Community Review: Jackbox Party Pack 7

As if it wasn’t obvious by now, my preferred gaming medium usually has the words “retro” or “vintage” tied up somewhere, but over the weekend I’ve spent quite a bit of time playing the latest in the long-running Jackbox series, Jackbox Party Pack 7 with my family and friends.

Can I qualify Jackbox Party Packs as “retro” since my very first exposure would have been through their predecessors? You don’t know Jack all the way back in 1995? It was a different time and I had a full head and everything.

But I digress. Like every other jackbox game, Jackbox Party Pack 7 consists of a series of party games with some recurring favorites and some new titles. Flavors and flavors in party games can vary as long as we can all agree that Monopoly is irredeemable junk. No, don’t argue with me – I’m right.

That being said, my experience with the games in Jackbox Party Pack 7, like so many of them, has been pretty mixed. Here is my brief take

Jackbox Party Pack 7: The Good Games

Quiplash 3 is… more Quiplash, with a slight nod to the classic Claymation games like Clayfighter, because that’s exactly what all the visual elements are now. See, I told you there was some way I could play retro gaming games here, and I made it so smooth that you probably didn’t even notice. However, it’s still very good.

Blather ‚Runde is Jackbox’s take on Charades, more or less, except that you can only describe your object with a few very vague types of sentences, aided by the ability to use false guesses in future sentences to make it clearer. Although, if you get stuck and say phrases like “It’s nothing like Orange Cassidy” when trying to describe Alfred Hitchcock, you are already in trouble.

conversation topics is the best new game in the Jackbox Party Pack. You’re essentially giving a TED talk on a subject built up from the random suggestions of others, but the other catch here is that another player is actually selecting the slides and images you’re presenting on – and you don’t know what It will be you until you see them.

If you have a group that can improvise easily, this is an absolute blast, especially when all of you, like us, are constantly ruffling on the same subject. I probably should have recorded my talk on how to build the perfect kitten (complete with pictures of car accidents and squirrels), although how much you can actually hear about laughter is debatable.

Jackbox Party Pack 7: The Not So Good Games

The devils and the details has a clever catch – you’re a family of devils in a mostly cooperative game where you’re trying to pretend you’re a regular suburban family – but the implementation feels way too much like the seedy Wii motion control games that it was never really the anger a few years ago. You spend way too much time doing simple and silly typing or drawing games on your own screen and it quickly loses its luster.

Champ’d Up is a drawing game that, like so many jackbox games before, is based on the comedy of your terrible drawings and a common voting structure. Unfortunately, this feels like a well that Jackbox has pulled out of too many times, and it’s especially difficult as you can do almost the same thing, but better with Drawful 2.

I’ve played a lot of Jackbox games with a variety of friends in 2020 and select Jackbox Party Pack 7 games will join the regular rotation I’m sure of that. Did any of you pick it up or recommend other jackbox game favorites?

You can pick up a copy of Jackbox Party Pack 7 for Steam through Fanatical here.