The Jackbox Party Pack 12 Review: The Next Pack Might Not Be So Lucky At How Fun It Is

 By Jonathan Bilski

 

 

 

Twelfth times the charm? Looks like it is for the latest installment of the Jackbox Party Pack. Just in time for the holiday season and fresh off the Trivia Murder Party III Early Access release; Number 12 has you; with 5 brand new games all with their own styles and charm to make you hate your friends, family members and loved ones when they beat you. Or, fall in love in them all over again with a game where you must win with friendship! We're breaking down each of the games and totally recommending you get the latest pack to fill the void of awkward conversation left open during the holiday season.

 

MegaPals

 

Did you ever think certain friendships came with benefits. Woah, hey, families read these reviews too. No, not that, it's MegaPals. The game where you try and connect with other players over the words you choose. A prompt like the word "doors" will be chosen and they you and whomever else is playing will then have come up with what the word means to you like: "the band, open, closed, locked" and write down those words lickity-split and hope other players do the same thing. Now if you match with other players who wrote the same thing you earn points due to your "friendship." Some people just think a-like and you need to to win this game. From the unused words comes another prompt that is  voted on and then chained for a few rounds, so you might get to know how the other players think.

 

Let me interrupt with your host for this one, the friendly little freak, The King of Friendship. This dude is...messed up and you'll be seeing a lot of him as he...is your screen a lot of the time. He's like an animated cartoon character out of a more gross time and it works. He's impossible to separate from the game, because he's literally a part of it. When his... "mass" takes over the screen and it seems like he's passing a turd on each prompt, you know what you're in for. 

 

Visually, what can I say, but crowns off. It totally entices you to play this weird little game where this freaky little dude and your avatar are so eye-catching. It's just a treat to see your connections pop-up on screen or your avatars hands shaking others to show friendship scores on another screen.

 

About that crown, you're trying to take it with another "friend."  The King of Friendship is fine giving it up, but you've got to earn it. And, in the final round the game changes up a little, because you've gotten know the people playing. You have to prove friendship with prompts geared toward other players. A prompted player gets to choose their favorite answers in this round. You still got to make those connections on words though for more points. 

In the end, only two can become the new Kings of Friendship and it looks painful being smooshed together, but in a good way.

 

Idol Factions

 

What a great concept, but hard to master, it's our new trivia game for the pack. Outright, just gonna say
only had a chance to play this with one other person and the game seems to need about four, two on each team to be fair. Two idols with funny names need you to prove which is a greater of master of knowledge. How about a constant barrage of words pertaining to certain subjects and you've got to send it to the correct subject hole. Example: Comic characters, cartoon characters, oh and how about if they're both that for another place to send them. So, you've got paths where the words Bugs Bunny and Dennis the Menace are coming down on little creatures and you've got to choose where they go as fast as possible. Oh, and if you screw up they come back, but they're worth less points. Oh, and there are bombs you have to get off of your side through portals. Oh, and let's add you can send over trivia to the other side you're unsure about. If the other faction doesn't send the trivia to the right subject, it hurts them and double points for you on that trivia. Simple right? Sheesh!!!

 

So much is going o on screen, it's rather taxing, so more people might help. When bombs blow up, because the game has to be harder, your side of the screen gets lost in a fog for a few seconds so you can't see where you're seeing things! It's truly infuriating! 

 

Like I wrote, fun concept, maybe hard to master, we'll see how fans of the series rank this one. 

 

Debate & Switch

 

Woah, is a strange animated version of Abbott Elementary starting? Starting off, this one just had me from how cute the character designs were. This game straight up pours on the charm with all the adorable folks that look like their from an animated sitcom you might have missed.

Gameplay has you debating whomever you're randomly put up against. You start out by choosing one of the adorable townsfolk as your avatar. Then, you agree to a subject out of prompts that are random or altered by other players. In a another round, that subject is slightly altered by one word and you can switch the side you were on. Really, just a suited up way to debate people.

How about points being scored? Oh, that's cute as Hell; you're avatars go extra chibi and tiny on the bottom portion of the screen and choose yes or no by running over to which side they think should win. They added a jump button for these little people for no reason other than it's cute.

 

Losing debates also has take-down animations of the townies that's on par with a Mortal Kombat Fatality, just in no way as gory.

 

Hyperface

 

Time to face it, quite literally as you modify faces on the fly like your part of Nickelodeon gameshow that only aired in Canada. Or maybe, like an early version of the movie theater pre-show where you guess the trivia. The games design looks late 90's early 2000's and it totally works for the drawing/modifying game of the pack.

 

Your prompted to make faces by either messing with them with a very basic almost CD-Rom like interface where you can give people anime eyes to really anything you can imagine. We've never really seen this feature in a Jackbox game before. (Friends were happy all the face images are being kept either by Jackbox if you take a selfie.) You also can just draw over faces if you like. So turn yourself into a pirate or a superhero or whatever. To add to it, to be even more personal, you can take a selfie an impose your tastes on your face to fit the prompts, be it "What would they look like a baby?" to "He's stealing you're man!"

 

Other players then vote on which face best matches the prompt or honestly makes them laugh the most until you have a winner.

 

Lots of fun to make people look stupid, including yourself. 

 

We Forgot A Card!

 

You cad! How could you forget the day we found that mouse together? Or really, this shouldn't be so
sexual on a Get Well card. Yes, Jackbox has finally gone down the path of making greeting cards and their total nonsense. Choose an image that doesn't quite feel Father's Day appropriate or pick a generic or other player prompt to best make other players laugh on the cards you're creating. Repeat a few times to see cards that you shouldn't be able to buy, but guess what? You can buy these after playing. Would they be okay to send out...probably not.

 

Eventually, the ending round has talking plushies that two different players write for separately, making a mess of something you wouldn't want to ever give someone. But, fun to giggle over.

 

In whatever sad store the cards are being stocked a lone sad men tells us to leave. Love that one of the "hosts" is an employee who just is done for the day. Ending theme for the game-all games have one- was just him telling everyone to get out.

 

Just one gripe with the style here, there's a friendly racoon who shows up throughout the match. The cute trash panda is okay, but the game lacks the visual flair the other games have. At certain points we get an empty shelf of cards, but instead of an animation stocking cards from players, when done, it remains empty. We get the cards are the main draw, but you've got to make what's on screen in-between worth looking at too.

 

Kind of amazed we didn't just jump more into Pokemon cards again. Jackbox has done a battle card deck game before, but one more closely following simplified rules of Pokemon cards might have been fun or just some sort of mass collecting game might have made the drawing game better stand out in the pack.

 

As already written, just get the latest Jackbox. If one game isn't your fancy, another sure will be. What are you going to do instead? Talk to those people around you in your personal space or those wishing you good tidings. No, you've go to make your face have a butt chin! A butt forehead! A butt something, let's debate about butts!

 

The Jackbox Party Pack 12 is out now on Steam and various consoles/devices/apps. As of writing this it's at $29.99

 

The Jackbox Party Pack 12 was provided by publisher for review purposes.