Jackbox Party Pack 6 – A Pleasant Surprise
Whenever there is a new Jackbox Party Pack available, I can always count on my brother to buy it and bust it out at the next family gathering. I’ve discussed some of the Jackbox Party Packs before, including the standalone games like Drawful, but the 6th edition of the Party Pack is a genuinely great addition to the collection. Actually, I’ll go ahead and say that it’s probably the most rounded of the party packs in general.
There are five games in the 6th Party Pack, one of which is a sequel to an old game from a previous party pack, the rest being new games or twists on old games. Surprisingly, there’s no specific drawing game in Party Pack 6, but that’s fine, not every pack needs a drawing game. Plus, some of the mini-games have drawing in them, so there are still opportunities to laugh at bad pics.
First game on the list is Trivia Murder Party 2, which is a Shining-themed sequel to Trivia Murder Party 1, with more trivia, more mini-games and a twist at the end where you have to get a question 100% correct in order to escape and win. I’d say that, although the questions are still quite “American” (although less so than before), there’s more chances for everyone to play. The last sequence also gives players more of a chance to make a comeback, since ghosts can close in quicker and sneak a victory at the end. It’s definitely an improvement from the first Trivia Murder Party.
The second game is Joke Boat, which is kinda like Mad Verse City from the previous game except you’re making jokes rather than making raps. I wasn’t sure at first, but Joke Boat grew on me. The prompts can be a little tricky but there’s generally something you can make from them. My only complaint with Joke Boat is that you have to pick a randomly generated catchphrase and it shows after every player’s joke, which does slow things down more than needed.
The game that’s probably best played with far more players is Push the Button, which is basically a game of Mafia or TTT, but you take it in turns to make people play mini-games. In your group, people will be randomly picked to play as aliens, and in every mini-game you do, aliens will get slightly different prompts compared to humans, meaning players have to work out who is suspicious or not. You have a limited amount of time to finish the game (15 minutes with 5 players) and at any time, you can push the button to nominate people to be shoved out an airlock and killed.
Role Models is a pretty odd game. It’s definitely a lot of fun, but it’s far less competitive than the others. It’s a very weird personality game where you match people to various characters or traits based on categories, like “Disney Princesses” or “Pizza Toppings”. As a personality test, it’s only somewhat accurate (well, it was accurate-ish for everyone but me) but it’s a ton of fun. I also actually really like the art style for Role Models. While the other games work best with any crowd, Role Models does kinda need people to somewhat know each other, so you can make accurate guesses as to who matches what, but it’s still a very good yet odd game.
In fact, the only somewhat okay game was Dictionarium, but mainly because it’s a very short game that could have done with a second round or perhaps more player interaction. Dictionarium is very simple: it gives you a randomly generated word or phrase, you give that random phrase a silly definition, you write a synonym for that word then use the synonym in a sentence. With five players, this only had one round and was over in five minutes, and frankly, there should have been a round where we CREATE a random word that we have to then define. But Dictionarium isn’t bad, it’s definitely playable, it’s just lacking something.
Overall, I’d definitely suggest getting Party Pack 6, if you have to limit yourself to just one game. While I’d say that the games in Party Pack 3 are my favourites (mainly because of Quiplash 2), the games in Jackbox Party Pack 6 are a really nice, rounded collection of games.