The Jackbox Survey Scramble Review

Is less more? If you were to compare last month’s Jackbox Naughty Pack with its stingy three games to some of the compilations that came before it, the answer would be no. But the folks at Jackbox Games love to keep us on our toes, so we’ve been gifted a bonus pack this October —  one which is essentially the same game sliced in four different ways. It shouldn’t really work. Somehow, it does. 

Survey Scramble is basically Family Fortunes / Family Feud in videogame form, with a few different skins. If you’ve somehow missed that lynchpin of Saturday night entertainment, it’s a very simple premise: Two to ten players have to guess the most popular answers to a prompt, which have been gathered from a panel of surveyed people. Here, you sometimes also need to guess the unpopular ones. The answers are all one word and the prompts include “Amazon Purchases” and “Comic Book Words”. There can be hundreds of answers to each prompt and the database is regularly updated by the developer, so it’s entirely possible that the top answer to some of the prompts may change over the coming weeks and months. 

Each of the four modes takes this premise and does something unique with it. First up is HiLo, which is the most straightforward take. All players are asked to guess two of the most popular answers to a prompt, then two of the most unpopular answers. The most successful players get the most points and if players guess the same answer they split the pot. In the final round you have to guess the most popular answer from a choice of two, and that’s it. Depending on the number of players, you’ll crack through this in under ten minutes. It’s brief, but fun.

Next we have Speed, which is essentially HiLo but with a timer. Players have twenty seconds to enter an answer to a prompt. If it’s on the list, the time resets. There are brief pauses to give players a breather and to increase the multiplier of the round, but if the timer runs out, the game is over and points are calculated as well as the percentage of all discovered answers to the prompt. Duplicate answers are not accepted, and panic will ensue as everyone races to think of something unique; twenty seconds might seem like a long time but it really isn’t. There are some fun easter eggs, such as the game chanting “Cheese! Cheese! Cheese!” when it was selected as an answer (the same happened with “Beans”) and it’d be interesting to see how many more of these are dotted through the game. It’s far more frenetic than HiLo and lasts a bit longer, especially with a bigger number of players. This is one for those who enjoy adrenaline in their quizzing but it’s conversely a bit dull as you’re essentially just trying to fill a massive list.

The other two games in the pack are team-based. You can play them one-on-one, but they’re far more fun with other people. The highlight here is Squares, which transposes the formula to a noughts and crosses 3x3 board, a bit like Celebrity Squares. Each box has a range which maps to the most popular answers in the top left corner (1-2) and the least popular in the bottom right (71+). Each team member has a guess at the answers in rotation between teams, with the aim being to claim a line of three squares. 

There are a couple of catches. Firstly, if you pick an answer that’s not the top of the range of that square, the other team can steal it by picking a more popular answer. Secondly, if you pick the top answer of a range, the square is locked and cannot be stolen. Since the bottom right square covers a huge amount of the least popular answers, there is usually a furious fight between teams trying to claim it. This was the most fun game in the pack by far, although it did suffer a little from the same quirks afflicting all of the games, which I will come to shortly.

Finally, we have Bounce, which is a creative attempt to meld the survey mechanics with Pong. Your paddle moves left to right, dictated by the popularity of the answers you provide. The most popular answer will move it all the way to the left, the least popular to the right, with the aim being to keep the ball in play. After each bounce, the opposing team has to submit an answer. 

The trick is finding the middle ground with your responses. The game will also save them in a list on your phone along with their ranking, so you can click them to move your paddle appropriately. However, while this method of reusing answers is allowed, each time you do your paddle shrinks, so it’s in your interest to try and find new responses. Teammates can also submit answers when it’s not their turn, and these also appear in the list and let you pick them. Bounce is by far the toughest game in the pack but it doesn’t outstay its welcome.

That notion can be applied across all of the games in Survey Scramble. The brevity of each mode actually works in its favour, because the premise is so simple. It’s easy to hop into a game already in play; you just need a smart device and to enter the room code on the screen. The presentation of all four modes is slick and you can either play them individually or in sequence through Tour mode if you want a longer blast of surveying.

Jackbox Games has stated that more modes are coming before the end of the year and, as mentioned, the answers to the prompts are constantly updated. This latter point is definitely required because there were occasional frustrations with similar variations of some answers not being accepted, while variations of others were. There was also some questionable logic in a few answers. In a list of meals you’d like to be cooked by a professional chef, I don’t think “food” should have made the cut. Then again, that entire prompt ended up with a shopping list of food anyway which wasn’t very exciting. There are clearly a few tweaks needed in the question and answer department to stop the inevitable teeth-gnashing when “Sellotape” and “Tape” are both allowed in the list of top sticky things. 

Overall though, this is a super addition to the Jackbox stable. It may be a stripped-down version of the usual games you might expect and there’s likely to be a favourite or two which gets played more than others, but this is standard for the series. It’s probably the most accessible release to date as it’s one you can get the whole family involved with. Prepare for some heated gatherings this Christmas.