Jackbox Games is poised to deliver its 11th Jackbox Party Pack this week, so how are they keeping things fresh after all these years? Well, by literally keeping things fresh: every one of the five games in Jackbox Party Pack 11 is an original.
There are no sequels to fan favorites like Drawful or Quiplash in Jackbox Party Pack 11—and as far as I can tell, this is the first Party Pack ever to not include a sequel of any kind. Even the very first Party Pack in 2014 had expanded versions of previous games like Fibbage and You Don't Know Jack.
Speaking to Jackbox last week, I asked director of production Rich Gallup and game director Brooke Breit about the choice to launch with five completely new games instead of one or two updated versions of Jackbox classics.
"It was a decision from the very beginning," Gallup said. "We took a little break from the party packs. We're back! Let's go strong with all new ideas."
"How we do it is, usually there's an anchor title, there's something that's standing out as, 'Ooh, people are really craving another Fibbage' or whatever," Breit said. "And like Rich said, it was a really cool challenge this year to go, 'I don't know, what if we didn't do that? What if we didn't have that anchor title, and they were all brand new IP for us?'"
Much as I am interested in playing some completely new games, I still can't help wishing for a new Fibbage or another You Don't Know Jack whenever a new Party Pack arrives—sort of like when you go to a concert and you want the band to play the hits instead of trying out new songs. I asked if they thought Jackbox fans might be a bit disappointed to not be getting any updated classics in Pack 11.
"We hope that genuinely the games we've made relieve the pressure of expectation of just wanting that thing that you already love, and you know you love, because the soul of the [new] games are so inherently Jackbox," Breit said. "We can never control how people feel or what their expectations are, but our hope is to blow those expectations out of the water with what we're providing."
For any worried fans out there, I can report that even with these new titles you can still see the DNA of prior Jackbox games in many of them. For instance, Legends of Trivia is set up like a fantasy roguelike, where you and your teammates (or just you, as this is the rare Jackbox game you can play solo) battle monsters and collect loot while traveling across a branching map, Slay the Spire-style.
Combat is handled through trivia, naturally, and I was happy to see some flashes of You Don't Know Jack in the game. While battling a boss ogre, for instance, I faced a "Dis Or Dat" style flurry of questions that challenged me to quickly decide if names like "Slim Reaper" and "Reign Man" were Stephen King short stories or NBA player nicknames. (I definitely don't know jack about basketball, but I know my King stories, so that ogre didn't stand a chance.)
The other games, while new, still cover some familiar ground. You might not have a new Drawful, but in Cookie Haus you decorate cookies by doodling on them. In Doominate you try to crack your friends up with your joke-writing, which has similarities to a game like Fibbage, and in Suspectives you try to figure out which player is a criminal, not unlike earlier social deduction games Jackbox has published like Fakin' It or Weapons Drawn.
And if you are looking for something completely new, there's Hear Say, the first Jackbox game to make use of your phone's mic. Players record their voices to be used as foley-like sound effects in movie clips:
"That's the nice thing about the pack model is we can have things that are at its core a trivia game, but then bring in some other elements, where you're arguing or you're drawing," Breit said. "We are never fully beholden to having to tick off boxes, as much as have guidelines of knowing different types of games that we've done, and that people really enjoy."
Jackbox Party Pack 11 comes out on Steam on October 23.
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