Also on: Nintendo Switch, PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X, Xbox One
Publisher: Jackbox Games
Developer: Jackbox Games
Medium: Digital
Players: 2-10
Online: Yes
ESRB: T
2024 has been a weird year for Jackbox games. It’s the first year in a decade or so that they didn’t release a new Party Pack, opting instead to release a Naughty Pack to get in on the fun people were already having with their non-naughty games.
As someone for whom the Party Packs are an annual tradition, this was kind of a disappointment. While I don’t often game with others, the Jackbox Party Packs have always been an exception, so for Jackbox’s big annual release to fall so flat was a definite letdown.
Thankfully, the folks at Jackbox must’ve had some inkling they had a bit of a dud on their hands with the Naughty Pack, because – as Stan has previously discussed on these pages – the studio had another trick up their sleeve for this fall, The Jackbox Survey Scramble. And while I wouldn’t say that it alone can make up for the lack of a proper Party Pack this year, at the very least it means that at least one of the new Jackbox games this year is well worth your time.
That’s not without some caveats, mind you. The Jackbox Survey Scramble is actually a collection of six different survey-based games and, as is the case with any Jackbox collection, some of these six games are invariably duds. Speed, for example, is a frantic dash to have everyone type in as many answers as they can in a short time, trying to guess what answers rank on the survey. Since the focus is, as the name implies, all about speed, it means that there’s not any opportunity to see what others have typed or to see what answers are on the board – and half the fun of any Jackbox game (or even of looking at a survey, for that matter) is seeing what your friends are doing.
Still, it’s better than Bounce, which is basically the answer to “What if we gamified the DVD screensaver?” That may sound fun in theory, but as Bounce shows, it’s not as enjoyable in practice. Every time I played this game, it inevitably boiled down to people trying to remember what they’d typed before and just entering the same things over and over again.
Happily, the other options are a lot better. Hilo, for example, asks players to guess both the most- and least-popular entries in a wide range of survey topics, in everything from “Most popular characters among kids” to “Old lady names” to “Dating red flags.” It’s the first game you encounter if you play Tour mode (which gives you a chance to play all the different modes once through), and it’s a perfect introduction to how the whole concept works.
Squares is also enjoyable, a take on tic-tac-toe that asks teams to think about ranges of answers. You claim squares by guessing answers that fall within a specific range, and you can steal squares from opponents if you can guess answers that fall higher within a range. It’s a neat way to blend together a well-known game with the survey format, and it’s a great team game.
Survey Scramble also features two new modes that just arrived a few weeks ago, and both only make The Jackbox Survey Scramble a more enticing proposition. Dares is finds a way of making Hilo even more competitive, as players don’t just guess where their answers might rank, you can also then turn around and try to mess with your opponents by forcing them to guess an answer that’s either higher or lower on the board – which is especially fun if you’ve just discovered the #2 ranked answer and you want to force an opponent to either guess the #1 answer or fail at the challenge.
Similarly, Dash is a race to the finish line where you compete directly with friends to see who can guess responses correctly while also being given fake responses the further ahead you get. It’s not quite as fun as Dares, but it’s still a good time.
In fact, that phrase – it’s not quite as fun as XXXXX, but it’s still a good time – could just as easily apply to The Jackbox Survey Scramble overall. It’s not quite enough to make up for the lack of a Party Pack this year, especially given how lousy the Jackbox Naughty Pack was, but if it had been included on a Party Pack it would undoubtedly be a standout game, no matter what else had been included. The Jackbox Survey Scramble is a very enjoyable addition to Jackbox’s impressive stable of party games.
Jackbox Games provided us with a Jackbox Survey Scramble PC code for review purposes.
