The Jackbox Naughty Pack Review

Like death, taxes and Thanos, a yearly Jackbox game is inevitable. I’ve been covering these for years now and the quality has generally been consistently high, if you discount last year’s disappointing 10th pack. So when I heard that an 11th Party Pack was not happening, I was a tad confused. My entire yearly routine was thrown. How was I supposed to know what month we were in without the reliable issue of bonkers party games? Was Jackbox Games closing down after a decade of collections?

I needn’t have worried. It seems that the developer has taken feedback on board from players who were looking for something a little edgier in their party gaming, resulting in the Jackbox Naughty Pack. Mechanically nothing has changed: players still participate in all of the games from a smart device, and can join and interact as audience members if the player limit is hit. Net play is local or remote and runs as smoothly as ever.

There are caveats, though. The first thing to note is that there are only three games, rather than the usual five. Secondly, the price hasn’t been adjusted accordingly — it’s only a few quid cheaper than packs with the full quota of five games. And then there's the fact that two of the games are more 'adult' versions of titles included in previous packs. On the surface, it doesn’t scream “value for money”, but if the games are all great, this shouldn’t be an issue. So, what’s on offer? 

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Dirty Drawful

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Without doubt, Drawful is still one of the best titles in any Jackbox pack. The excellent sequel never made it into a compilation, and Drawful Animate was a bit of a misstep pacing-wise, but Dirty Drawful aims to set things back on track with a, yes, ruder version of the game you know and love. 

As with the first two games, you’re sent a prompt to draw and then other players have to caption it with what they believe the correct title is. Everyone then votes on which title they think is correct, and points are scored for fooling other people into voting for yours. You also get points from “likes” even if your title was wrong, because popularity is important, right?

The difference here is that the prompts are ruder or have more mature themes, including sex, drugs and alcohol. This works surprisingly well, not least because the developer has cunningly added typos and other subtle changes to the captions. In previous iterations of Drawful, if you saw a spelling mistake in a title, you’d know it was from a player and therefore not the correct answer. That knowledge is irrelevant here and it means all bets are off. While it might drive a spelling purist like me nuts, I can appreciate that it also makes the landscape a bit fairer for people who struggle with spelling and grammar. 

Other tweaks include having four colours to choose from, a series of emoji reactions to choose from during voting, and, possibly controversially, an Undo button which lets you reverse the last thing you drew. This can be switched off in the settings if you want to retain the original chaos of the previous games where every mark you made on your canvas was retained. Overall, it’s a decent iteration of the original game with an adult theme which works well in this pack, and is one you’re likely to revisit with friends, especially after a few beverages. 

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Fakin’ It All Night Long

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Fans of Among Us or the board game Chameleon will have a blast with Fakin’ It All Night Long, which revisits the original social deduction IP from seven years ago. Picking three categories from a choice of five and a mandatory final round, everyone gets given the same prompt. Everyone, that is, aside from one person who is deemed the Faker and not given any details of what’s been asked. This could involve responding by pointing at other players, holding up a number of fingers or giving a thumbs up or down response. 

The Faker has to blend in as best they can and think on their feet to justify why their answer might be tangentially different to other people’s. Everyone votes on who they think is lying and if the Faker manages to stay concealed, they get lots of points. If they’re exposed, the players who voted for them are rewarded. 

And of course, the prompts are often rude, which adds to the hilarity. Many of the rounds are the same as before but with more on-the-nose names to fit the theme (Number Pressure is renamed to Finger Blast, for instance). Better still, remote play — which was not possible in the first game — is now an option here thanks to some clever changes to the tasks. Voting for the Faker no longer has to be unanimous either; as long as over half of the players are in agreement, an accusation can stand. 

The original Fakin’ It was already a great concept and sprinkling spice into the formula does no harm at all. In fact, a lot of the tasks are more cheeky than vulgar. With Jackbox veteran Cookie Masterson acting as MC, Fakin’ It All Night Long is a splendid adult-themed update on a fan favourite.  

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Let Me Finish

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Jackbox has a slew of presentation games in its catalogue, from the underrated Talking Points and Patently Stupid to the mediocre Junktopia and Joke Boat. The downside is that they often rely on players fully investing in the premise, which means that introverts may not have such a fun time, especially if there are people in the group who don’t know each other well. 

It’s unlikely you’ll be playing Let Me Finish with strangers, given this is the Naughty Pack, but debate and defence are still the meat of the game. You’re all given an image and a prompt and then have to make a choice by either selecting from a group (such as “Which of these birds is an actual hitman?”) or highlighting an area on an image (such as “Where would you put this building’s pubes?”). Your responses are then pitted against each other and you have to explain the choice you made within a time limit. Your opponent does the same, and then the players vote on who they think is the most convincing (or, in reality, the funniest).

The questions are all a bit weird, and the fun comes in being the most confident delivering your position and making the other players laugh. If you have a party of outgoing japesters or motormouths who can assert their stance on obscure questions such as which screwdriver from a selection worked in 90s porn, you’ll have a blast. More likely, there is going to be at least one person who isn’t as comfortable justifying their response to risque material in public. Given this is the only new title in the pack, it’s hard not to feel a bit disappointed that the chosen genre is one that is unlikely to get as much play time as other potential candidates. Where is naughty Quiplash when you need it? 

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Overall

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The Jackbox Naughty Pack feels like the developer is trying out a new direction for the series that made it famous, which is welcome. Theming two of its strongest IPs with an adult offering is a statement of intent, but it also relies on familiarity rather than offering up anything truly innovative. That isn’t to say the games don’t benefit from spicier content — indeed, one of the main drawbacks of the original Drawful was that anything with bad language in could immediately be identified as a player’s answer rather than the correct one. However, the only truly new game is a hit-and-miss affair, despite it being as polished as the rest. It’s a shame there weren’t a couple more games included to make this feel like a competitively priced offering, but if you’re after a bawdy evening with friends, this first foray into mature party gaming is a welcome one.