The Jackbox Party Pack Available Now on Steam

[Shawn Zipay]

The 5-game collection of party games called The Jackbox Party Pack is now available on Steam for $24.99 (USD).

The Jackbox Party Pack is the studio’s biggest stab yet at cornering the party game market. Coming on the heels of their recent hit release, Fibbage: The Hilarious Bluffing Party Game, the Party Pack builds on the company’s unique play-with-your-phone technology. Players don’t need individual controllers to play, just an Internet-connected device, such as a smartphone or tablet.

The five party games in the pack are: YOU DON’T KNOW JACK 2015, Fibbage XL, Drawful, Word Spud and Lie Swatter. YOU DON’T KNOW JACK 2015 is the latest in the company’s long-running series of twisted comedic trivia and features hundreds of all-new questions. Fibbage XL builds on the popular Fibbage: The Hilarious Bluffing Party Game. It features all the questions in the original game plus, by popular demand, a sizeable batch of brand-new questions (over 50% more). Drawful is a new drawing game that puts a bizarre and laugh-inducing twist on classic drawing games, letting players “draw” on their phones or tablets. Word Spud is a battle of wits to finish partially-formed words, allowing players to customize the raunchiness level of the game to their liking. And Lie Swatter has thousands of funny, unusual trivia bits that players are asked to identify as true or false.

To access the Party Pack from their devices, players are prompted to log in (using smartphones, tablets, even laptops) via the game’s jackbox.tv website and are provided a room code to join the game. This easy-in, controller-free mode of play has actually sparked a series of Fibbage games streamed via Twitch, with players around the country joining and playing the host’s game remotely. Jackbox expects much of the same with this pack.

[K-16]

Finally a new YDKJ game that isn't exclusive to consoles or mobile (and technically the other mobile games are also now on PC/console with this pack, but I don't care). And it looks like it doesn't use microtransactions either! Took them FOREVER to get us a YDKJ title for PC (no I'm not counting the classic pack that's missing some YDKJ titles due to licensing and technical issues). I suspect it's because THQ didn't care for the PC market, but I was really butthurt to see YDKJ go from PS3 to the Ouya to Android (with microtransactions to let you play more than an episode per day). Then when THQ shut down I was terrified to see nobody even notice who Jellyvision was, let alone consider acquiring them and their brands.

It didn't help that Jellyvision isn't a dedicated game developer, but rather specializes in marketing through virtual interactivity. In other words, they make entertaining automated conversations for business clients to serve their customers with, as well as invisibly (but ethically) collect survey data through said "conversations". YDKJ was more of a proof of concept that Jellyvision could entertain the general public beyond gamers, and intends to extend that towards interactive websites, info kiosks, friendlier automated tech support, etc. And you don't notice it half the time because we're distracted by their comedy, which is intentional and the point.

This is why I am somewhat relieved to see Jellyvision choosing not to shut down post-THQ, but instead continue as an independent company, and split their company into two divisions to end the confusion. We now have Jackbox Games so we understand this department focuses solely on game development, and then we have Jellyvision the interactive marketing specialists for business clients. I'm not even sure if they share the same office anymore (probably though). Because back then, gamers thought Jellyvision was a game developer, and business clients thought Jellyvision was a weird marketing firm. Truth is, they're both. Welcome back to the PC Jackbox Games. We don't need you as an exclusive as the more platforms the merrier, but it's good to have you back. Technically it's already multiplatform by default, because the game pack involves cross-platform play through mobile as controllers to play on PC/Console.

Now if only they could bring back the people who portrayed Nate, Buzz, and Schmitty... I like Cookie Masterson (both when the character was a host and producer of YDKJ), but I want more!