The Jackbox Party Pack 11 Review (PC)
Summary: Jackbox 11 is a return to form, with the excellent Legends of Trivia and some of the best interpretations of a creative drawing game or funny prompt game, this Party Pack would be an excellent addition to your party nights. If it's a long-standing addition remains to be seen, but I'll be spending a lot of time in Pack 11 in the near future.
4.6
Jack is back!
Jackbox is back with Party Pack 11! After a year of trying something different with the Jackbox Naughty Pack, and the years before that not hitting as hard with its packs, Jackbox 11 is a return to form. With 5 new games and no sequels, I believe it’s one of the strongest overall packs we’ve gotten since Party Pack 7. Let’s take a look at all the games included in Party Pack 11:
Doominate
Doominate is like a mixture of Quiplash & Survive The Internet, requiring you to take a nice prompt and make a mess out of it. Two prompts will be placed against each other, and you’ll be voting on the funniest or best ones like in Quiplash. Then, by the last round, said ruined prompts will have to be fixed as best as you can.
While all the games in Party Pack 11 are technically not sequels, this definitely feels like a follow-up to something like Survive The Internet. It’s a fresh twist on the same Quiplash concept. Doominate supports 3-8 players.
Hear Say
Hear Say is an original new little concept, all about sound and visuals. You’ll be given prompts of noises or situations to imitate with your own microphone, and then the best interpretation will be picked and played over a visual. Surprisingly, Hear Say is a real visual treat to the eyes. Every player character is a unique little bean which has some really unique and wild animations when making noise, adding to the funny factor. Hear Say also has some wind-down intermezzo sound-based minigames that aren’t any good, but skippable. The best part of Hear Say are the rounds where you compete to make the best noise.
Hear Say most definitely requires a microphone and a close, trustworthy friend group. It’s not a game that would be a ton of fun with random chatters as a Twitch streamer, as an example, due to the potential for bad actors to ruin the game. But if you’re in a friend group with a penchant for voice acting? I imagine it’ll be a fun few sessions. Hear Say supports 2-8 players.
Cookie Haus
Cookie Haus is our drawing game of the pack, and one of the better ones we’ve gotten! It requires you to draw cookies based on customer requests, letting you pick between 3 shapes with more difficult ones rewarding extra points, and a lot of different colours, sprinkle options and more. The drawing aspect is really innovative, with the cookies having a very detailed and unique texture opposed to the usual paper drawings in practically any other game. But being confined to a cookie can limit creativity or really require you to think outside the box.
Cookie Haus will likely not be as funny as games like Champ’d Up or Tee K.O. but is great for the creative soul regardless. It has potential to be one of the most beautiful drawing games with its cookie-designing tools. Cookie Haus supports 3-8 players.
Suspectives
Suspectives is a social-deduction game that is best played with friends in a voice-call. A crime has been committed, and one of you did it! At the start of the game every player will fill out a survey to get characteristics about themselves noted down for their files, after which a crime will happen. Using these details, you’ll have to figure out who the culprit is among you.
With elements of games like Push The Button or even Role Models from the past, Suspectives is a somewhat new original addition to your Party nights. I’m not sure how replayable this one is, but it’ll be fun to interrogate one another. Suspectives support 4-8 players.
Legends of Trivia
The ABSOLUTE highlight of Party Pack 11 and one of the best Jackbox games we’ve gotten in years, Legends of Trivia is a D&D inspired Trivia game with an amazing presentation. Make a part of up to 6 players and venture out in the land of Tri-via to battle monsters with facts & knowledge. The humour, art, presentation and music is on point in this game, with a Bard regaling your adventures. The game even has an animated opening, and every area has a small song attached to it when entering it. Legends of Trivia is really fun, even for people that are usually not into Jackbox’ Trivia offerings like myself.
Communication is once again key for this game, best played with a small friend group. Some of the types of questions Legends of Trivia asks you give one of you the question, and all the other players a different answer, making you communicate which answer is right. Pick the wrong one and you’ll take damage. Visit shops for extra items and try and make it all the way to the end. You can even chain games back-to-back for a whole D&D campaign! Solo play is also possible if you’d like to take on Trivia by yourself.
If there’s anything wrong with Legends of Trivia, it’s that there’s not more of it. More players allowed rather than just 6. More types of questions, I’d take a single forest area instead of the 3 we got and more variety over 3 areas with the same gameplay loop, and just more of this world and writing. But Legends of Trivia is a fun little Trivia inspired D&D campaign that is perhaps not as replayable as something like a Trivia Murder Party over and over, but one of the most beautiful Jackbox games, if not the most beautiful with the best presentation we’ve ever gotten. It’s the highlight of the pack and a true testament to the team’s ongoing creativity. Legends of Trivia supports 1-6 players.
Conclusion
Jackbox Party Pack 11 is a return to form in many ways. Every game here is a worthwhile addition to your Party nights, and while there is no absolute stand-out that’s eternally replayable and insanely good like a Talking Points, Champ’d Up or so forth (even Legends of Trivia will get old eventually), it’s a varied offering of amazing little adventures, nonetheless. Perhaps there’ll be a small addition in an update to any of the games, and I’ll be curious to see a possible Legends of Trivia 2 down the line.
About the Author
Lander Van Poucke Lander is a passionate gamer from Belgium with a flair for the dramatic. Valuing storytelling & narrtive in games, he favours single-player games, RPG's & fighting games for their lore and vast character rosters.
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