As a huge fan of the silliness, variety, and general overall quality of the Jackbox games from the beginning, I’ll admit that I was intrigued when the Naughty Pack was announced. While not all of their games have a component that allows for it, there’s also no question that even in their normal mode the right crowd can make for some pretty wild answers. So then, how does it work out when you’ve got a pack of 3 titles essentially looking to lean into that vibe directly? I’d say it’s mixed results, but we’ll review each game within it.

You’ll start out with Fakin’ It! All Night Long, which revolves around group deduction and trying to sniff out the person who’s lying. All but one person will receive the same prompt, which will require raising a hand, choosing an emoji, or some other simple action. If you’re the faker your objective is then to do your best to lie, cheat, and do all you can to shift blame to someone else, regardless of how poorly your response may line up with everyone else’s. Much like the normal version of the game, this one really should have as many people participating as possible. With only 4 players it’s simply too easy to sniff out the liar, at least with the maximum of 8, people would have more of a fighting chance. There can be a Never Have I Ever component to the prompts themselves, which can be fun though, so it could work well with the right group of friends.

Next there’s a new variation on a Jackbox staple, and that’s Dirty Drawful. While relying on people’s ability to compose art on their phones is always an issue for this game, the bizarre prompts people are given actually help to minimize the issue. For the most part you’re tasked with drawing things people would never typically envision in the first place, and that can make for some great laughs around what people come up with. This only tends to get better as everyone gets to try to come up with what they think the prompt was, with everyone then trying to choose which they thought was the original. Of the three, even for the people in my group who typically don’t enjoy Drawful very much, this was the consensus winner by a fair margin as being the most fun.

The last game in the pack, Let Me Finish, has some similarities to games featured in other packs, and with it the challenge is who can be the most effective presenter trying to explain how a series of odd images can be reconciled with the prompts you’re given. Trying to sell people on where what looks like a mechanical jellyfish doesn’t like to be touched during sex can be a challenge, but for people with the gift of gab it can simply be a great opportunity to demonstrate their skills. As with the previous iterations of this sort of title, this is one of those games where it’s really relying on having the right crowd, so it can be very hit or miss. Again likely favoring larger groups, where you’ll at least increase the odds of having some talented talkers that can make it worthwhile, this can be fun but the results can typically feel pretty lopsided.

Overall, there’s no doubt that this was an interesting experiment, and I’ll give credit to the developers for going with some variety to try to maximize the odds of any given group liking at least something. That said, it feels like they have stronger players in their line-up that could have easily worked with the “adults only” theme and perhaps been less hit-or-miss. Certainly Quiplash already tends to get rowdy as it is, leaning fully into it being adult would seem to be an easy win. Similarly, my group agreed that Fibbage and even Earwax could have had great potential as well. In the end though, the consensus was that this pack felt trapped a bit by its theme. While many of their games over the years have been family-friendly, depending on the crowd they could easily get wild without needing to be nudged into adult territory more forcefully. This was fun, but the lack of unpredictability to how games will go organically also holds it back.