It’s been 11 years since Jackbox Games first launched its massively popular Party Packs. Ever since, games like Quiplash, Drawful, Job Job, and more have become party staples, thanks to a combination of easy access and communal participation. After so many entries, it would be easy for new Party Packs to either play the hits or get wildly experimental.
Jackbox Party Pack 11 manages to do both. In a preview session held with other outlets, I got a chance to play a round of each game in the upcoming pack. With a decade’s worth of playing Party Pack, I was eager to see if the Jackbox team could surprise me. Turns out, they’re nowhere close to being out of ideas.
The five games in Jackbox Party Pack 11 hew close to familiar styles: improv, drawing, social deduction, and trivia are all present here. Some are twisted in clever, simple ways, like the ruination-driven Doominate; others feel like fresh starts on classic archetypes, like the early standout Legends of Trivia. And then there’s Hear Say, which has an appeal that’s difficult to dictate. I’ll try, but it might result in a lot of onomatopoeia.
Doominate
Our first round was also, conveniently, a pretty solid warm-up game for everyone’s comedic muscles. Doominate falls squarely within the prompt-driven improv category of Jackbox games, asking players to take something like “meeting your hero” or “swimming in a pool” and, well, ruin it.
What if you met your hero and they’d read all your worst posts? What if you got a free Switch 2, but now games cost $200? This simple setup works effectively for quick, witty inversions and laughs. As the game goes on, Doominate will ask players to provide their own prompts to ruin, and then eventually un-ruin. It’s fast, fun, and easy to get a handle on, making for a neat introduction to the pack.
Hear Say
Jackbox Games has experimented with audio-driven games quite a bit, but Hear Say is one of the better implementations I’ve seen. It’s prompts and improv, but rather than type an answer, you need to voice it, often within six to eight seconds. Something like “words you never want to hear from your crush” pops up, and you’ll have about a minute to concoct a little voice memo response.
Limitation fosters creativity here, as the sound bites can get repeated, remixed, and more by the game’s presentation. Ever been hanging out and someone’s offhand remark becomes a recurring line that the whole group repeats for laughs throughout the day? Hear Say feels built around those quick vocal hits. I’m curious to see how popular it becomes, as it requires a mic on whatever device you’re using, and might not always be as conducive to in-person play as it was for online. But Hear Say is certainly one of the more novel parts of this pack.
Cookie Haus
The drawing game of this pack is Cookie Haus, a surprisingly cozy face-off for would-be cookie artisans. Customers offer a prompt, and each player chooses a base cookie shape to sprinkle and frost however they want, creating something beautiful or horrifying. It feels like a fun remix of classics like Tee K.O. or Champ’d Up, but some of the limitations with cookie-specific drawing options made it difficult to be as artistic as I’d like. A delicious treat, even if it’s not the main course.
Suspectives
Social deduction games have rarely stolen chunks of time from my Jackbox sessions over the years, so it was doubly surprising that Suspectives grabbed me so much. After answering a short bout of get-to-know-you questions, it’s revealed one person is the “culprit,” and you must deduce who it was based on details about their answers. Who doesn’t know Taylor Swift lyrics, or thinks feet smell better than farts? The questions make for some fun moments, especially when the culprit needs to pretend like they shouldn’t be the one under scrutiny.
With strangers, this one could fall flat. For our group of previewers who approximately knew each other, it served as a bit of a fun icebreaker to poke and prod about each others’ personalities and interests. But with a good group of pals who have known each other for a while, I could really see this turning into an exciting whodunnit. It certainly made for a fun way to get to know others.
Legends of Trivia
The last game we played during our preview session was also the longest. Legends of Trivia is Jackbox’s latest trivia game, this time twisting it into a tabletop-esque dungeon crawl. What’s nice is that Legends of Trivia is a cooperative expedition; players could certainly vie to perform better, but the party answers questions to deal damage to monsters together. It also means you can collaborate, like a trivia night team, to either focus on an answer you know for sure or split answers to ensure some damage lands. There’s gold to earn and spend on health or hint potions, and plenty of fantastic character designs.
An easy downside in trivia games is that, if they’re competitive, players can feel a bit siloed off. Legends of Trivia navigates around this by having everyone work as a team; rather than quietly enter in answers and hope for the best, the whole crew is talking and collaborating. We had moments of deducing answers, or someone triumphantly declaring they knew the right choice, giving them little moments of spotlight without leaving out the rest of the group. All of this mixes with a fantasy setting and incredible animation style, making it feel like the better parts of a tabletop night mixed with bar trivia. Legends of Trivia feels like it could be a breakout of this pack, and with enough trivia and gameplay variety, a new Jackbox night staple.
The Jackbox Party Pack 11 arrives on PlayStation 4 and 5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch and Switch 2, and PC sometime this Fall.
