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0 Game night is back. Jackbox Party Pack 11 has hit the virtual shelves! Available now on PlayStation 4/5, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch and PC.
Get Back In The Box
For many years now, Jackbox has saved our boring evenings with hilarious party games between friends and family. With five new game modes to play, players can compete in trivia and laughs. Some of us here at Thumb Culture came together to give the new Jackbox Party Pack 11 a try.
Doominate – twist your friend’s words.
The first game mode is Doominate. Think of this as a typical mini game in that you take something wholesome your friends have written, and completely ruin it. With love of course. The aim is to twist them into something funnier… or cruder. The winner is the one who can come up with the funniest twisted answers. As with any Jackbox Game that has a similar premise, this has the potential to be very funny, but also reveals the true nature of those around you!
Great news is this is one of the more simple games in that you don’t need a microphone to play. It’s all text based and so you’ll just need to use whatever device you’re playing on.
Hear Say – Loud and clear
Ever wanted to be a voice actor? Then this mode is for you. Hear Say is a game where you are given prompts to record into your microphone, with prompts such as “The sound of a sneeze that never comes out.” Once recorded, everyone’s attempts will be played out. The winner is the one awarded the highest score at the end.
Now during our game night we did not get a chance to ty this one out, mostly due to microphone issues and being in a big discord call. But even the mere mention of making sound effects had the team laughing. Play at your own peril!
Cookie Haus – Creativity in the Kitchen
In Cookie Haus, your creativity and art skills are put to work at your new job within a bakery. Each player is given an objective for a customer’s order. You must then draw this using a cookie as their blank canvas, helped with a collection of icing and sprinkles to create your delicious masterpiece. The curve ball is that you will be given limited options for your cookie canvas. More often then not you will get a weird shape cookie that you have no ide how to turn into anything remotely like the customer’s brief. Once finished, your masterpiece is put up for review against another competitor. With the other players acting like judges from the British Bake Off to choose the best Cookie. Only with much more judgement on your artistic capabilities.
No microphone is required for this one. This is one for your controller, keyboard and mouse or finger if you’re on mobile. Or be like EIC Stu and use your apple pen and iPad for optimum cookie decorating precision!
Suspectives – Suspect everyone, even yourself.
In Suspectives players must investigate a crime and defend their innocence. This noir-style detective game is designed to pit friend against friend. Husband against wife. Discord user against Discord user. At the start of the game, one of you will be assigned as the suspect. Whilst the rest of the party will be detectives. You will then all answer a series of personal questions before the deduction game begins.
Once these questions have been answered the game is truly afoot. As each member of the party is brought in for questioning, it is the job of the suspect to try and remain as anonymous as possible. Try not to give too much about yourself away during the interrogations or the detectives will win!
A microphone isn’t needed in game, however you will need to be able to speak to one another in order to interact and ask questions. This could be done via text chat however the timer counts down quickly so you’ll need to be a fast typer!
Legends of Trivia – Adventuring is better with friends
Last but not least is Legends of Trivia is a D&D-inspired trivia game mode. Each player picks a D&D character archetype to embark on a quest across a Medieval fantasy realm.
This adventure has the party voting what course to set on their adventure meaning once again you’ll need access to a microphone if playing online. I can see this being a popular choice for in person game nights too!
Instead of dice rolls, players have to choose paths. These could lead to different trivia-based challenges, such as multiple choice or a flurry of facts, or even to a shop. Each question answered right, allows your character to land a successful hit on an enemy. But each question answered wrong, allows the enemy to attack you. Leading to death. Defeating foes will reward you with gold you can use to purchase power-ups, such as health potions or auto-revives. The ultimate goal of Legends of Trivia is to work together in trivia battles to defeat the villainous dragon, ‘BOOKWYRM’. If you’re looking for a less D&D game with less dice and more trivia, I don’t know who you are, but this is the experience you’ve been looking for.
This was unanimously the Thumb Culture gang’s favourite game from the whole pack. The opportunity to create backstories for our characters and how they could possibly know that much about Smithsonian museum exhibits was the icing on the cake.
Final Thoughts
Once again, Jackbox has delivered on providing another fun game to play with you and your friends. With a great selection of games to play, there is a whole host of time that can be sunk into this game. All you have to do is get your friends round, or even play with your Discord community!
The Jackbox Party Pack 11 receives the Thumb Culture Platinum Award.
Disclaimer: A code was received in order to write this review.
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