Jackbox has been a gaming darling to many, especially during the Covid lockdowns where it entertained millions of friends and families in their homes. And much like the popular Call of Duty franchise and Christmas, it’s been seeing a yearly release and has reached its ninth instalment. Well, another year and it’s time to look at the next entry to the wacky, silly and twisted franchise of interactive entertainment, which mixes gaming, online social play and the most absurd humour it can make you laugh, cringe and feel very ashamed of yourself.
Time to review Jackbox Party 9, where I ask if this series keeps bringing so much joy to people around the world, or if has it started running out of steam.
What is Jackbox Party 9? 
This is the ninth instalment of the infamous and immensely beloved Jackbox Party series, featuring five brand-new multiplayer games that test quick and creative thinking, problem-solving, teamwork and above all, the fine line that is friendship.
Jackbox is a social gaming platform where players join in on a game via a web browser (meaning only one person has to own the game, and others can join in via the Jackbox website). Each Jackbox pack of several games ranging from quizzes, and creative tasks such as drawing superheroes from buzz words and the more complex and ludicrous, such as presenting slides about nappies for horses to all your friends. The format is very simple, as players will simply need to enter prompts via their handheld devices when instructed, whether they be answers to a question, drawings or putting together rap lyrics for Transformer Def Jam.
Previous Jackbox packs have had some legendary games, with some of my favourites being Trivial Murder Party, Split the Room, Mad Verse City, Champ’d Up and Survive the Internet. Some of the best the series has had to offer in my opinion.
But now we have four brand new games and one sequel including Fibbage 4, Quixort, Junktopia, Nonsensory, and Roomerang. Jackbox has been on a roll with the number of packs they’ve released, and while fans can easily argue on what are the best and worst games of the series, there was a lot of buzz around these five games and what impact they would have in the series.
I’ll be reviewing each of them, giving a score and giving an average score at the end.
Fibbage 4 
The fan-favourite bluffing game makes a glorious return, and while some hardcore fans may think another sequel is not in order, it has been quite a few years since the last instalment of Fibbage. The fourth entry delivers more on what made this a household title for the Jackbox series, where players are given a random statement with a blank space disguising the most critical fact. It’s up to players to fill in the blank space with an answer that they feel could make sense, and thus create a convincing lie, but also try to figure out the correct answer for themselves. It’s a double edge sword approach which could see you claiming points, but also falling for someone else’s lie. It’s a solid formula that hasn’t been changed over the years, due to how engaging and entertaining it really is.
Visually speaking, Fibbage 3 was one of the best-looking Jackbox entries ever, with its retro 70’s inspired design, pastel colour palette and funky imagery. But this entry does away with that and instead goes for a photo-realistic, surrealistic, pop culture approach which looks pretty great too, with a neat soundtrack to match.
Along with the new visual style, Fibbage 4 adds in a few new dynamics to spice things up, including new category types and a new last-round feature. Categories include Cookie’s VHS Vault, where players will see a clip from an old B movie or TV show and ask a question about it. There is a VIP and VIP “Dead” which asks questions about famous people both living and dead! And then we have the inclusion of fan questions, submitted by actual fans of Fibbage, which is a cool idea. Plus, the return of “Enough About You”!
So, there is plenty of variety here with the new additions to the formula, with some working really well and others not so much. The VSH vault is the better of the inclusions and adds a nice change of pace for players as it plays clips from strange and likeable old movies. While VIP and VIP Dead didn’t feel needed as there was a variety of questions about certain famous people both living and dead in the main game, these added very little overall. And the fan questions are a nice touch but are a little cringe to watch and feel a little too random. Still not a bad addition.
But thankfully the final round is handled much better, and gives a chance for the highest rewards, but carries the biggest risk. Players will be given two statements and must write a single answer for both whiles picking out the actual right answer themselves. It’s a cool layer of risk and reward for those who dare to think of an answer that could fit two vastly different statements. Plus, it will test out your creativity to the max figuring out one response for two statements.
The return of "Enough About" You is a great way to wrap things up, where players are asked to give a fact about themselves while everyone else makes up a lie. It’s a great alternative to the formula, but sadly compared to Fibbage 3’s version, there is no final round here. Meaning the game just kind of ends and feels somewhat short with a small group.
Overall, I felt Fibbage 3 was better, but this is still a solid entry to the series and one of the better titles on offer here.
3.5 / 5 Quixort 
While the simplest game of the bunch, Quixort is likely going to be the massive sleeper hit of this pack.
This is a manic trivia sorting game, reminiscing something between Tetris and Trivia Pursuit on specialist subjects. Players are split into two teams, and each is given the task of sorting various facts about a subject between two distinctive rankings. Teamwork and quick thinking are vital as numerous blocks with the facts are lowered slowly onto the baseline. What makes it even harder, is that you won’t know what each block will say until it appears, meaning you can judge the answers accordingly and have to place and plan as you go. Soon enough the blocks will be layered upon each other, and if the pile reaches the top, it's game over.
So, you might get the subject of “Celebrity Mononyms, youngest to oldest” with each block containing a name of a Celebrity Mononym, like Sting, Adele or Cher. The team will then need to sort out the blocks in order as they come into the fold, while not letting them pile up as much as possible. It Sounds easy enough, but most subjects have a fair number of blocks to handle (especially since Stephen King has written around 65 novels. Plus, there are random blocks which shouldn’t belong there, either the wrong answer or just something which is misspelt. These must be placed in the trash, and just adds a layer of tension for the sake of pure sabotage.
When the round ends, teams are rewarded for how close they got their answers correct and bonus points for “Streaks”, linking up various answers if they’re connected in some way, like two blocks containing cat themes and so on.
The gameplay loop is extremely fun, and one of the best team-based games to date (although I felt Poll Mine was slightly better). It can be a little manic, and certain subjects are way easier to handle than others. But you do get to choose a subject which is displayed on the screen, or take a risk with a mystery subject, which is a nice feature. But bear in mind someone with lag or delays can kill this game, as you will need to sort blocks in real-time and even with a delayed timer, you need plenty of time to sort.
But with a good team, it’s a real hoot to figure out some of the crazier subjects and playing this in person will be the best way to do so. There is an additional mode called Quixort forever which fixes this and has everyone playing together in a Tetris-style format, where you need to make as many right placements as possible, before the blocks which are permanently in place, reach the top. It fixes the timing issue and feels much more fluent.
Otherwise, a neat, and fast-paced trivia game that’s a highlight of the pack!
4.5 / 5Junktopia 
Another game where players will have to be immensely creative, silly, or thoroughly disturbed when thinking about backstories for various exotic and weird items found in a junkshop. After being turned into a frog by an evil, geriatric wizard, you’re told to become the ultimate entrepreneur by selling junk and making a huge profit, by making up weird and strange backstories for junk.
Players will be presented with an assortment of random items for two rounds and buy one of them to keep. After purchasing, players will then make a bizarre and captivating backstory for each item to win people over, including giving it a name, and two interesting facts. You’re encouraged to present each item in a pitch, like in Talking Points, but you can also sit quietly if you’re feeling shy as the facts are presented on the screen. It's nice this way as people can just laugh at the silly backstory you’ve created.
Junktopia is one of those games where high creativity (and a warped mind) is in order to get the most fun from it. Thinking of either the most interesting or absurd backstories for items, so that they can be voted for positivity and thus gain value takes a lot of creative flairs or an understanding of what the audience will like. There is a chance in round two to buy a mystery item, and while it's nothing ground-breaking, I liked the additional risk and reward factor, as the mystery item is super cheap and could be super good… or completely naff and difficult to work with.
The random nature of items (there are more than 300 of them) can lead to some great results, although the last round is one note, where you gather the items, you’ve bought and simply name the group. It’s not the most exciting way to end the game and for first-time players, you’ll most likely have a random assortment of items which don’t connect. But I feel it could be a nice way to wind down the game and give people less stress of having to think of another fact for laugh value.
Also, there is a haggling mechanic where you can potentially reduce the price of an item saving you some cash but risk the price going up if you fail. This mechanic really has no strategy as it’s influenced by an RNG system, randomly deciding if you get a price reduction or raise. So, there’s no control over it and thus is pointless to have this mechanic.
Yet one of the best things from Junktopia was how voting worked, as at the end of each round all items are separated into groups, and not everything is plastered together in one space for voting. This eliminates mass votes for one single item and takes out the annoying prospect of playing favourites. It's handled incredibly well and I hope the Jackbox team implement this voting system in future games.
But regardless of some flaws, the general pacing and format are excellent, with plenty of laughs and creativity to be had. It's visually charming and bizarrely random and while the last round could have been better, the gameplay loop is satisfying and highly replayable. However, the appeal of Junktopia will ultimately depend on the creativity of people playing, as some items can be hard to write for.
3.5 / 5Nonsensory 
Nonsensory might look like one of those games which might be a chore to play, like “The Devils in the Detail”, but ends up being quite possibly the best game of the pack… despite one big flaw. It’s a mix of drawing, writing, and guessing, with some excellent laughs to be had, but with some clunky UI elements.
This Jackbox game has a very fascinating objective for the first round, involving player creativity and guessing. Player by player is asked to create various answers based on requests given, but adapt their answers based on a percentage. Such as “Can you make up a new Super Hero, that would be 20% successful with comic book fans”, and you would have to think of an answer that would get people voting at or around 20%, so ideally you need to think of a pretty bad superhero (but not completely god awful). It's about guessing what your audience will like, and dislike and getting the right balance, or even at best the exact amount of good or bad in your answer to be praised or despised depending on the percentage you need to work with. It’s a good little start and does get the creative juices flowing.
There’s also a neat risk-reward mechanic (a lot of those in this Jackbox pack), where you can vote confidence in guessing the exact correct percentage of the answer. Meaning you can double your points, but also lose them. This applies to all rounds.
The next round is the same, but you’re now drawing the answer, like drawing a cat that’s 100% adorable. Again, it’s really cleaver, but this is where the main issue begins with me and that is the drawing mechanics. I can’t understand why some Jackbox games have great drawing mechanics and others don’t, especially here in Nonsensory, which has another problem with how line strokes appear in the final image. Champ’d up has excellent drawing mechanics, and here they are very basic, which is not a problem for round 2, but more so for round three as the requests get more complex.
Round three, players are given are asked to draw an image based on the percentages of two verbs. You could get a request to draw something that looks 20% Zombie and 80% pirate, so you would need to draw something most like a pirate, but with a hint of the undead.
Yet again this is a fun round, and some of the requests we got were freaking hilarious. But the complexity of the requests and the clunkiness of the drawing mechanics can be a pain. This is really the only major drawback… and the general lack of clarity or instructions (as some people in the group just couldn’t get their heads around the rules the first time we played).
Thankfully the biggest problem of the drawing can be overlooked due to the flexibility and accessibility options on offer. Nonsensory can be adjusted to have only text-based rounds, or if you feel like it only drawing rounds, which is great depending on if you like the drawing or not. While I wish there was a proper dedicated drawing game, there is something here for the most part to satisfy that itch.
Overall, it’s an incredibly fun game, with lots of flexibility, and creativity and while the drawing mechanics are not as refined here, Nonsensory is a great addition to the Jackbox franchise.
4.5 / 5Roomerang 
This was the game that gathered the most buzz and personally, I didn’t see why at first but was intrigued by the concept. And after playing it … I see the potential but overall, this felt very lacking.
This is a Reality TV-themed game, where players roleplay as a housemate who’s been given various quirks and character traits. The idea is to survive 5 rounds and avoid being voted out by the other housemates. While there are certain twists in each round, tweaking what responses you need to come up with, it all amounts to writing down something that will appease others for points and bonuses, and more importantly avoid being voted out.
While players can be voted out, no one is ever truly removed from the game. As voted-out players make a return in the next round wearing a disguise and a slightly different name/character trait. Which was quite amusing, if not a little lacking in impact.
The objective is to accumulate the most points and not be voted out at all if possible. That’s it, five rounds of writing down something and not much else.
With a full room of players (9), Roomarang can last quite a long time, and you’re not doing very much in this time at all. While it’s not bad having a long game, the lack of interesting dynamics makes it very dull for a 30-minute game. You’re simply writing down statements and waiting for the round to progress, then you vote, and repeat until the end. I felt this could have been varied like Murder Trivia Party, which is indeed one of the best Jackbox games ever. In comparison, Roomarang’s pacing is quite slow and the inclusion of some minigames to break up the repetitive tasks would have made flow so much more smoothly, and added some much need variety and fun.
I can see some people liking it (and I see why), I just felt Roomarang takes far too long to play, with no real payoff at the end and just tedious pacing where something other than writing up statements could have been included. It will certainly have its moments of laughter and fun, but feels like a bloated Quiplash 3, or Survive the Internet (which were much quicker and a lot more fun in execution) and ultimately for me is the least favourite game of the pack. Not totally awful like other games in other Jackbox packs but doesn’t live up to its potential.
2.5./ 5Overall?While not the greatest Jackbox Pack (I feel 7 was better and one of the best), it’s certainly high on the list and offers some of the more unique and refreshing games to play. It’s a good mix of everything from team base trivia, drawing, creative writing and guesswork, accumulating into a hotpot of fun and wacky ventures with friends. It has one real letdown with Roomarang, but more powerhouse games which really do make up for the previous Jackbox entry, and with the right group of weirdos, will bring down the house in classic Jackbox fashion.
++ Good selection of games overall
++ Nonsensory and Quixort are the main highlights
+ Junktopia and Fibbage 4 are solid games
- Roomarang is the least engaging and lacks depth
- Needs more introduction or clear instructions for Nonsensory
A PS4 review code of The Jackbox Party Pack 9 was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review.
