The game developer Jackbox has been cranking out fun trivia games for more than two decades now. For years, they kept updating their You Don’t Know Jack series with new questions and features, keeping it relevant year to year. But those games only supported a few players, and you all had to crowd around a computer keyboard and screen to play. So, a few years ago, Jackbox started releasing packs of party games that found a way around that, with a controller nearly everyone already has in their pocket - their smartphone.
Each of the games in the Jackbox Party Pack starts out the same way - it has you open a website on your own personal smartphone, and then enter your name and a special code. Each person playing around your TV does the same thing, and then once everyone has joined, the game starts. Each player uses their smartphone as their controller, and depending on the game, you can have anywhere from two to 16 players.
Several of the games are trivia games - You Don’t Know Jack is included in one of the packs, but several others contain new versions of the game Fibbage - it’s like a trivia game, but before you answer the question, you get the chance to submit a false answer to the question. You get points if you answer the trivia question right, but you can potentially get even more points if people thought your lie was the right answer.
The packs offer other games too - there’s one where you get to compete with your friends in drawing artwork for T-Shirts, an online dating simulator where you secretly message other players that just happen to be monsters with super-powers, or Lie Swatter, where you try to spot as many untruths as possible on a time limit - with up to 100 other players.
Each of the 4 packs of games are pretty inexpensive, and are available for just about anything - PC, Mac, Xbox, Playstation, Nintendo Switch, or even Apple TV and the Amazon Fire TV.
