The Jackbox Party Pack 11, launching Thursday, Oct. 23, offers the series' trademark variety of casual party games, from trivia to drawing to joke writing. I own a handful of these bundles, breaking them out whenever I have a group of friends over and we want something with lower stakes and less of a time commitment than playing a full D&D session or even breaking out a game of Camel Up.
The great thing about a Jackbox title is that it mixes five different mini-games into one package, meaning almost anyone can find at least one they enjoy among the variety. The trouble is that the group may not always enjoy the whole pack, or even most of it. There may be only one or two of the five that really click with your group, perhaps neglecting the more experimental or complex challenges.
"There's a lot of different people out there," Rich Gallup, director of production at Jackbox Games told me. "There's a lot of different types of parties [with different ways they] play our games, and not every game is gonna fit every group." Gallup referred to the "power of the pack" -- the idea that each Party Pack should have a game for everyone, and in some cases, more than one game.
Party Pack 11 manages the remarkable feat of being pretty even throughout. I played through the mini-games ahead of launch with a group of friends I would describe as "abundantly familiar" with prior entries in the Jackbox series. After playing through the entirety of the new Party Pack, we all agreed that almost every game felt equally interesting to us… even if we came out with some early favorites that we'll probably go back to over and over again.
All the games in Jackbox Party Pack 11
Hear Say
The standout of the new Party Pack is Hear Say, a game where your group is asked to record sound effects in response to prompts like [example] and [example]. Then you vote on the best recording.
"It's a whole new form of creativity for our players," Gallup said. "Writing jokes is hard. Drawing is hard. Making a fart noise, y'know… maybe that's a little more universal. And the game has shown you can make fart noises over a lot of things, and they make a lot of people laugh."
The simplicity is a huge part of the charm. Unlike Jackbox staples like Quiplash, which asks you to carefully craft cerebral (or crass) jokes, Hear Say is all about blurting silly little sounds into your phone. Pretend to almost sneeze. Forget your coworker's name. You only have about 5 seconds for each sound effect, so brevity is king.
Hear Say also gives you plenty of opportunities to make other players laugh. My group heard each other recording their sound effects, and sometimes had to redo our own because we burst out laughing in the middle of recording. If there's a particularly popular sound effect, you can also replay it on demand after hearing everyone's responses before voting is finished.
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