A New Collection of Chaotic Classics
Despite releasing an iteration every year since I can remember, in 2024 we weren’t treated to the usual Jackbox Party Pack, with the Jackbox team instead focusing on smaller, more niche products – The Jackbox Naughty Pack and that of The Jackbox Survey Scramble. Some interesting diversions aside, it’s great to finally have the next entry in the main series drop on to the Xbox store.
For those who are unaware, The Jackbox Party Pack 11 is the latest entry in a long running party game series which spans numerous genres. It allows a group of friends to get together and get silly with only their mobile devices and one copy of the game needed to play.
Doominate and Cookie Haus: Wordplay and Artistic Destruction
The Jackbox Party Pack 11 offers up five new games, these being: Doominate, Hear Say, Cookie Haus, Suspectives and Legends of Trivia. As the last title makes clear, each follows the long established pattern of offering up games of varying types to get to grips with across the collection.
First up, we have Doominate. This is a game all about wordplay, specifically ruining prompts given to you by expanding on the broad subject matter provided. “Ruining” (as ever in Jackbox) means putting your own comedic spin on things in order to bag the most votes from other players. This in turn will earn you points and this is how you win the game.
In a later round you can “unruin” previous entries, those being prompts submitted by other players. This involves rewriting their submissions although the goal is to try and outdo their humour rather than just fix them.
Doominate reminded me very much of “Joke Boat”, one of my all time favourites from The Jackbox Party Pack 6. It’s structured very similarly, with plenty of purposely crafted subjects to get the laughs going (especially if you combine them with in-jokes from your own group of friends).
Hear Say: The Hilarious Power of Sound Effects
Next we have Hear Say. This one is all about sounds, more specifically those you make into the microphone of your device. You’ll be prompted and then tasked to match what you’re given, but using words is strictly forbidden. A note of caution however. I’d advise taking it in turns to record your sound if you are in the same room, otherwise things turn to chaos as you’ll end up drowning each other out with your daft noises.
Once complete players will be able to vote on the best fitting sound and bag those coveted points. However, possibly the best parts of Hear Say aren’t actually the main game itself, but the bits in between. Intermission games challenge your pitch range but the video clips with your recorded sounds dubbed over make Hear Say genuinely one of the funniest Jackbox games I can remember. As long as you have the confidence to get silly, you’ll no doubt have a blast with this one.
The drawing game (the one I always fear thanks to my woeful art skills) in The Jackbox Party Pack 11 is Cookie Haus. Here you are tasked with designing cookies to order so you can meet the needs of an eclectic group of customers.
You choose from various shapes depending on how confident you are (some are pretty difficult to do anything with), and can ice your cookies, add tips, sprinkles and even googly eyes. Once submitted you vote for and can compliment each other’s designs.
The last round tasks players with amending someone else’s design at the behest of your increasingly demanding customers. Of course, this is an opportunity to completely ruin someone else’s masterpiece if you should choose, or delicately improve upon their creation. The choice is yours.
Cookie Haus is good fun like the many drawing games which have come before it, but doesn’t do much to change the tried and tested formula. Personally, I think it will take something truly special to beat the fantastic Tee K.O. 2 from The Jackbox Party Pack 10.
Suspectives: The Social Deduction Debate
The fourth game in The Jackbox Party Pack 11 is Suspectives, which falls into the social deduction category. This type of game has featured in pretty much every party pack since Among Us took the world by storm. Although most Jackbox games can easily be streamed these days, Suspectives is one which is best played locally due to the need for discussion and debate. It’s also the only one in the collection which needs a minimum of four people to play.
In Suspectives players need to solve a crime by studying survey answers, clues and ultimately defending themselves from wild accusations. One player will be assigned the role of the criminal, and it will be up to the others to try and identify and prove who the guilty party is.
Methods such as interrogations and lie detectors will help, but ultimately how well you know each other will often provide the biggest clues. As with any social deduction game the trick is mastering misdirections and red herrings to avoid detection.
For me, in the past, the social deduction games have ever so slightly clashed with the quick natured, rapid paced Jackbox style and Suspectives is no different. It’s enjoyable, don’t get me wrong but takes longer to play thanks to the more drawn-out, complicated game structure that comes with the genre. As a result I found myself going back to the others more often for that quick hit of party game action.
Legends of Trivia: D&D Meets Question-Answering
Finally, Legends of Trivia wraps up the question based game in a fantasy D&D style theme. Players select a character each with their own stats and set off on an adventure of turn based battling where answering questions does damage. The aim is to work as a team to collect gold by defeating monsters, and it is also important for resurrecting in the event of death.
There are different types of question structures, for example double answers, hidden questions, lists and more. Gold can also be used to purchase items from the many pop up shops which appear, which come in very handy in the more difficult areas.
There are three different biomes to play through that end with a final boss battle and increase in difficulty. It’s here on one occasion where the game did give duplicate answers and got completely stuck, forcing me to restart. It’s worth remembering that with trivia games in Jackbox filtering the US-centric content can really help improve the experience for those of us across the pond.
Legends of Trivia is a great way of making answering questions fun. It retains the quickfire Jackbox gameplay but adds in a simple layer of strategy too. Another cool feature of this game is the audience can influence things by rolling dice which can heal both the party of heroes and their enemies.
A Strong Collection Lacking a Standout Star
The Jackbox Party Pack 11 is a great collection of games which boasts the series staples, but features no standout stars to add to the all-timers list.
Important Links
The Jackbox Party Pack 11 Unveils Five All-New Games, Sets October Release Date – https://www.thexboxhub.com/the-jackbox-party-pack-11-unveils-five-all-new-games-sets-october-release-date/
Buy from the Xbox Store – https://www.xbox.com/en-GB/games/store/the-jackbox-party-pack-11/9PJWRQRJTHNT/0010
