The Jackbox Party Pack 12 review

Who better to review the new Jackbox Party Pack than a college student! I am of the opinion that Jackbox games are best played in person, in the company of those you love (or love to make fun of), so when GamingTrend gave me the opportunity to review the new Jackbox Party Pack 12, I jumped at the chance to host a party. Little did my friends know that I intended to use them as lab rats to figure out whether these new games were actually any good. 

Jackbox has been a staple of my game nights for years now, and I think that is largely due to the use of phones as player controllers. It makes these games incredibly easy to pick up, regardless of how familiar someone is with video games. The Jackbox Party Pack 12 continues this tradition, offering five new games: Debate and Switch, We Forgot a Card, Idol Factions, MegaPals, and Hyperface. While each game brings at least some new thing to the table, I couldn't help but notice that a few felt remarkably similar to games we've already seen in previous packs.

I'll start with Debate and Switch, which immediately reminded me of a staple among my friend group, Talking Points. For those unfamiliar, Talking Points has players giving presentations to their friends, with the presenter often having no clue what their presentation is actually on. The fun comes from having to improvise your way through a topic while your friends choose the pictures in the background. Your goal is basically to make a coherent (and funny) presentation. Debate and Switch follows a similar formula, except this time, rather than presenting an argument on your own, you're facing off against one of your friends

Players take turns arguing opposing sides of a topic, while everyone else decides whose argument they agree with. The game also allows the audience to change words in the topic midway through the debate, forcing the players to adapt their arguments on the spot. What started out as a debate on how a coffee date is old-fashioned quickly turned into a debate about drinking fifteen 5-hour energies in 30 minutes and how safe that is (do NOT drink fifteen 5-hour energies in 30 minutes). It's a really fun concept, especially when you’re playing with the people I am playing with, people who have no qualms about embarrassing themselves in front of a crowd.

But this is where my biggest criticism of the pack begins. While I enjoyed Debate and Switch, I couldn't shake the feeling that I was just playing Talking Points with a fresh coat of paint. It felt more like a DLC than a new game, which isn't the worst thing ever when the original product is a fun time, but it didn't feel like we were breaking new ground. The premise is essentially the same: make your friends say unhinged things in front of an audience and laugh at them while they try to make a convincing argument. It's always a fun time, but they didn't reinvent the wheel here.

We Forgot a Card falls into a similar category. It tasks players with creating greeting cards for a variety of occasions, writing messages that will hopefully be funnier than everyone else's. The results are then put up against one another, with players voting on which card they prefer.

I liked this game, but again, it felt very reminiscent of other titles we've played before, particularly Quiplash. Both games revolve around players being given a prompt, coming up with the funniest response they can, and competing head-to-head for votes from the rest of the group. While the greeting card format puts a new spin on the initial idea, the overall gameplay doesn't feel particularly new. Much like Debate and Switch, we all had a fun time playing it, but it just felt like we were playing the same game we've already played a billion times.

I don't necessarily think this is a bad thing. Jackbox has found a formula that works incredibly well, and there's no reason to completely abandon it. The issue comes when you're twelve party packs into a series and still relying so much on concepts that have already been explored a bunch of times. We already have three Quiplash titles throughout the packs; I was hoping to see something new that really surprised me.

Idol Factions was another game that felt familiar, but where We Forgot a Card and Debate and Switch didn't innovate all that much, Idol Factions did. Unlike the previous two games, this one focuses on trivia, dividing players into teams that compete to sort answers into categories. As answers come flying across the screen, players have to work together to make sure everything ends up where it belongs. The game becomes increasingly harder to manage as more answers appear, and you can even send problems over to the opposing team to make their lives more difficult. In my experience playing, sending problems to the other team was the best way to play. It introduced an element of chaos that we felt was missing initially.

I can appreciate that Idol Factions brings a more competitive experience to the pack. Not every Jackbox game needs to revolve around who can come up with the funniest answer, and having something that challenges your knowledge is a nice change of pace. However, it still feels like an evolution of the trivia games that have been present throughout the franchise rather than a completely new idea. It's enjoyable, and the added pressure of working with teammates makes things interesting, but I wouldn't consider it one of the pack's most innovative offerings.

Thankfully, the final two games are where I think The Jackbox Party Pack 12 really starts to shine.

MegaPals is centered around how well you and your friends think alike. Players are given prompts and have to quickly type as many related words as they can. You have to hope that their answers match everyone else's. The more you think alike, the more points you earn together. It's a simple concept, but one that takes advantage of a central part of the Jackbox experience: making the people you're playing with the most important thing.

It's unreasonably entertaining to see how differently your friends' brains work compared to yours, especially when you're convinced that everyone will come up with the same answer you did. Sometimes every single person answers with the same inside joke, and sometimes you're all on a separate wavelength. That's the fun of the game. Rather than relying entirely on who can make the funniest joke, MegaPals finds humor in the connections, or lack thereof, between the players. Often, we found that the members of the group who knew each other the best, i.e., roommates or childhood friends, often had more connections. It was a super interesting thing to see represented through the game. I appreciated how different this game felt from the typical Jackbox formula, even while maintaining that these games should be simple enough for anyone to understand.

Hyperface is easily the most ridiculous concept in the entire pack, and spoiler alert: it works really well. Players take photos of themselves, or use images provided by the game (But who wants to do that!), and manipulate them into horrifying creations that fit a given prompt. Then two players go head to head, and everyone else votes on who’s matches the best. Yes, very Quiplash-coded as well, but just wait until you hear about the twist: You can stretch and distort your friends' faces in ways that make the results look like freaks of nature rather than someone you know!

What I liked most about Hyperface is how much creative freedom it gives you. You don't need to be particularly good at drawing or writing jokes to make something funny here. Sometimes, all it takes is stretching someone's forehead to an unreasonable size to get the point across. It felt like a new direction for Jackbox, and one that I would love to see explored further in future packs.

Looking at the collection as a whole, I think The Jackbox Party Pack 12 is a good example of a game that doesn't necessarily need to innovate to be entertaining. Even when I found myself recognizing familiar mechanics, I was still enjoying the experience. At the end of the day, Jackbox games are only as entertaining as the people you're playing them with, and this pack gives those people plenty of opportunities to make each other laugh.

My biggest issue is that, outside of MegaPals and Hyperface, I don't feel like there's enough here to separate this entry from the eleven packs that came before it. The games are fun, but fun and original are not the same thing. I would have liked to see Jackbox take a few more risks with its twelfth installment.

Still, it's hard to complain too much about a game that gives me another excuse to get all my friends together for a night of laughing at each other's expense. While The Jackbox Party Pack 12 may not reinvent the party game formula, it certainly proves that there's still plenty of fun to be had with it. And if nothing else, my friends now know to be suspicious the next time I invite them over for a game night.