Since 2011 The Jackbox Party Pack has entertained us for hours now we have The Jackbox Naughty Pack. You Don’t Know Jack, the Jackbox Party Packs, and associated standalone titles from the series have offered good and relatively-clean fun and games for you, your friends and your family from the comfort of your living room. But perhaps restless following the introduction of family friendly modes and stream filters in their last few titles, Jackbox Games have exploded all over our screens this year with something familiar, but equally entirely different…
The Jackbox Naughty Pack truly needs little introduction – the clue is in the name and this batch of party games certainly does not beat around the bush. Aptly advertising itself as offering a “threesome of fun”, this is a smaller package of titles than we have become accustomed to (five minigames has been the standard for some time), but each experience is packed full of outrageous, explicit content in the most entertaining kind of way. None of the trio leaves much to the imagination, so let’s dive into each one in turn and see what this threesome is made of!
Fakin’ It All Night Long
Fakin’ It finally makes an epic return after a long wait since The Jackbox Party Pack 3. This social deduction game, traditionally played in the same room as friends and family, is all about catching the player who has not received the same prompt to their phone as the others.
This new instalment, Fakin’ It All Night Long, sends all but one player in the game a prompt such as “name a food you would love to eat in bed”. Meanwhile, one player, the “faker”, is instead sent a blank canvas and has to guess an appropriate answer in order to fit in. Sometimes a small hint is given, such as “name a food”, to allow the player to answer on-theme, but often blatantly inappropriately for the prompt. Players then have to review the responses given in order to identify the faker, whilst the faker themselves has to attempt to blend in for three rounds without being voted out.
The format of play in Fakin’ It All Night Long is simple enough for any new player to quickly and easily pick up and play. Additionally, a new Remote Play mode allows friends to play over Discord rather than being limited by the need to be in the same room. This is a great addition to the game and one of the factors which made the original title less popular in my friendship group as we binged the Jackbox games during the COVID pandemic lockdowns.
The crude and rude comedy of this latest instalment tends to say exactly what it means, with very little left to the imagination. We felt that in some cases this took away from the experience, as one of the classic charms of Jackbox is that the games are made by the people you are playing with. That being said, it all got a lot of laughs from the crew and was certainly our favourite title in this new trio of minigames.
Dirty Drawful
Dirty Drawful is exactly what it sounds like – the classic drawing game which has long been a Jackbox staple with a VERY dirty spin. In The Jackbox Naughty Pack, each player draws a simple artistic work based on a prompt sent to their phone. Then, upon reviewing these creations, players offer a fake possible title for the piece with the objective of fooling others into believing this was the prompt. Points are gained if players fool their peers, or if the artist successfully conveys their prompt to the audience.
More than either of the other games in The Jackbox Naughty Pack, this title got the most gasps and wow’s when the prompts for what to draw appeared on players’ phone screens. Certainly, one member of our group, all of whom knew what type of games they were signing up to when we played, was genuinely shocked by what they had been asked to draw on their device.
Similarly to the Fakin’ It analysis, we all agreed that we had anticipated The Jackbox Naughty Pack being a bit more euphemistic than blunt, and it might have been nice to leave a little of the entertainment open to the artists’ own interpretations, so to speak. That being said, we ultimately enjoyed the party game.
Cleverly mixed up with some poor spelling, punctuation and grammar to make it entirely unclear which prompt is real and which are fabricated, we really appreciated the gameplay improvements made to this version of Drawful which made it far less obvious which Americanised statement must be the original prompt versus our clearly British English fake answers. Drawing felt easier than ever, too, with some minor quality-of-life updates ensuring the focus was entirely on the fun factor, rather than the execution.
Let Me Finish
Let Me Finish is The Jackbox Naughty Pack’s only brand-new experience. This presentation game involved players reviewing an image and a prompt, and convincing their peers that their interpretation is the most accurate, entertaining, or indeed both. For example, when faced with a series of images of sausages, my friends and I were asked to suggest which sausage would in fact be the most “fun”. Perhaps expectedly, the images and prompts which followed were equally bizarre, rude and entertaining.
Let Me Finish was the most divisive game in the Naughty Pack for my friendship group. The title certainly favoured the two of us who are most charismatic and confident speaking on the fly in front of a group, with some players feeling less able to discuss their views on the aforementioned sausages for the allotted 20-second window on offer. Played with the right group, these presentation-style games have always been highly-entertaining winners amidst the Jackbox Games array.
On the flipside, they have always been wholly offputting for those less confident making a bizarre speech to their peers; even in a gamified manner. It would have been nice to see some method through which these players could still fully participate, even if they did not want to speak out themselves.
For the reason above, and because of the sheer number of presentations we were asked to make (it felt like a lot), Let Me Finish was our least favourite title amongst The Jackbox Naughty Pack. The game was funny to play, but it was challenging to make everyone feel included for a full 20 minutes versus the entirely loose and light duo of Fakin’ It and Dirty Drawful which it was being compared to.
Conclusion
The Jackbox Naughty Pack was always set to be an entertaining twist and an interesting experiment with the classic Jackbox model. There is no doubt that my friends and I laughed a lot when we played each of the games on offer, but there were two key takeaways that we felt left the collection wanting.
First, one of the joys of the Jackbox games has always been that they offer a framework for your entertainment, with the humour added by your own group of peers and their inputs. This has always meant that the content and comedy has been directly applicable to your group of players, with the responses always being designed to entertain those you are playing with. The Naughty Pack, however, feels like it goes a step too far in taking all of that comedy factor upon itself. Frequently this lands, and credit is due for that.
However, as soon as one player is shocked or confused by a perhaps overly-blunt prompt their engagement begins to slip.
The second problem was how tainted the overall experience became when one section of our group felt they couldn’t fully engage with Let Me Finish, because they did not want to present to the group. It is a pack of five games as is traditional, this would have largely gone unnoticed. Inevitably, in every Party Pack, there have been games which have been less played than others based on the group that is playing. However, in a pack of just three titles, this made the experience feel somewhat limited.
The Jackbox Naughty Pack certainly has its place as a fun spinoff experience and will be hilariously good fun for the right groups. However, for me and my now long-standing crew of Jackbox veterans, this pack didn’t land in the same way as the annual Party Packs have for years gone by. We will no doubt dip in from time to time, but the classics are more likely to fill our boots until the next mainline instalment reaches our screens in the not-too-distant future.
The Jackbox Naughty Pack Trailer
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