Jackbox Party Pack 9 Gamescom Preview - A Decent Addition To The Jackbox Mix

thegamer.com:

This is my third time previewing or reviewing a Jackbox title, and it never gets much easier. It’s a bit like reviewing a party - it’s never really about the party as it is the people there. A chill evening around the fire or a glitzy rooftop shindig can be a nightmare with the wrong people, while just watching reruns of The Simpsons while sipping room temperature wine can be Heaven with the right people. When I reviewed Jackbox Party Pack 8 off the back of playing with the staff at TheGamer, we all had a great time even when a couple of the games didn’t quite land. Meanwhile when I played the Party Starter Pack with some random journos over Discord at a press event, even though I love all three games, it all felt a bit naff. At Gamescom, I tested out two games from Jackbox Party Pack 9 with the people who made it, and I guess my takeaway is I had as much fun as you might expect from playing unfamiliar games with jetlagged strangers. All things considered, that feels like a victory.

While I only played two of the games, the devs talked me through all five, so let’s have a whistle stop tour past them all here. The flagship game is Fibbage 4, the fourth Fibbage. Since that should be well known to Jackbox fans (and because it’s one of the two I give a bit more depth on below), we’ll leave it at that for now. The second game was Roomage, a roleplaying reality show where you take on the role of various stock characters and act out their parts. You get voted out and then back in, possibly as someone else. Maybe it’s The Circle? I’m unsure on how you win and I doubt I’ll ever play this one. Every Jackbox pack has a game they over thought (Zeeple Dome, what are you even doing here?) and Roomage seems to be that. I didn’t play it