What keeps me and many of my friends coming back year after year is the connective tissue-the game’s prompts, concepts and scenarios that set us up for lasting in-jokes and room-shaking laughs.
The new games still have plenty of opportunities for players to caption things with quippy remarks and make crude drawings, but if Jackbox were just about putting fart jokes and phalluses on the TV, the novelty would’ve worn off years ago. Fibbage 4 is familiar territory for most people who’ve played the franchise at this point, since nearly half the packs have an iteration of Fibbage in them, but each game reps many of the tried-and-true elements of the Jackbox experience. This time around, the lineup consists of one returning classic, Fibbage 4, and four new entries: Junktopia, Quixort, Roomerang and Nonsensory. Like every pack, not every game’s a winner, but even the worst Jackbox game makes for effective social lubricant and some great laughs with friends. Jackbox Party Pack 9 takes familiar and successful ideas from previous packs and stretches them into a handful of largely new, experimental, clever party games.
