The Jackbox Party Pack 4 brings more anarchic audience participation on October 19th
Fibbing fibbers who fib
I've not played as many Jackbox Party Pack [official site] games as I would have liked, but what memories I do have of this brilliant spinoff from the You Don't Know Jack series tend to reduce me to fits of giggles. For those unfamiliar, the Party Packs are quickfire party-style quiz games of creative smartarsery and misinformation, designed to either be played locally with friends or livestreamed (allowing for audience participation) with each player inputting their answers through a phone, tablet or similar.
The fourth set, bringing one returning favourite and three (and a half) new games, is now due for release on Steam, October 19th
Top billing in the Party Pack 4 is the third iteration of Fibbage, a game of writing convincingly wrong answers to otherwise coherent trivia quiz questions in the hopes that your friends will fall for them when they try to answer in earnest. There's also a more personal variant - 'Enough About You' - which is about guessing weird facts about your friends. Being the third (and a half) iteration in four party packs, this one seems a safe bet.
Second on the list goes to Survive The Internet, a game about internet comments, and twisting them to serve your sinister purposes. If that's not an invitation to let your inner idiot run rampant, I don't know what is. Third up is Monster Seeking Monster, a game about dating monsters with special powers. Not quite sure how that'll work mechanically, but it sounds like a fun hook.
Bracketeering seems like the game best suited to online audience involvement. Stupid questions and/or timeless internet arguments are posited, and players bet on which side will win the argument, regardless of their personal opinion. If true to Jackbox standards, playing this through Twitch or similar will allow the audience to handle the voting, while the players focus firmly on the betting.
Last up is Civic Doodle, a game of 'improving' town murals. Drawing games have always been the wild-card of Jackbox games. Some of them weak, but I cannot sing enough praises for Tee K.O. from the third instalment, wherein players attempt to design and vote on the best T-shirt design you can assemble from a grab-bag of logos and slogans submitted by your rivals.
It seems like a solid enough lineup, conceptually. The fourth pack is also introducing more streaming-related options to the mix, including customisable turn timers (to compensate for the inherent lag of internet broadcasting), and 'manual censoring', presumably letting the host pick and choose the specific level of bad language and general internet crudity allowed.
The Jackbox Party Pack 4 is out on Steam on October 19th, and will be priced at £19/23/$25.