The latest The Jackbox Party Pack is here, and this time there’s a big number 10 slapped on the end of it. Making it to ten games is an impressive milestone for any series that isn’t football, Call of Duty or Mario, and part of the key to getting there is consistency. As with every year, The Jackbox Party Pack 10 includes five games to mess around with of varying themes, styles, and, if we’re all being honest here, qualities.
This time around, that set of five games includes Tee K.O. 2, Timejinx, FixyText, DodoRe Mi, and Hypnotorious. Four of these games are a lot of fun, so let’s get the rubbish one out of the way first.
Dodo Re Mi has you and your friends playing as birds that mimic instruments, including things like a jazz guitar, beatboxing, an alarm clock, and a cowbell. You all have to play along with songs using between one and five inputs to match the rhythm game feeling, and then if you all do well, you get to live. Otherwise, an angry, carnivorous plant eats you all. The idea is nice in theory, and it’s great to see Jackbox getting out of its comfort zone and trying new things… but it just feels like a more mediocre version of most other rhythm games, so it’s pretty skippable.
The others are all very enjoyable, so let’s get into them. First of the rest is Timejinx, which is this pack’s trivia game. Rather than straight-up answering questions, a lot of the rounds have you trying to place specific events on the timeline. You’re given a range of years to choose from, and you get a point for each year off you are by, with the playing with the lowest points total winning.
It’s a really cool take on trivia, and the questions are hugely varied, and thanks to the ranges offered, the game feels fair even if you’re an absolute dunce about history. There are also some rounds where hints are given, which can make the games far closer, which is always fun.
Next is Hypnotorious, with your brain removed from your body and hypnotised into thinking you’re someone or something else. This has you and your friends split into three different groups, and then you have to answer questions as those things and try to sort yourself into the groups you think you belong in. However, while two of those groups will have more than one member, one person will be solo – they just won’t quite know it, but still want to blend in. Because of this, this game is far more enjoyable when you have at least five people.
Hypnotorious takes a round or two to properly get your head around as a group, but it’s a fun sorting game that tests your general knowledge, as well as your ability to vaguely read your friends and their answers. It’s a very good waste of time that we’ll be taking part in again, and slots neatly into that social deduction genre that’s rather popular these days.
The penultimate one in our list is Tee K.O. 2. This is the follow-up to the game from all the way back in Jackbox 3 which had you making drawings and slogans and then matching together random ones before making the designs fight to the death. It’s a very silly idea, and the second entry builds on it in some good ways.
For starters, you can now change the kind of top your design goes on – this sounds meaningless, but I promise that some designs fit a vest shirt far better, and some hoodies just feel right – as well as swapping out the font, which is amazing. Finally, you can also change drawings up in the second round, and it’s a damn delight to put a silly moustache on someone else’s masterpiece.
The final game is FixyText, which is just incredible in so many ways. Aside from having the coolest visual style of Jackbox 10, FixyText is also the most entertaining game, in my opinion. The premise is simple: the host is getting too many texts, and they don’t want to deal with them anymore. You get to choose from different categories, including business and flirty, and then take over and respond to those texts.
Each round, you’re given a few words from a reply to go with, then half of your group will have to edit the text. There’s a catch though, as you’ve only got so many characters each, and you can’t delete or backspace anything, and you’re all typing at the same time! The result is chaos. Once you’re done, the people who weren’t involved in editing the text then vote on their favourite bits of the resulting carnage to give points. It’s an intensely funny game, and the highlight of the pack, though Tee K.O. 2 is pretty close behind it.
