Summary
As someone whose job and day-to-day life involvethinking, talking, and writing about video games to a ridiculous degree, I like to spend most of my free time away from screens as much as possible. That means I’m not much of a social gamer and stick to single-player adventures whenever possible. I’m fun at parties too.
There are a few multiplayer games I’ll make an exception for, includingFortnite,MultiVersus(of course),Among Us, and, best of all,Jackbox. In case you can’t tell, I like to think I’m a pretty quick-witted and funny person (humble too), making the Jackbox Party Packs a long-time favourite of mine and the burden of anyone who has to read my answers.
That includes many editors at TheGamer, who have seen some of the truly horrible, immature, and dirty things that Jackbox’s relatively innocent prompts bring to mind during our monthly game nights. I can’t say any of them for fear of my career, but anyone who has played before will know exactly what I mean and, for my money, it’s pretty much the only way to do it. Who needs to be smart when you may just say the word that rhymes with dumb?
Jackbox, But Make It Naughty
Even though pretty much every experience I’ve ever had with Jackbox has been at least alittlenaughty, that hasn’t stopped me from wondering what it would be like if the team leaned into that filthy vibe instead of awkwardly looking the other way when we all drunkenly purchase our shameful Tee K.O. creations. That’s where its latest release comes in.
The Jackbox Naughty Packacts as a smaller, experimental spin-off containing three games that are decidedly more swear-filled than a normal round of Jackbox is supposed to be. That made it a perfect end-of-day activity atGamescomwith my colleagues Harry Alston and Axel Bosso, who were just as eager to see what naughty things awaited us.
The first game we played was a cheeky version of a Jackbox classic - Fakin’ It All Night Long. The original version of this game never really gave much chance to be dirty since it’s more about fooling other players, but now the prompts have been changed to raising your hand if “you’ve ever wanted to lick someone’s head to groom them like a cat”, or if “you think the term ‘trouser trout’ is acceptable in polite conversation”.
We only got to play very small snippets of each game and didn’t even finish a full match of any of the three, but Fakin’ It All Night Long was a bit of a muted beginning. It’s as fun as it’s ever been and a little more interesting to catch people out with thanks to the weirder scenarios, but it doesn’t really change things up all that much and is entirely dependent on how extreme the prompts get, something that seemed surprisingly tame to me as the first “adult” release.
If any Jackbox classic would fit an adult version, surely it’d be Quiplash?
Drawful’s Just As Good With Some Spice
The Naughty Pack’s second game is another spin on a classic, turning Drawful into Dirty Drawful. This one makes a lot more sense to be turned into a risque game and was probably my favourite out of the three based on the concept alone. Like Fakin’ It, Drawful is one of the few Jackbox games that doesn’t always lend itself to just drawing you-know-whats, so getting saucy prompts does mix things up a bit.
I’m not sure if it’d replace Drawful as a Jackbox mainstay, but it is a good idea, even if the prompts are once again a little too tame for the overall concept. Jackbox isn’t an adult game and that’s part of what makes it so funny, but if it’s selling itself as one then it needs to go further than what I saw in my brief time with it.
The final game of the Naughty Pack is an original one called Let Me Finish, which sits in my favourite Jackbox category - presentation games. Players are shown a picture and asked a suggestive question about it, and then have to come up with the funniest answer and win the crowd over by presenting their suggestion. Chuck a few beers in me, and this is my ideal Jackbox game.
Let Me Finish, Teehee
Let Me Finish is really the only game in the pack that felt like it ran with the Naughty part of the title, with some of the prompts coming as a surprise in a Jackbox game. It does feel a little like it’s trying too hard to be naughty, which I think goes against what makes Jackbox work so well, but since that’s the whole point of the pack I think it works from what I played.
Sadly, that’s your lot with the Jackbox Naughty Pack, as it’s a smaller release with just three games. It’s a bit of a shame that two of those are just remade versions of classics (with one of them not really working as well in an adult format), especially since Let Me Finish does feel like it makes the most of the concept.
I can’t believe I’m thinking of We Dare in 2024, but that’s the kind of thing I’d like to see Jackbox have a crack at.
I love that Jackbox has the freedom to experiment with stuff like the Naughty Pack, but if it’s going to do more adult-themed releases in the future, then it needs to go all out with it and have some more original offerings that make the naughty moniker more worthwhile. I only got to check out the games briefly and do want to mess around with them more with friends when it launches, but from what I’ve seen, the idea needs to be taken further.
