The Jackbox Party Pack 11, launching Thursday, Oct. 23, offers the series’ trademark variety of casual party games, from trivia to drawing to joke writing. I own a handful of these bundles, breaking them out whenever I have a group of friends over and we want something with lower stakes and less of a time commitment than playing a full D&D session or even breaking out a game of Camel Up. 

The great thing about a Jackbox title is that it mixes five different mini-games into one package, meaning almost anyone can find at least one they enjoy among the variety. The trouble is that the group may not always enjoy the whole pack, or even most of it. There may be only one or two of the five that really click with your group, perhaps neglecting the more experimental or complex challenges. 

“There’s a lot of different people out there,” Rich Gallup, director of production at Jackbox Games told me. “There’s a lot of different types of parties [with different ways they] play our games, and not every game is gonna fit every group.” Gallup referred to the “power of the pack” — the idea that each Party Pack should have a game for everyone, and in some cases, more than one game. 

Party Pack 11 manages the remarkable feat of being pretty even throughout. I played through the mini-games ahead of launch with a group of friends I would describe as “abundantly familiar” with prior entries in the Jackbox series. After playing through the entirety of the new Party Pack, we all agreed that almost every game felt equally interesting to us… even if we came out with some early favorites that we’ll probably go back to over and over again. 

All the games in Jackbox Party Pack 11

Hear Say

The standout of the new Party Pack is Hear Say, a game where your group is asked to record sound effects in response to prompts like [example] and [example]. Then you vote on the best recording.

“It’s a whole new form of creativity for our players,” Gallup said. “Writing jokes is hard. Drawing is hard. Making a fart noise, y’know… maybe that’s a little more universal. And the game has shown you can make fart noises over a lot of things, and they make a lot of people laugh.”

The simplicity is a huge part of the charm. Unlike Jackbox staples like Quiplash, which asks you to carefully craft cerebral (or crass) jokes, Hear Say is all about blurting silly little sounds into your phone. Pretend to almost sneeze. Forget your coworker’s name. You only have about 5 seconds for each sound effect, so brevity is king. 

Hear Say also gives you plenty of opportunities to make other players laugh. My group heard each other recording their sound effects, and sometimes had to redo our own because we burst out laughing in the middle of recording. If there’s a particularly popular sound effect, you can also replay it on demand after hearing everyone’s responses before voting is finished. 

The result is a characteristically delightful Jackbox jumble of chaos, aided by some great details like the animations of your chosen avatar whenever your recording plays. I would fire up Party Pack 11 just for Hear Say, and could probably play it several times in a row without feeling bored of the gimmick. 

Doominate

Look, I’m sure you’re not a bad person, but I’m equally sure you’d find it fun, occasionally and in small doses, to act like one. Doominate prompts you with nice, wholesome things, and then asks other players to ruin those things by twisting them out from under you. Then it ups the stakes by asking you to list extra things you enjoy so other people can spoil them. It’s a more personal brand of ruination. 

Things come back around at the end when you get to un-ruin a prompt for someone. So maybe you ruined “puppies” with the answer “puppies… running away from you.” You can redeem yourself by twisting it back into a semblance of its original shape: “puppies… running away from you… into your home together!” 

It’s a fun variation on the joke-writing format seen in prior Jackbox mini-games like Quiplash or Fibbage. And while you might wrinkle some relationships in the early rounds, the un-ruination in the final round gives you a chance to smooth things out again. 

Gallup said the final, good-natured twist came through playtesting. “There was a lot of testing of, like, do we like how the game ends if you’re just ruining things, or do we like that, like, upnote at the end of, like, eh we made it better — we’re still friends, right? And through our playtesting, that stuck.”

My group liked it as a warm-up game to get the jokes turning in our brains. It’s a pretty zippy game, too, which makes it easy to come back to. 

Cookie Haus

One of my favorite styles of Jackbox Games is games like Tee K.O., where you’re drawing something on your phone and matching the drawing with delectably funny titles. Cookie Haus asks you to do that by decorating cookies.

Customers will walk into the Cookie Haus with prompts for weird specific cookies they want. For example: “Mermaids, the wrong way.” Then it’s up to you to choose a cookie shape and get to frosting (and naming) their wildest dreams. 

The music and art design also make it a pleasant game to play.

“Cookie Haus is magical. It’s cozy,” Gallup said. “The act of icing a cookie just feels so delightful. It just feels really good. It looks delicious.” 

The cookies look surprisingly realistic, with smooth textures on the icing, and a variety of sprinkles you can place on top. I enjoyed the flexibility of working with different colors or sprinkles, but watch out for the restriction of only being able to undo your single most recent icing stroke or sprinkling. My whole group struggled with that. 

Be prepared to make revisions to cookies later in the game, giving you a chance to improve upon (or, depending on your mood, totally ruin) someone else’s creation. Overall, it’s a great game for when you just want to doodle and maybe get a few chuckles out of it. I’ve been mentally sketching out cookie abominations since I last played.

Suspectives

Suspectives has everyone fill out surveys about themselves and then secretly casts one person as a criminal while the rest of the group is tasked with interrogating everyone as survey info about the criminal slowly rolls in. 

Candidly, social dedication games are not my thing — I’m in the camp of people that finds them more stressful than fun. So Suspectives is the one game in Party Pack 11 that I don’t expect to replay much, although I did find it slightly less stressful than other games in the genre. 

Gallup acknowledged that challenge. “We knew it needed to be a game where someone like you and I, who don’t love lying, could have fun and, at the very least, hide a little bit. And the surveys and the pacing allows for that. Generally, you only have to stand up to one round of grilling, more or less, maybe two. And if you can make it through that one, I’ve found, personally, I can do OK.”

What I appreciated most about Suspectives was the fun Noir-ish atmosphere. The game has a strong flavor, and if anything brings me back, it’s most likely to be that. But I did also enjoy filling out the surveys and having a more structured game instead of being forced to argue nonstop for 20 minutes about who the criminal was. 

If you like social deduction games, there are a few neat inclusions in Suspectives, notably the ability to reveal one person’s answer to see if they’re telling the truth. These extra twists can mix up the formula and keep things interesting.

Legends of Trivia

While Hear Say is my favorite game in the pack, Legends of Trivia is the one I expect to play the most. Partly because it supports two players, which means my wife and I can pick it up at any time, but also because it blends together two things I love: trivia and roleplaying games. 

It’s also the first time Jackbox is making trivia collaborative.

“The goal was: We want people to work together on trivia,” Gallup said. “We learned very quickly that making a collaborative trivia game is a little harder than a competitive trivia game. Because if it’s collaborative, there’s almost always going to be someone who knows the answer. And so this is also likely Jackbox’s most difficult trivia game, because you don’t want that one person who’s going to answer every single question. (Which is me. I’m that person.)”

Legends of Trivia starts unlike any other trivia game, asking you to choose your character, complete with stats that affect the game. Health gives you more of a safety net, attack rewards you more for getting answers right, and gold gives you resources to pick up items. 

Then you set out on your adventure, where you’ll be stopped by trivia-obsessed monsters. Answer their questions correctly and you’ll deal damage to them and gain gold. Answering incorrectly means you miss an opportunity for damage, and you lose some health and gold. You can shop for items along the way, trading gold for trinkets that might heal your character or give you hints on tough questions.

Survive your trek and the game will measure the gold you acquired to determine whether you’ve reached “legendary” status. 

My group loved the combination of collaboration and individual choice in a trivia game. It’s up to you to buy your own items (or save your gold). Don’t agree with the consensus answer? Everyone answers individually, so you’ll either bask in the glory of being the smartest person in the room… or be yelled at by your party because you’re the reason the monster didn’t die this turn. 

Legends of Trivia also has the distinction of being an uncommonly long Jackbox game. While trivia tends to run a little longer than more joke-based entries, Legends of Trivia has three different levels for you to explore, each one taking around 20 to 30 minutes to complete, so a full run might reach an hour and a half. If you don’t want to trivia for that long, you can take a smaller slice, but I like the opportunity to keep going, similar to starting a “sequel” at the end of a Trivia Murder Party round.

Turn it up to 11

I’ve spent a lot of time in Jackbox games, and I expect Party Pack 11 to quickly rise near the top of my most-played list. Hear Say and Legends of Trivia tickle different parts of my brain and will both keep me coming back, and while I have the game open, there’s little reason not to also throw in a few rounds of Doominate and Cookie Haus. 

“Whenever you create something, you never believe it’s good until it’s out. So we’re really excited for the game to come out and for people to hopefully tell us it’s good,” Gallup said, before adding a characteristic Jackbox quip: “But if they don’t, we’ll be ready for that because we’re creators.”

Jackbox Party Pack 11 launches on Oct. 23 for all major platforms.