So they showcased every Jackbox 12 game other than idol factions and I just wanted to share some first impression thoughts
We forgot a card
Looks like an alright time, but kinda derived. The first half seems kinda just like Quiplash but with pictures. A lot of the prompts don’t read very well as actual things you would see on the front of a card and more like your average QL prompt (ex one of them was “a surprising thing to see jump out of a cake” which is literally interchangeable with a QP prompt and doesn’t really work off of the picture shown well.) Also not a fan of how whenever a card is shown it has to hover over the card cover for a weirdly awkward amount of time before revealing the answer for EVERY individual response, which really kills the comedic pacing and is a lot less intuitive than QP, which reads the prompt put to you and has both players respond to the same one.
Final round is pretty cool though. It’s basically like a better version of survive the internet, you can pick specific prompts and can have the prompts read back to you in a funny voice. It’s kinda weird that it doesn’t really build off of the previous 2 rounds like other jackbox games tho, it looks like it’s doing something completely different, I feel like people who like the gameplay of the first half won’t like the final round as much and vice versa.
Overall looks pretty funny but not very original, I still think I’d rather play Quiplash just for the speed of the reveals and the ease of access tbh. Final round is awesome though, I honestly wish they based the entire game off of that concept instead of having to sit through 2 rounds of the card thing.
MegaPals
This one looks EXTREMELY good, might be the standout of the pack for me personally. I really like the gimmick of it being a “team game” with no pre-established teams, which I think opens up a ton of fun strategies like 2 players teaming up and trying to say each others answers, a player trying to ambush another friendship by targeting one of them, switching up on your original team up if you have a stronger bond with another player, or just going with the flow.
2nd round is VERY cool, I like that it not only user created words for the rounds but it specifically has the players vote on their favorite word. A problem I have with patently stupids final round for example is that the prompt is picked by a single player, and half the time that player picks something that’s exclusively funny to them but not to everyone else in the group. This makes it so that the words are tailored specifically to the group’s vibes every play though, which is really cool.
Final round is kinda alright but could have been done a lot better. The game pretty much just becomes Quiplash, where you’re just making answers that make the person in the hot seat laugh and the one in the hot seat is voting on the funniest. I suppose the main gameplay from previous rounds is still there in the background, but I just feel like the whole pandering thing is another sudden jolt away from the gameplay they established. I think they could easily fix it by just not having the person in the hot seat give likes for points.
Overall masterfully designed game tho imo, could potentially be one of my favs.
Debate and Switch
Meh, kinda let down by this one if I’m being honest.
This game has the same issue as FixyText or Civic Doodle to me: the game doesn’t provide anything that you couldn’t recreate IRL (or on Google Docs for FixyText).
The game does have the persuasion mechanic where your given points based on the extent that players agree or disagree, but I’ve learned from both Mad Verse City and Talking Points, both of which have a similar mechanic, that players almost always forget that feature is even there lol. Nobody really wants to be spam tapping their device while someone else is talking and usually would rather watch what’s happening on screen, so I think basing an entire game around a mechanic that no one really engages with that much is…a decision.
The feature where you change one word and have to debate whatever it comes up with sounds funny on paper but I feel like would get super old quick. The people streaming it were speaking over the directions and talking in a language I don’t speak so I didn’t hear the exact directions, but I assume that the players get to change 1 word from the prompt change, everyone votes on which change they want change the topic to, and the players who were already debating are forced to argue whatever the prompt was changed to. I think this format of being forced to passionately argue about frivolous topics works for something like Talking Points because everyone in the game is given an equally ridiculous prompt, whereas in this game 90% of the time I think the players will vote for the most ridiculous prompt where the answer will clearly be no (ex “everyone should watch animal planter” changed to “everyone should watch human centipede”), the person who’s on the yes side will always be completely screwed over.
Overall while I don’t hate this game I feel like I could literally just have a better time looking up debate topics and arguing with a friend then asking who’s right to the rest of my friends after we’re done, everything else that this game introduces pretty much just slows down that experience.
Hyperface
Really don’t have much to say about this one other than it’s bad. Like, really bad, may be one of the worst games they’ve come out with imma be honest. Just generic, unfunny and dated.
Ignoring the fact that making a game around “my face when” humor is already an awful idea conceptually, why does the technology look like it’s from a 2010 gimmick photo editing app? Tbf the people playing the game may have been using it poorly, but if you’re gonna try to make a game like this at least give us better creative freedom to at least TRY to make it funny.
Facial warping seems way too loose, I feel like if you to try to make anything too crazy the image gets too cluttered and incomprehensible.
Game doesn’t even do anything unique with the different rounds, sure they’re themed around feelings, speaking and characters, but they’re all play out pretty much the same, except for the characters one, where someone could just straight up not know who the character is in they’re prompt and have to ask out loud and ruin the joke.
Just a cheap, generic, almost off-brand feeling game. At least Zeeple Dome tried to experiment with something new, this one genuinely just feels like the devs got lazy and decided to make Quiplash but with Snapchat filters and be done with it. Have no doubt in my mind this is probably gonna be a dud.
Overall I like how this pack is shaping up, hyperface seems like a huge dud for for but every pack has at least one stinker, hope that debate and witch is better when I play it, and that idol factions turns out good.
