How Jackbox Games Finds The Perfect Titles For Every Party Pack

Today marks the release of Jackbox Party Pack 10 by Jackbox Games.

If you’ve been sleeping on Jackbox Games, the Chicago-based studio have been releasing “Party Packs” every year since 2014. Each party pack is a collection of five chaotic multiplayer games that have players laughing and yelling at one another as they participate from their mobile devices.

Through their devices, players can compete against one another through a variety of different games by typing in their own unique answers to prompts, drawing on their screen and more.

The popularity of the Jackbox Party Packs increased even more over the pandemic on a global scale, with players uniting together online in their own private games via Zoom, or joining in on the fun with their fave Twitch streamers who broadcast the game to their audience.

So with the latest Jackbox Party Pack out, you might be wondering how on earth the Jackbox Games team decides on nailing down just five games for a new Party Pack?

To find out how they work their magic, we spoke with the Chief Creative Officer of Jackbox Games Allard Laban – an OG who’s been part of Jackbox’s journey since 1995.

The idea to use a mobile phone as a controller attributed to the incredible success of the first Jackbox Party Pack in 2014, and the rise of popularity of the game on Twitch.

“We had this innovation which the phone is a controller where [players] could just go to a website [and] enter a code… It was adopted almost immediately,” Allard recalls.

“We're as surprised by it as I think anybody else, but as you just said we're chuffed about [the success of the game], and we have such a wonderful process of making them and such a great community of developers and artists and writers that you feel like we can just kind of keep on making these up until Party Pack 20, but this is definitely a milestone for us 10 years of doing it.”

So what games are defined as a ‘success’ in the Jackbox Games team’s eyes?

“When we’re developing games, it’s all about the noise that’s coming out of the room or the noise that’s coming off the Zoom all nowadays because we do a lot because our playtesting is all virtual events,” explains Allard.

He explains literally anyone who works at Jackbox can pitch a game, no matter what their role is in the company. It’s usually around this time of year that the team starts working for the next year.

The Jackbox team has what Allard calls a ‘green light process’, where teams get together to arrange a time to pitch the game and essentially present it to everyone to test whether it could work in practice and from a production standpoint.

“It’s a very transparent, open process [asking] what is the best act we can put together with these games," Allard said.

"Usually there’s one game that’s a return title… then we have four new games every year that could be anything potentially but we usually have a drawing game, usually a little bit of trivia. Sometimes there’s a hidden action or hidden identity game.”

“We try to make something for everyone."

Jackbox Party Pack 10 has four new games; “Fixy Text”, “Dodo Re Mi”, “Time Jinx”, and “Hypnotorious”, as well as fan-fave drawing game “Tee K.O.” returning for a sequel as “Tee K.O. 2”.

What can players expect from “Tee K.O. 2”? Allard says the Jackbox team has made the overall experience “a little faster” and “tighter” when it comes to showcasing each player’s drawing.

“Also we just added a bunch of new little features… The drawing tech is similar to what you might have found in “Champ’d Up”. A lot of people really love that interface… so we borrowed some of that [and] updated it,” Allard explained.

Allard also mentions how there are more IRL products you can buy that feature your drawings from the game. He explained this was initially a “throwaway idea” the Jackbox team had implemented into the game that they weren’t expecting the audience to love it as much as they did!

We could’ve spoken to Allard all day, but we only had time to ask him about one of the new Jackbox Party Pack 10 titles, which was the musical game “Dodo Re Mi”.

One of the Jackbox developers Chase McClure had been working on a prototype of a rhythm/music game for a couple of years and has now been brought to life as “Dodo Re Mi”, which Allard describes as “more than just a typical rhythm game.”

He says that what makes this game unique is that your “phone actually plays the instrument you’ve chosen, so when you're all together in a room or if you're on Zoom you can hear everyone's instruments.”

“It’s almost like you’re really jamming together, which is super awesome and that’s the feeling that we wanted to achieve.”

In typical Jackbox fashion, there’s some crazy kinds of instruments you can play as well as playing the sweet sounds of… straight-up screams, for example.

The songs are a reimagining of public domain songs, which is perfect for those streamers out there worried about copyright strikes on their channel. For example, you can jam to a heavy metal version of Hall of the Mountain King.

Allard describes “Dodo Re Mi” as being great title players of all gaming/musical experiences, as each instrument has different difficult ratings.

“You might have an instrument that only plays once, like a cannon. It’s like, you gotta hit it but you gotta hit it right, and then we have insane solo instruments, guitar solos and things like that.”

BRB, off to get our hands on this Party Pack!

Jackbox Party Pack 10 is out now on Steam, Nintendo, PlayStation and Xbox.