On top of running several escape rooms together and playing a whole lot of Mario Tennis Aces, we actually spent most of our free time playing various games from the Jackbox Party Packs. And what a ride it was! If you’ve never played any of the Jackbox games, you’re missing out. Keep reading to see why you should start playing. Recently updated with Jackbox Party Pack 9!
What Are Jackbox Party Games? Explained
Jackbox games are party games that can be played over a streaming service like Twitch, but in my experience it’s best when everyone is in the same room. Only one person needs to purchase and own the game, which is hosted on a TV, computer screen, or what have you. Everyone else joins the game as a player using their mobile phone and the room code. So you have a bunch of players sitting in front of the TV, and the game itself plays out on the TV, but players are interacting with the game’s prompts using their mobile phones. Most Jackbox games involve typing answers or drawing images to your device, and the results of the game are shown on the TV. Each game is different, of course, but the driving element of every Jackbox game is the party aspect: they’re simple, creative, and downright hilarious when played with the right group of people. But not every Jackbox game is a winner. The best ones have incredible replayability that can keep you entertained for hours, but some are downright terrible and others may only be fun a few times before they lose their luster. This is a shame because—save for a few exceptions—the Jackbox games can’t be bought a la carte. You have to buy them in Jackbox Party Packs, and at $25 a pop, it can be hard to know which packs are worth getting and which ones you should probably skip. As of this writing, there are nine Jackbox Party Packs available. I’ll review each one and explain why I think it’s either worth getting or skipping, and I’ll rate each game in each pack using the following evaluations:
Not worth playing Good for a few plays Fun with the right people Always worth playing
Jackbox Party Pack 1: Worth It?
You Don’t Know Jack 2015 (1–4 players)Not worth playing Straight-up trivia game with a twist: the questions involve a lot of puns and word play, requiring you to decode what they’re asking before you can even answer. I didn’t find it entertaining in the least. Word Spud (2–8 players)Not worth playing Players take turns creating compound words. The music is surprisingly tense, which I liked, but at the end of the day this one’s not really a game at all. Not sure how it made it into the pack. Lie Swatter (1–100 players)Not worth playing A race to see who can answer True or False the fastest. Not really a game since you can mash answers and still have a 50 percent chance of getting it correct. If only there were more to it than that. Fibbage XL (2–8 players)Fun with the right people Entertaining! Every player is given the same trivia fact with a fill-in-the-blank to answer. All false answers are shown simultaneously with the actual answer, and players need to guess what the truth is. Drawful (3–8 players)Always worth playing Each player is given a wacky prompt to draw. Then, one at a time, the drawings are shown on screen and everyone (except the drawer) needs to guess what it is. Then, the guesses are all shown simultaneously with the actual prompt, and players need to pick the right one. Hilarious! Fortunately, you can buy Drawful as a standalone game.
Jackbox Party Pack 2: Worth It?
Earwax (3–8 players)Not worth playing Players are given a prompt and must pick two sound effects (from a list of six) that best match the prompt. Usually devolves into fart noises and absurd, nonsensical combinations. Very little replay value. Bidiots (3–6 players)Not worth playing Every player starts with $3,000 and is given two prompts to draw. Drawings are put up for auction, but each player only knows the true value of some of the drawings. Whoever ends with the most money wins. Not a bad concept, but the game just takes way too long for how much fun it provides. Bomb Corp (1–4 players)Fun with the right people Have you ever played Spaceteam? This is like that, cranked up another notch. Players work cooperatively to defuse a bomb, but each player knows special details about the bomb that the other players don’t—so they need to work together to figure out how to defuse it properly before time runs out. Surprisingly tense and funny! Fibbage 2 (2–8 players)Fun with the right people Like Fibbage XL in Jackbox Party Pack 1 with all-new questions! Quiplash XL (3–8 players)Always worth playing Players are given two prompts to answer, where each prompt is given to two players. For each prompt, the two answers are pitted head-to-head, and players vote for which one they like better. Really funny!
Jackbox Party Pack 3: Worth It?
Tee K.O. (3–8 players)Fun with the right people Players take turn drawing, and then those drawings are given to other players to caption. Finally, drawings and captions are matched together to create funny T-shirts, which are voted on. Best one wins. I didn’t like this one, but it has potential to be hilarious with the right group. Guesspionage (2–8 players)Fun with the right people Players take turns answering a social statistics question, where the statistics are gathered by informal polls (like Family Feud). The other players then guess whether the real answer is higher or lower. It’s a pretty good blend of trivia and social interaction, but can be a bust if played with people who don’t really care about statistics. Trivia Murder Party (1–8 players)Fun with the right people Straight-up trivia quiz show packaged as a horror escape. Pretty fun if your group is into trivia, otherwise it’s a bit of a bust. Quiplash 2 (3–8 players)Always worth playing Like Quiplash XL from Jackbox Party Pack 2 but with more questions—as well as the ability to create your own questions if you want. Fakin’ It (3–6 players)Always worth playing This might be my favorite Jackbox game of all time. In it, all players except one—the “faker”—is given a particular instruction (“Raise your hand if…”, “Point at the person who…”, “Make the face you’d make when…”). The faker needs to try to blend in, while everyone else needs to figure out who’s faking. I love this game because it’s not just funny, but you learn things about people you never would have otherwise.
Jackbox Party Pack 4: Worth It?
Bracketeering (3–16 players)Not worth playing Everyone is given a prompt. Then, all answers are pitted against one another in a tournament-style bracket, until one answer comes out on top. It’s basically Quiplash but slower and nowhere near as funny. Civic Doodle (3–8 players)Good for a few plays Two players are given something to draw. The rest vote on which they like better. The resulting winner is given to two other players, who add on to it, and the results are voted on. On and on it goes for several rounds and you’re left with a mess of a drawing. A cool concept, but it drags on for far too long, and the laughs-per-minute just aren’t there. Survive the Internet (3–8 players)Fun with the right people Everyone is given a prompt to answer. Then, each answer is given to a different player who provides a different prompt for that answer, so it looks like the original player’s answer is ridiculous, offensive, etc. Then everyone votes on the funniest results. Requires a bit of clever wit to be good, but can lead to some hilarious moments! Monster Seeking Monster (3–7 players)Fun with the right people Everyone joins the game using a nonsense nickname so no one knows who’s who. Then, over the course of six rounds, players send each other messages in secret to try to “match” with one another, as if they were online dating. Everyone has individual goals on who they need to match with. Requires everyone to get into character for it to be fun, but it’s surprisingly fun when they do. Fibbage 3 (2–8 players)Always worth playing Like Fibbage XL and Fibbage 2, but with an amazing new mode called “Enough About You” where players enter truths about themselves, everyone enters lies about everyone else, and the goal is to guess the truth for each person. I love this game because it’s hilarious and you learn so much about the people you play with. My second favorite Jackbox game after Fakin’ It.
Jackbox Party Pack 5: Worth It?
You Don’t Know Jack (1–8 players)Not worth playing Pretty much the same thing as You Don’t Know Jack 2015 from Jackbox Party Pack 1, and still just as bad. I really don’t like this game. Zeeple Dome (1–6 players)Not worth playing Jackbox took a risk with Zeeple Dome, an action-style physics arena game—and, unfortunately, it’s a huge miss. It just isn’t very fun or funny. However, I’m glad they took the chance, and I’d love to see more attempts at action-oriented party games, as long as they end up being better than this one. Patently Stupid (3–8 players)Good for a few plays A creative concept where players submit “problems” that need solving. Then, each player is given one problem at random and must draw a solution for it. Then, the drawn solutions are distributed to players, and players must given them names, slogans, and try to “sell” the product to everyone else by presenting it like a salesman. Split the Room (3–8 players)Fun with the right people Players are given prompts with fill-in-the-blanks answers and must write in controversial choices. Everyone else votes on the two choices, and the goal is to “split the room” so that half pick one and half pick the other. Similar to but not as good as Quiplash. Mad Verse City (3–8 players)Fun with the right people Players are given nonsensical rap lines and must come up with rhymes for them. Then, two players are pitted head-to-head in a rap battle, and everyone else votes on who had the better lines. Extremely funny as long as everyone is into it and actually puts effort into their answers.
Jackbox Party Pack 6: Worth It?
Trivia Murder Party 2 (1–8 players)Fun with the right people Like the original, this sequel is another straight-up trivia quiz show packaged as a horror escape, but with more (arguably better) minigames and a more thrilling ending. Still, it’s only good if your group is into trivia. Role Models (3–6 players)Good for a few plays Over several rounds, you’re given several archetypes that you have to assign everyone into. For example, if the topic were “Murder weapons,” then you’d be given a variety of murder weapons and have to choose which player would be most likely to use which weapon. In the end, everyone is given a personality assessment based on how everyone sees them. It’s not a bad game, but loses its novelty pretty quickly. Joke Boat (3–8 players)Fun with the right people Everyone is given rapid-fire prompts to answer, which are used to seed various joke setups. Players must then create punchlines to those joke setups, and the resulting jokes are placed head-to-head for the rest of the players to vote on. It feels like Mad Verse City but a lot more difficult. Only good to play if everyone has the creativity to come up with clever punchlines. Dictionarium (3–8 players)Not worth playing In the first round, players are prompted to define a nonsensical, fictional slang term, then vote on their favorite. In the second round, players are prompted to come up with their own fictional slang synonym for the first term, then vote on their favorite. In the last round, players are prompted to use the winning synonym in a sentence, then vote on their favorite. There’s potential in the idea, but Dictionarium sadly falls flat and isn’t as funny as it seems like it’d be. Push the Button (4–10 players)Good for a few plays One player is secretly an alien while everyone else is human. Two players at a time are given a prompt and a set of answers; but if one of the players is the alien, they only get the set of answers without the prompt. The goal is to identify who the alien is within 12 minutes—but the longer you take, the more powerful the alien becomes with special abilities. While Push the Button isn’t a bad game, it’s a more convoluted and not-as-fun version of Fakin’ It.
Jackbox Party Pack 7: Worth It?
Quiplash 3 (3–8 players)Always worth playing After a long wait since Jackbox Party Pack 3, we finally have another! Quiplash 3 is more of the same fun, with new prompts to keep things fresh. The Devils and the Details (3–8 players)Good for a few plays Despite the failure of Zeeple Dome, Jackbox took another risk with this action-oriented game—and it came out better this time. This cooperative game has each player take on a specific role in a family of devils, and everyone must work together to successfully get through suburban life. But I prefer Bomb Corp, to be honest. Champ’d Up (3–8 players)Fun with the right people Players are given unique prompts and have to draw a “champion” for that prompt (e.g. “The Champion of Shenanigans”). Then everyone receives one of the drawn champions WITHOUT its prompt and must draw a challenger. Every champion is then pitted against its challenger and everyone votes on the winner. Requires a group of creative folk to really shine! Talking Points (3–8 players)Fun with the right people Every player takes turn giving a speech based on a PowerPoint presentation they’ve never seen. The catch? While one player is giving the speech, another player (“The Assistant”) is picking the next slide. This game demands a bit of improvisational prowess from players, so it may not be the most fun for people with social anxiety or fear of public speaking (even though the presentation is mostly played for jokes). But with a close group of friends or family who can wing it, it can be a blast! Blather ‘Round (2–6 players)Always worth playing A guessing game where players take turns with secret prompts. The Presenter wants to describe their prompt, but they can only choose from a pool of descriptors. As players offer their guesses, the Presenter can use those guesses to direct players (whether it’s similar or nothing like it). It’s collaborative and satisfying! Great if you like Pictionary-esque guessing games.
Jackbox Party Pack 8: Worth It?
Drawful Animate (3–10 players)Fun with the right people This is basically the same as previous Drawful games, but with a twist: instead of drawing a singular image each round, you draw a two-frame animation. It definitely opens up more room for fun and creativity, but also slows down the pacing because each round takes longer for drawing. Can be super entertaining with players who are good at animating! The Wheel of Enormous Proportions (3–8 players)Not worth playing The Jackbox Party Packs have been pretty hit-or-miss when it comes to trivia games, and this one feels like a bust. There’s too much luck involved, the mechanics are too convoluted, and the pacing is extremely slow—resulting in too little fun-per-minute for what’s essentially a glorified trivia game. It’s entirely forgettable. Job Job (3–10 players)Always worth playing Job Job is my personal favorite in Jackbox Party Pack 8. It’s a clever twist on the Quiplash formula: instead of simply answering prompts, there’s a preliminary round where everyone answers preliminary prompts. The words used in the preliminary prompts’ answers are the only words you can use to answer the actual prompts! Answers are pitted against each other and voted on in Quiplash fashion. The end result is hilarious because your answers are constrained by the words available to you, meaning all answers are pretty much nonsensical. Job Job is an improvement on Quiplash for groups where players may feel embarrassed for not feeling “smart” enough to write witty answers—the word-pool mechanic evens the playing field for everyone. The Poll Mine (2–10 players)Fun with the right people The Poll Mine is a fun Family Feud-style game where each round involves a prompt, a selection of potential answers to that prompt, and each player choosing their favorite answers in ranked order. Higher-ranked answers are given more overall weight. Players are then divided into teams and must guess the most popular answers based on how everyone collectively ranked the answers. The second round shakes things up by asking teams to only guess the top 2/3/4 answers (not the most popular). The last round is a face-off to guess answers in order from least popular to most popular. The Poll Mine is one of those games that’s more fun with more people. It’s engaging from start to finish, and the final round is designed so that any team can win (the first two rounds can given advantages though). Weapons Drawn (4–8 players)Fun with the right people Weapons Drawn is a surprisingly complex social deduction game that requires several playthroughs to really understand its complexities. Players are given prompts to draw, but have to incorporate a random letter from their name in drawings (the letter shape is random and provided). Players also “bring guests” by giving their guest a name. The mechanics come together like so: by guessing which player named a particular guest, you “murder” that guest and leave your drawing as your calling card. For each murdered guest, players have to guess who did the murdering by using the calling card drawing as a clue. The calling card acts as a clue in two ways: first, the style of drawing can give away who drew it, and second, there might be a letter hidden in the drawing that gives away who drew it. Weapons Drawn moves pretty quickly—perhaps too quickly at first, and you’ll feel lost the first few times you play. But once it clicks, it can be fun with the right people, especially because the game provides several ways to deduce a murderer through player drawings.
Jackbox Party Pack 9: Worth It?
Fibbage 4 (2–8 players)Not worth playing Even though I personally love the Fibbage series, I can’t help but feel that Fibbage 4 is one of the worst Jackbox experiences. I actively dislike it and I’ll probably never play it again. It reeks of a try-hard desperation and leans so heavily into its nonsensical, random, surreal aesthetic that induces eyeroll after eyeroll. The startup time is way too long and doesn’t offer a skip option, and the downtime between questions is poorly paced. Plus, the questions are surprisingly lame compared to past iterations of Fibbage, and the new formats (like video questions) add nothing to the experience. Stick with previous Fibbage titles. Quixort (1–10 players)Fun with the right people Quixort is a shameless rip-off of a board game called Timeline, in which you’re given a random assortment of items that you need to sort. For example, sort a set of movies by their release date. There are two twists that make Quixort worth playing despite lifting gameplay from Timeline: first, it’s cooperative team-vs-team where players on a team alternate placing items, and second, some blocks are fake and need to be trashed instead of placed. I personally enjoy Quixort a lot, but it hasn’t always been a hit with the people I played with. My biggest gripe is that one team does nothing while it’s the other team’s turn, which sucks for a Jackbox game. Junktopia (3–8 players)Not worth playing Junktopia is another entry in Jackbox’s series of presentation games. If you hated previous games in this genre (i.e. Patently Stupid, Talking Points) then you’ll probably hate this one as well for the same reasons. In Junktopia, you choose a worthless artifact and give it two written descriptions (“This item was previously owned by…”). Everyone presents their items and then votes on their favorites. I enjoy both Patently Stupid and Talking Points, but Junktopia is a total dud. It lacks the structural guidance that makes those previous games fun for all; instead, Junktopia’s open-endedness makes you feel stupid and the provided images aren’t funny enough. Nonsensory (3–8 players)Always worth playing The gameplay of Nonsensory is very similar to a popular board game called Wavelength. If you’ve enjoyed playing Wavelength before, you’ll love this! In Nonsensory, everyone is prompted with a spectrum (e.g. Vegetarian to Meat Eater) as well as a point along that spectrum (e.g. 60%) and a question (e.g. “What’s a good nickname for someone whose diet is 60% Meat?” to which I might answer “Prettynormalarian.”) Other players are shown your answer and must guess the point along the spectrum you were given. In other words, knowing that I answered “Prettynormalarian,” they’d guess how much of one’s diet is Meat. There are two big twists in Nonsensory that make it really enjoyable: first, the second and third rounds involve drawing, and second, the last round’s spectrum is non-binary (e.g. On a spectrum from Bouquet to Knives, draw something that is 30% Bouquet.) Roomerang (4–9 players)Fun with the right people Roomerang is a game where players embody cast members on a reality TV show, and each player picks a personality trait for their character (e.g. Loves Scented Candles). Over the course of five rounds, you’ll be given various prompts to answer from the perspective of your character, and you’ll also be voting on the other characters—not just your favorite answers, but which ones to eliminate! This is a reality TV show, after all. What’s nice in Roomerang is that being eliminated doesn’t mean you stop playing. When you’re eliminated, your character is replaced with another whose name is slightly tweaked from your own and now has a different personality trait that you can embody. Roomerang is one of the best-produced Jackbox games, but it’s also one of the longer ones (takes about 30 minutes to play) and it requires a certain type of group—players who can roleplay and won’t be offended by being selected for elimination—to unlock its full potential.
Save Money With Jackbox Bundles
If you’re planning on buying multiple Jackbox Party Packs, you may want to opt for one of the party pack bundles on offer. Each bundle has its own combination of Jackbox Party Packs, and the price is slightly cheaper than if you were to buy them separately. So unless you only want to grab one or two of them, or if you want a strange mixture a la carte, consider one of these:
The Jackbox Party Trilogy contains:
Jackbox Party Pack 1 Jackbox Party Pack 2 Jackbox Party Pack 3
The Jackbox Party Trilogy 2.0 contains:
Jackbox Party Pack 4 Jackbox Party Pack 5 Jackbox Party Pack 6
The Jackbox Party Quadpack contains:
Jackbox Party Pack 1 Jackbox Party Pack 2 Jackbox Party Pack 3 Jackbox Party Pack 4
The Jackbox Party Quintpack contains:
Jackbox Party Pack 1 Jackbox Party Pack 2 Jackbox Party Pack 3 Jackbox Party Pack 4 Jackbox Party Pack 5
I love the Jackbox games and I try to play them whenever we have gatherings and the opportunity strikes. Grab a few and have fun! Read next: The Best Party Board Games for Larger Groups (8 or More Players)
