It’s hard to believe that we’ve been having fun with the Jackbox team for a decade already. But in that time they’ve been super prolific, pushing out numerous Jackbox Party Packs to the masses.
For the most part, they have been brilliant as end of year gatherings look to move to the virtual world, with the main ‘Packs’ full of crazy, humorous, fun mini-games. And to accompany those, that same Jackbox team have also pulled the pin on a few smaller packs, The Jackbox Naughty Pack being the most recent offering.
But now they are trying something a little different to the norm with The Jackbox Survey Scramble. This is a collection of games – four in fact – that bring players together as they go hunting for one-word (or smushed words if you must) answers, inputting those into survey-based mini-games in hope of scoring more points than their friends. In a nutshell, it’s a really simple premise and should appeal more to those who struggle with the drawing and ‘imagination-focused’ gameplay of other, more popular, Jackbox games.
For me, it feels a perfect addition. If only because I love surveys, stats and the chance to go leaderboard climbing. It helps that it’s quite possibly the most fun of all recent Jackbox games too – but obviously that should be seen as a wholly personal thing, for you might have preferred the stupid drawings of The Jackbox Starter Pack.
So what do we have in The Jackbox Survey Scramble? Well, with the usual superb Jackbox presentation front and centre, it’s easy to pick and choose the games you wish to play, when you want to play them. The simple entering of a four-letter room code allows entry for up to ten players, each just requiring an internet enabled device in order to play. Phones are absolutely fine for this, as are tablets. We’ve found that the very best way of playing Survey Scramble though is through a laptop – it’s just that teeny, tiny bit quicker to type on than on mobile. And occasionally, speed is your friend with this scramble.
Wherever you play, things work well, provided you have a solid internet connection to hand. We’ve played enough Jackbox over the years to be fully aware of what may happen when multiple players are trying to get in on the action, huddled in a single room, attempting to make the most of a dodgy wifi connection. Get something solid going on though and the power of Jackbox pulls through each and every time.
Game wise and possibly the best way to work through the Survey Scramble is through the Tour. This brings together the four games – Hilo, Speed, Squares and Bounce – in a competition format, scoring as you go, allowing for overall bragging rights and fun interaction at the end. And with there being only four games in this pack, it’s still a fairly swift playthrough, easily coming in under the half hour mark with a few players in place. Of course, that may well lengthen if you’ve got a full house participating.
You can let Jackbox pick a game for you if you must too, but seeing as you’re going to need to get the brain working at some point, you may as well dive into each of the games that are offered. Starting with Hilo is probably for the best. And that’s because it is the best of the games included.
In Hilo you need to guess the most popular – and least popular – one-word answers from a set list. After picking a category of your liking, you’re provided with a blank table, and one simple question. From there, you just need to input whatever you think may be the most popular answer from Jackbox’s surveying. For instance, you may be asked what you think people would most like for their birthday. Popular answers are – of course – money, happiness, love and the likes. Strangely, pants and socks, as well as forks, are much less wanted.
Taking your time to add single answers, considering new answers as others reply for themselves, means that this is a fairly laid back Jackbox game. And it’s one that ‘may’ well surprise too – if only as some of the top answers to the questions we’ve played through are a bit ‘out there’.
For us, Hilo is a high point of The Jackbox Survey Scramble, fast followed by the next game in the list – Speed.
Speed, as the name suggests, ups the pace a little – and it’s here where those playing on a computer or laptop will find a little bit of an advantage.
The premise is similar to previous, in that you are given a list of blank answers and you need to fill things in; as fast as you can. This means that you may get asked ‘What is needed to make a good home’ and from there you’re left to input as many answers as possible, as fast as possible.
In this example, we had all manner of weirdnesses going on, from sofa to kettle, to dog and cat, to bath, pool, bed, carpets, plants, mirrors and so on. With time against you, whatever comes into your mind is best to be put down in writing, as others do the same alongside you; repeat answers count for nothing when you’re competing for some Survey Scramble bragging rights.
Both Hilo and Speed are played as individual affairs, every person for themselves, attempting to slam in some answers and take home the big points. But then The Jackbox Survey Scramble mixes things up a bit more to deliver a couple of team-based games.
Squares is easily the most appealing of those team games, as you again hunt for answers to the most random of questions. With each answer given a scoring tile, you need to capture three squares in a row in order to win. For instance, you may find the top scoring answer and fill in the top left tile of the 3×3 grid, nailing down that spot. But if you only find the second best answer, the other team can move in and steal that square. It does feel very random, and rarely will you really be left considering specific answers, mostly intent on just finding a scoring answer, but Squares works well as is. We were left during one game to try and find the ‘most popular snack’ and needed to dominate a tile with an answer that could sit between ‘ice-cream’ and ‘burgers’. We failed, but ‘bread’ was as good as anything and delivered a winning line nonetheless.
For us, Bounce is by far the weakest of the inclusions in The Jackbox Survey Scramble. This works as a type of Breakout-styled game, in which a constantly moving ball bounces between the play area ceiling and a bumper along the bottom. The thing is, you can only move that bumper by inputting answers – the most popular answer shifting it to the far left of the screen, the least popular moving it to the right.
We’ll admit we seriously struggled with this game mode, especially when it came to discovering some of the more random, least popular answers. And seeing as the ‘ball’ could – in effect – get caught on one side of the playfield, just adding the same old answers each time would see it batted back and forth. For us, in one game, that was between ‘Barbie’ as the most popular answer on the board, and ‘Transformers’ in the middle of the field. Rarely did ‘Pokemon’ come into play in that ‘Childhood toys’ round. And Bounce isn’t helped by the fact that it’s fairly difficult for newcomers to pick up on the fly too – confusion has reigned on occasion.
Disliking Bounce as much as we did, we then found that the ‘Tour’ option from the main menu became a little more redundant. It’s so easy in the Jackbox Survey Scramble to jump into a game of Hilo, Speed or Squares and have stupid fun in the process, that a full on Tour, knowing you have the annoyances of Bounce at the end would rarely excite.
There’s no doubt that the Jackbox Survey Scramble is set-up nicely for moving forward though. Every guess, from every player, is integrated into a database at Jackbox HQ, inputted back into the game to allow for fresh experiences each and every time. And with more games promised soon, this one-word answer-thon could well be the go-to party game for the foreseeable future. Of course, it would have been great if those games were included at launch…
And so that means The Jackbox Survey Scramble is three-quarters of the way to being another hugely fun Jackbox experience. Taking a different angle to what has proven to work over the course of a decade, it’s great to see a new option on the madcap fun that emanates from the Jackbox team. With highs in the form of Hilo and Speed, this is only taken down a notch by the less-fun Bounce.
It would have been appreciated if there were a couple more survey-based games included to build out that fun, but if you like what Jackbox have provided over the years, then The Jackbox Survey Scramble deserves some playtime.
The Jackbox Survey Scramble: A Hilarious New Party Game That’s Always Changing – https://www.thexboxhub.com/the-jackbox-survey-scramble-a-hilarious-new-party-game-thats-always-changing/
Buy The Jackbox Survey Scramble on Xbox – https://www.xbox.com/en-gb/games/store/the-jackbox-survey-scramble/9n0gr077vg2s