The Jackbox Party Pack 10 Review

I have been a huge fan of the Jackbox Party games and even the original You Don't Know Jack for years now. Being able to play with a lot of people locally or even online using your phone instead of a controller is great, and even if you hit the maximum number of players, you can always have people join the audience. Only one person in the group needs to own the game, and once a mini-game is selected, a room code will be shown. All the players go to jackbox.tv on their phones and enter that code along with the name they want to use. 

This collection is made up of five games, all different from different genres, so they don't feel like you're constantly playing the same type of game. Here's a brief description of the mini-games available to play.

Tee K.O. 2 — This drawing game has you trying to create the best design and slogan for a t-shirt; this is the sequel to Tee K.O. that appeared on Jackbox Party Pack 3. Only this time, you can also have your design on a tank top or a hooded sweater. The catch is that you won't be using the design that you had drawn yourself or the slogan that you had come up with. You will be assigned one of the other random drawings that members from your group had created, along with a choice of three slogans. This could be a good thing if you aren't that great at drawing on your phone or you aren't really artistic. But this also means that you could be forced to work with some not-so-great images to use on the clothing yourself. At least you can change the font of the slogan; that's got to help it, right? If the winning shirt design was one you had drawn yourself, you are out of luck. You don't win for that; the person who used it on their clothing is the winner. This probably happens a lot in real life where the artist isn't properly compensated for their work…

This clothing design game is for three to eight players.

Timejinx — You are a time traveller who goes to a trivia night with your eclectic friends go to a trivia night hosted by the blunt and sharp-tongued Jerri Rigg. This will not be the usual kind of trivia night that you are used to attending, but instead, it will be an immersive trivia experience unlike any that you have experienced before. Some of the crazy tasks you will be doing over the course of the evening involve:

• Jumping into your time machine to travel to other years you are supposed to visit.

• Join other parties occurring in different time periods.

• Save a real-life historical figure from an evil fake version of themselves.

• Try to fix the butterfly effect that has occurred from you messing with elements of the past.

The scoring in this game is different than you would expect: instead of needing to name the exact year that something occurred, you gain a point for every year that you were off the right answer. So, in the end, you want to be the person with the lowest score, not the highest. Timejinx gives you a range of when the event in question could have occurred, so it helps narrow it down and will limit the number of points that you can possibly get if you guess wrong.

This game works for one to eight players who want to find out they know the most or at least more about history than the other contestants.

Fixy Text — two players are tossed together in one text box to write a response to a crazy text message that the character has gotten. The thing is, you are both trying to write the response at the same time, changing the message that the other has been typing. The other tricky part is that once you type something, it will stay that way forever; no backspace button here! The other players vote on the parts of the message they thought were the funniest, and the person who wrote it gets the points. I feel that this game probably works better with older players as the text with my 10 and 12 years old turned into "arf arf arf" and erase what the other one had previously written. The best part of the game is when the computer reads out what was written; hearing it out loud was so much funnier.

This crazy texting battle supports three to eight writers.

Dodo Re Mi — this is the first musical game to ever appear in a Jackbox Collection. Your phone has now become a musical instrument, and you find yourself in a band with the other people you are playing with. You and your birdy friends have to play music to feed a hungry musical plant that survives on eating your tunes. If you don't feed it enough, it will turn on you and have a birdy snack instead. Before you start playing, you will do a sync check to make sure your phone timing isn't off. Then, you get to select which instrument you want to play. There is a huge variety of crazy instruments to choose from, ranging from a cowbell, shredding guitar, and drum set to unusual stuff like an alarm clock or Taz the Cat. I guess anything can make music. Each instrument lists which part of the song it plays, along with a difficulty rating and how many lanes you will have to play. The cat has only three lanes and is rated medium. Whereas the DJ Drums, which are also ranked medium, have five lanes of beats coming at you to hit. 

Like a traditional rhythm game, you have to try to hit the beats at the right time. When you time it right, you get a perfect hit; if it's not totally right, you will get a good rating or just totally miss. The better you do, the more damage you will do to the hungry plant. But since this is a team, everyone has to do good, or you will get eaten. At the end of the song, you will get to hear your band's rendition of the song you played. It was freaking hilarious when you have bizarre instruments like alarm clocks, cowbells, cats, and drums fixed together. Our first four attempts ended in failure, and we got eaten. Though we didn't mind selecting another song from the list of familiar songs you know, like In the Hall of the Mountain King or Flight of the Bumblebee, along with other new original tunes we didn't know. At first, there is a small selection to select from, though there are a lot of others available to unlock, which will entice you to play your favourite tune multiple times over, as some require a lot of replay. We had a great time collaborating together, and I haven't laughed that hard in a long time!

 Dodo Re Mi can have one to nine players jamming out together to feed the monster plant.

Hypnotorious — This hidden identity roleplaying game has you taking on a secret role, making alliances, and answering crazy questions with the silliest answer possible. You and your fellow players are taking part in a stage show where you are mesmerised by a hypnotist who gives each person a new identity. They will ask you questions, and you respond as if you were that character. 

All the players are trying to figure out each other's identity so you can figure out which of the three different, secret categories they will fit into. If you identify them correctly, you will be rewarded. One of the players is an outlier and won't fit into any of these categories, so you will need to figure out who this person is. The thing is it could also be you, so consider that if you don't seem to fit with the others.

I found this game to be quite difficult as trying to figure out what made all the characters different from each other was tricky. In one round, we all ended up being NFL football teams like the Dallas Cowboys or the Miami Dolphins. The thing that ended up making us different is that one category was a person (cowboys), but the others were based on animals. We were stumped and didn't have a clue. This was the game that my family and friends liked the least; it just wasn't very fun.

Hypnotorious works for a group of four to eight players.

The Jackbox Party games always work better with a larger group of players. It's just not as silly or wacky with just a few, and this is definitely not a game that you could play alone. That being said, some of the games were just more fun than others. Dodo Re Mi was our favourite by far, with the vast selection of traditional — and non-traditional instruments — which made the resulting song that we had created together ridiculous and funny. However, I have to say, the alarm clock was so annoying, and I will be happy if no one that I am playing with chooses it. The other cool thing is that when the round is done, you are able to download your creations onto your phone. 

It's hard to score Jackbox Party Pack 10 as the amount of fun you will have will depend on who you are playing with and the age of the players. Timejinx and Hypnotorious were more difficult for my kids, but adults in the family were huge fans of the trivia. FixyText lands in the middle difficulty-wise, though I suppose it doesn't matter if the text everyone writes makes sense or not, as long as people find it funny! Overall, I think Dodo Re Mi and Tee K.O. 2 will be popular with everyone, no matter the player's age. 

If you have ever had fun playing a Jackbox game, Jackbox Party Pack 10 is going to be a title that you are going to want to play, especially for Dodo Re Mi! I can't wait to play this the next time I have a group of friends over; it is sure to be a night full of laughter.