The Jackbox Party Pack

The Jackbox Party Pack is a series of party video games developed by Jackbox Games for many different platforms on a near-annual release schedule since 2014. Each installment contains five games that are designed to be played in groups of varying sizes, including in conjunction with streaming services like Twitch which provide means for audiences to participate.

History

had been well-established for its You Don't Know Jack series of "irreverent trivia" games. Though the series had been successful in the late 1990s, Jellyvision had not been able to make the transition easily from computer to home console games, and by 2001, all but six employees of Jellyvision had been laid off. The company focused on developing business solution software, specifically offering software to its clients to help assist their customers for complex forms or other types of support.
By 2008, Jellyvision, now named The Jellyvision Lab, saw that mobile gaming was booming, so it created a small subsidiary, Jellyvision Games, to rework You Don't Know Jack, first for consoles in its 2011 version, then for mobile and Facebook users with the now-defunct 2012 iteration. This last version was a critical success, and led the studio to focus on developing similar games, rebranding the studio by 2013 as Jackbox Games.
Among its one-off games include Lie Swatter, Clone Booth, and Word Puttz, generally designed as single player games or played asynchronously with other players. One key game that followed this was its 2014 game Fibbage, which allows up to eight simultaneous players, one of whom can use live streaming or play with people in the same room. Other players would participate by using a web browser or mobile device to connect to the streaming player's game through Jackbox's servers and which to provide their answers.
With the success of Fibbage, Jackbox Games decided that they could offer these games in packs, reworking older games to use the streaming capabilities and adding in new games. This formed the basis of the Jackbox Party Pack, with the first pack released in 2014 including updated versions of You Don't Know Jack, Fibbage, a reworked version of Lie Swatter for its multiplayer approach, and two new games. The company saw this as a new development model that allowed them to provide new packs on an annual basis, play around with different game formats, and provide higher value to consumers over one-off games.
Subsequent Jackbox Party Packs have included improvements of existing games, support for more players including the addition of audience participation through the same connectivity approach, better support for content management for streams, and the ability to create custom games. A key part of Party Pack games is to streamline the ability for players to get into games, and according to Jackbox Games' CEO Mike Bilder, they spent about a year working on building their servers and software to provide a flexible architecture for the player-side mobile and web interface to expand for any of the games, and to avoid having players download any type of app to get started.
According to Allard Laban, creative chief for both Jellyvision Labs and Jackbox Games, they select games to include in the packs through a combination of allowing the team to submit fleshed-out ideas, and through testing various ideas through pen-and-paper trials; Laban stated that for Party Pack 4, they had over fifty play-tested concepts which they narrowed down to four new games, rounding out the package with an improved version of Fibbage. Some games, such as Fakin' It, took multiple years to get the right gameplay and mechanics down to make it an appropriate game for inclusion.
The first six Jackbox Party Packs gained renewed attention during the COVID-19 pandemic as a way for many people to keep up social interactions while maintaining social distancing. Starting on May 1, 2020, Jackbox ran ten special Celebrity Jackbox live streams to support COVID-19 charities, with the celebrities playing various Jackbox Party Pack games alongside audience viewers. Jackbox said that its playerbase doubled from 100 million players in 2019 to 200 million by October 2020 due to society's shutdown. Jackbox Games improved server capacity and streaming service usability, and internationalized a standalone version of Quiplash 2 InterLASHional for French, German, Italian, and Spanish languages.
Jackbox released a Twitch extension for streamers in December 2020 which allows viewers of their channel to directly participate in Jackbox games from the Twitch interface.
Creative director for Jackbox, Brooke Breit, said in March 2024 that Jackbox was taking a break from the Party Pack model in 2024, though have other games still in the works.

Gameplay

Most games in The Jackbox Party Pack are designed for online play, requiring only one person to own and launch the game. Remaining players can be local and thus see the game via the first player's computer or console, or can be remote, watching the game be played through streaming media services. All players–whether local or remote–use either web-enabled devices, including personal computers and mobile or tablet devices, to enter a provided "room code" at Jackbox's dedicated servers to enter the game, or can use a Twitch extension controlled by the streamer to let viewers play directly via the Twitch viewer. Games are generally limited to 4-8 active players, but any other players connecting to the room after these players are connected become audience participants, who can impact how scoring is determined and influence the winner.
Each game generally has a period where all players are given a type of prompt. This prompt appears on the individual devices and gives players sufficient time to enter their reply or draw as necessary, and can be set to account for forced streaming delays that some streaming services require. The game then collects and processes all the replies, and frequently then gives players a chance to vote for the best answer or drawing; this is often where the audience may also participate by voting as a group. Games proceed for a number of rounds, and a winner, generally with the highest score at the end, is announced.
Ten of the eleven games are developed with a default ESRB Teen rating, with a family-friendly option to censor certain questions and player input, however Party Pack 8 has an ESRB Everybody 10+ rating.

Platforms

All packs are available on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Microsoft Windows, macOS and Linux, Apple TV, iPad, Android TV, Amazon Fire TV, and Nvidia Shield TV. Party Pack 1 is the only one available on the Xbox 360. Party Pack 1 and Party Pack 2 are the only two packs available on PlayStation 3. Starting on April 13, 2017, the packs are available on the Nintendo Switch. Starting in January 2018, the packs are available on Xfinity X1. Starting on October 14, 2021, the packs are available on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S. From November 16, 2021, to December 21, 2021, the packs became available on Stadia. Starting on October 23, 2025, the packs are available on the Nintendo Switch 2.

Games

Pack	Games	Games	Games	Games	Games
1	You Don't Know Jack 2015	Drawful	Word Spud	Lie Swatter	Fibbage XL
2	Fibbage 2	Earwax	Bidiots	Quiplash XL	Bomb Corp.
3	Quiplash 2	Trivia Murder Party	Guesspionage	Fakin' It	Tee K.O.
4	Fibbage 3	Survive the Internet	Monster Seeking Monster	Bracketeering	Civic Doodle
5	You Don't Know Jack: Full Stream	Split the Room	Mad Verse City	Zeeple Dome	Patently Stupid
6	Trivia Murder Party 2	Role Models	Joke Boat	Dictionarium	Push the Button
7	Quiplash 3	The Devils and the Details	Champ'd Up	Talking Points	Blather 'Round
8	Drawful: Animate	The Wheel of Enormous Proportions	Job Job	The Poll Mine	Weapons Drawn
9	Fibbage 4	Roomerang	Junktopia	Nonsensory	Quixort
10	Tee K.O. 2	Timejinx	Fixy Text	Dodo Re Mi	Hypnotorious
11	Doominate	Hear Say	Cookie Haus	Suspectives	Legends of Trivia

Pack	Games	Games	Games
The Jackbox Party Starter	Quiplash 3	Tee K.O.	Trivia Murder Party 2
The Jackbox Naughty Pack	Fakin’ It All Night Long	Dirty Drawful	Let Me Finish

''The Jackbox Party Pack'' (2014)

The Jackbox Party Pack was released on PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One on November 19, 2014, and for Microsoft Windows and macOS on November 26, 2014. The Xbox 360 version was released on November 3, 2015, alongside retail editions for these console platforms published by Telltale Games. The Nintendo Switch version was released on August 17, 2017.
You Don't Know Jack 2015 is based on the standard format for You Don't Know Jack games. One to four players are tasked to answer multiple choice trivia questions presented obscurely in the game's "high culture meets pop culture" format. Players earn in-game money for answering correctly in a shorter amount of time and lose money for wrong answers. Multiplayer games also feature "screws", where one player can force another player to answer immediately and can earn a bonus if the "screwed" player answers incorrectly or fails to answer. The player with the most money at the end wins.
Drawful is for 3–8 players and is a drawing game. Each round starts with each player individually being given a playful phrase and a drawing canvas on their local device. They have a short amount of time to draw out that phrase. Following this, each picture is presented to all players, and the players except for the artist must enter a phrase they think the picture represents. Then, all those replies, along with the actual phrase for that picture, are presented to the players to make their vote of what they think the original phrase was. The artist of the picture gets points for every other player that guessed their original phrase, while those who wrote other phrases get points for votes their phrase gets. The player with the most points at the end wins.
Word Spud is for 2–8 players and is a word association game. A word is presented and one player comes up with a word that is associated with it. The remaining players vote if the association is good or not and the player who came up with the association scores or loses points accordingly. From there, the next player starts from the new word to come up with a new association, and the game continues. The player with the most points at the end wins.
Lie Swatter is a multiplayer version of the single-player mobile app that Jackbox Games released prior to The Jackbox Party Pack. The game challenges up to 100 players to correctly guess if presented trivia statements are true or not, "swatting" those that are false. Players earn points for correct answers with the fastest player earning additional points. The player with the most points at the end wins.
Fibbage XL is for 2–8 players and is an expansion of the standalone game that Jackbox Games released prior to the pack with new sets of questions. In the first two rounds of the game, each player selects from one of five random categories, and an obscure fact is presented to all players with a missing word or phrase to complete it. Each player uses their local device to enter a reply for those missing words; if they enter the actual right answer, they are asked to enter something different, and if they can't enter an answer before the timer runs out, they can press the "lie for me" button and get to choose between two game-generated choices. Then, the game presents all replies, including the correct one, to the players, who then select what they think is the right answer. Players score points for selecting the right answer, but can also score if other players select their reply, so players are encouraged to provide seemingly correct answers for their replies. Players lose points for selecting the false answer the game wrote itself. In the final round, "The Final Fibbage", one more question is provided for all of the players to answer. The player with the most points at the end wins.