The Jackbox Party Pack 9 Logo
The Jackbox Party Pack 9 Icon
The Jackbox Party Pack 9

Developer: Jackbox Games

Competititve Mutliplayer
Family
Weird
Multiplayer
Party
Casual
  • Price: $29.99
  • Release Date: Oct 20, 2022
  • Number of Players: 1 - 8
  • Last on Sale: Jul 15, 2024 [$17.99]
  • Lowest Historic Price: $17.99
  • ESRB Rating: T [Teen]
Reviews:
  • An old favorite and 4 very different games make this pack fun, but as usual not all will probably be a hit for everyone

    I have no doubt that even though from the outside perhaps coming up with and getting the party games in the Jackbox Party packs working may seem simple, that in practice it’s a bit of a pain. Over time it’s clear that, to make things more complex, the edict has been to really try to differentiate each one beyond mere presentation and personality, but to really try to embrace different styles of play as well… and that’s a big risk since inevitably that means for any group not all titles are likely to be winners. One smart move they’ve made for the past few packs is to always include one new iteration of a classic, this time with Fibbage being in the driver’s seat and, as always, it plays well and provides great opportunities to show off your knowledge of useless trivia as well as fabricate lies to fool your friends and family with. From there, it gets a bit more bumpy. Junktopia, overall is the most “to formula” I’d say, where you’ll acquire random weird items and then try to give them names and descriptions to amp up the fun and get your fellow players to bid on them. Quixort is actually a team game, something I don’t recall seeing often (or at all) in the past, with the goal of trying to place a collection of lyrics, items, or other elements into a specific order, whether by quality, value, popularity, chronologically, etc. Nonsensory does conceptually make sense and work, but it was probably the hardest to get everyone on board with understanding the rules and how the scale is meant to work. People caught on after a round or two, but its concept wasn’t clear for everyone. Roomerang, at least for my family, was probably the most odd, but we’re also not big reality TV fans. It makes sense as a concept, but with the criteria people used in their answers being consistently all over the place it also had its struggles. To this pack’s credit, I think they were really aiming for enough variety to expand their potential audience, and in that are I think they’ve done well, just the hit or miss variety also then makes it trickier to score, whether you’re mostly considering the highs, the lows, or trying to average it out. Throw in more native language options and quite a few new settings for tuning your games to better suit your group and you can really see the efforts here. It may not be their best pack, but I think it may be their most earnest in trying to be unpredictable.


    Justin Nation, Score:
    Nindie Choice! [8.2]
2024

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