This is my 5th review of the Jackbox Party Pack series. While I've played some of these games a number of times previously, it wasn't until recently in preparation for this review I realized this might be one of the best packs so far. It's got multiple great games you won't find in the other packs and a couple are among my favorites overall.

Usual disclaimers: I'm writing this review after having played a lot of Jackbox already, so I'm often speaking about my impressions in the context of the full release library so far (up through 9 at the time of this writing). I generally play over Discord stream with a group of 3 (including me). I'm skipping games that require more people for now if I've not had a chance to play them with a larger group otherwise, though this pack didn't have any such games. My rating will mostly be based on a holistic look at the pack based on individual impressions of the different games contained.

Zeepledome

We hadn't played this game until quite recently in preparation for this review. I'm not totally sure why not, but we were pleasantly surprised that it's actually quite good. Departing from the format of the vast majority of Jackbox games, Zeepledome is almost entirely coop. You do get scores to compare, but you're essentially working together the entire time. The game is a 2D, single screen arena with some floating monsters, obstacles, and your cute little characters. Your goal is to defeat the monsters by bumping into them without dying to their occasional attacks, which take a few forms. If one of your allies dies, you can resurrect them by bumping into them. The main goofy part of the game is that your controls are a sort of slingshot style mechanic you operate from your device, pulling back in the direction opposite of where you want to go and releasing. The movement can be kind of jank and inconsistent but for once, that actually is part of the fun as the game feels pretty silly despite being in some ways a more regular "video game" genre. The only caveat for this one, and it is somewhat significant, is that playing over Discord stream as we were, even a very slight delay over the stream made the game really difficult for my friends to control given the somewhat fast-paced nature of the game and the fact they'd have to wait to see the response of their inputs, so I had to carry a lot, which is only so possible. It wasn't quite unplayable, but it was very obvious the significant disadvantage even a fraction of a second has. Still, especially if playing in person, the game has the potential to be a ton of fun.

Mad Verse City

Mad Verse City is basically like if the characters in 8 Mile were Gundams voiced by text-to-speech. At its core, you're filling in a bit of Mad Libs to generate a line, often being asked to provide a noun or an adverb or something, which will be inserted in the blank at the end of a pre-generated first line, which you must then follow up with a line you write fully yourself, ideally rhyming with the first. The players are paired off against each other in "rap battles" in which the lines you made up will be spoken by your rapping robot using a robotic text-to-speech voice. The lines are pretty fun to come up with, even when you get screwed by a crummy set up, but listening to the text-to-speech voice trying to sound bad-ass is quite funny in itself. The other players vote on who had the best rhymes each round and after a few rounds the person with the most votes wins. This is probably one of my favorite Jackbox games—even if some of my friends aren't as crazy about it—as the creativity is quite approachable and enjoyable and the performances are pretty damn funny, whether you had good lines or not. This is another game that will insert 'Gene' as a fourth player if you only have three, and his rhymes are appropriately cringey. My only real complaint with the game is that it doesn't show your rhymes on the screen during the vote segment which makes it hard to remember enough to adequately compare the two. I would love to see an updated version of this game, though I'm not sure we'll ever get it.

Split the Room

This may be the weakest game in the pack to me, but I still think it has decent potential. The core of the game is you'll be given a prompt and you need to try to provide an answer that will "split the room." This means, when all the other players choose yes or no, you will get the most points if there's closer to a 50/50 split in the two choices (with bonus points if they took longer to decide). This is a really interesting spin on the "think of the cleverest answer" type voting games in that you specifically don't want to come up with an obvious response. As with most voting games, it suffered a bit by the fact there was only 3 of us, but I also found this added an interesting element in the sense that I could think specifically about my friends' proclivities and come up with a situation that I expect friend A would say 'yes' to and friend B would say 'no' to, rather than just a general hard choice. I overall simply didn't enjoy the game that much, but I think it's a cool idea and it's at least okay. It might be more interesting in a larger group as well.

Patently Stupid

This is one of those games you may not play over and over, but is a lot of fun when you come back to it. You each come up with "problems" that you'd like solved. Then you get to pick a problem from among a few the other players came up with that you'll need to design an invention for. You then have to draw a back-of-the-napkin design for the invention and come up with a title and tag line. Finally, you each take turns presenting a pitch of your invention using the descriptions you've provided (note, you can't really play this game without at least voice chat or being in person because of this, but I suppose you could present silently and just cycle through the items you have). You then vote on how you'd invest in each invention with the best inventions getting enough funding to move forward. It's a game with a lot of player input and interaction that really shows why these concepts work so well for these kinds of games. This is especially so since given the fast-pace of having to come up with answers to everything, problems can be rather abstract and solutions are by necessity usually pretty funny since everyone is just throwing out some random invention idea in a matter of minutes. In my experience, one of the hardest parts of the game is trying to present your pitch while trying not to just laugh too hard the whole time.

You Don't Know Jack 2

I somehow didn't notice until recently that this pack even had another version of YDKJ. As I noted in my review of its initial instance in Jackbox Party Pack 1, there is one major flaw in the original: the later rounds have a lot of fast-paced buzzer style selection that over stream is just way too big of a disadvantage for those not hosting and it kind of ruined the game with even a split-second delay. The biggest improvement is that this version shifted that section into something that's much more stream-mode friendly, basically eliminating the issues of lag, which was great considering that was such a significant problem. The other major change was that the "screw" mechanic was adjusted and seems less punishing and more quirky. Instead of just forcing someone to answer, it now inflicts certain difficulties on your opponents, such as swapping their answer choices around and putting them in tiny print or making the text dark gray on a black background so it's harder to read. Beyond those notable changes, the game just felt overall improved. The hosting remains rather clever and goofy in a way that feels like it should be cringe, but is usually at the very least funny in a so-stupid-I'm-laughing way. Everything is just generally touched up some from an already pretty amusing format, making this a pretty strong Jackbox game overall with no major issues.

All in all, this is a very solid pack containing multiple top-choice Jackbox games and significantly, no real sleepers. I'd consider this is a top contender for one's first party pack to grab of those released so far.

My other Jackbox reviews:

Jackbox Party Pack 1 ★★

Jackbox Party Pack 2 ★★★

Jackbox Party Pack 3 ★★★★★

Jackbox Party Pack 4 ★★★★

Jackbox Party Pack 6 ★★★★★

Jackbox Party Pack 7 ★★★★★

Jackbox Party Pack 8 ★★★

Jackbox Party Pack 9 ★★★★★

Jackbox Party Pack 10 ★★★★★