns, they can usually just turn their screen back on and play, but sometimes they might have to refresh the jackbox.tv webpage. Savvy smartphone users got the hang of this pretty quickly, but some of the older players never got used to it.

The Jackbox Party Pack 11 is another fantastic set. One of its strengths is that it has three games that are variations of classic Jackbox Games. But that could also be a deterrent for people who own some Jackbox Party Packs already. Suspectives and Legends of Trivia are both fantastic, unique additions to the Jackbox Games library though. As with past Jackbox Party Packs, The Jackbox Party Pack 11 is half the price of a triple-A game. It’s a lot of value. Whether or not it’s a must-buy for Jackbox veterans will largely depend on their love of trivia.

***PS5 code provided by the publisher***