Review: JACKBOX PARTY PACK 12 Offers a Ton of Laughs
Jackbox Games has released their 12th pack of party games. The Jackbox Party Pack 12 brings five new games for friends and family to enjoy and laugh about. These bundles are always a little dubious in how much fun all the games will actually be though.
There’s usually at least one game that’s a ton of fun, but not all party packs are considered equal. Thankfully, the Jackbox Games team was kind enough to provide me with a Steam review key and so you can read my thoughts below on which games I think are winners and which ones are just jacked up.
If you want to purchase them, you can do so from your favorite gaming outlets including the Humble Store (affiliate link) and Fanatical (affiliate link).
The first game in Party Pack 12 is We Forgot A Card. Players are given silly greeting cards for various events like birthdays, anniversaries, graduations, etc. and then tasked with coming up with the text on the inside of the card.
Until the lead player actually starts the game, all players can complete prompts that have the potential to end up on the front of cards. This is fun, although definitely make sure the lead player knows to wait if you’re coming up with a banger of a card so that it can actually make it in.. My friends and I really enjoyed this one. To give you a better idea of the gameplay, I would say that it’s in the same vein as Quiplash. It’s all about getting a prompt and making it funny for your group.
The second game is Megapals. This is possibly my favorite game from the bunch. There is a little character guy in this one that is very gross and disturbing, but the actual gameplay is a ton of fun. The closest game I can think of is Blather Round, but only because the main gameplay is to simply word vomit. Players are given prompts and everyone says words that fit it.
The goal is to say the same words as the other players. The catch is that the more players that match a word, the fewer points everyone receives. As the round goes on, there will be clues given for what words other players are using, but they’re rarely obvious enough to actually give you the match. It can result in unintended matches or even some fantastic no matches to be used in later rounds.
At the end of each round, you can see all the words thrown out that had no matches and vote for your five favorites with the most voted one becoming the prompt of the next round. This one was always so fun and is definitely one of my go-tos now.
Third, we have Debate & Switch. This is the game in the pack that is the most group-dependent in my opinion. Players are paired up and given silly topics that they will then have to actually debate. Partway through, the audience will change part of the prompt and even which position (pro/con) the players are representing.
The other players use sliders to determine how many points the players get. It’s exactly what you’d expect. For some prompts, the time felt too short and for other prompts it felt way too long. This is a game that I could see some groups really enjoying, but it’s not one that my friend groups are drawn to. We aren’t big on most of the presentation-based games in general.
Our fourth game is Hyperface. In my humble opinion, this is the worst one of the bunch by far. Players are given prompts and a couple choices of images (or you can take a selfie) which you then edit and distort in the hopes of making your friends laugh. Then, players vote between two options and the funnier or more popular person (depending on the group) wins points. It felt extremely high school to me and just had next to no appeal.
The fifth and final game in the pack is Idol Factions. This game surprised me. It’s one of those few Jackbox games that happens in real time meaning you have to be on it. Essentially, the players are divided into two teams and have to sort items into one of three categories.
If you’re unsure about an item, you can send it to the other team who will then either score double or nothing depending on if they get it right or wrong. It does get crazy though because in later rounds players will have to move around as well which can result in some chaos.
Not to mention the bombs that you need to make sure you don’t sort, but rather pass to the other team. I enjoyed this game, but was shocked to hear my wife mention how much she liked it. For reference, one of her favorite games is Blather Round.
As a whole, I really liked Party Pack 12. Three of the games are solid, one is really dependent on you and your group but can be fun, and then the last one is a dud in my opinion.That’s a pretty good track record. One final note of criticism though is that some of the fonts they use for room codes are very poorly chosen and hard to read.
Yes, you can scan a QR code and/or have the code read outloud, but I think it would simply be better to just have the codes be legible. If you’re a fan of Jackbox games, I would recommend Party Pack 12.
