Jackbox Party Pack 11 Review: Usual Shenanigans With One Major Highlight

For the last decade, Jackbox Party Pack has been a staple among my friends and I at game nights. Though the main series took a break in 2024 with smaller spin-offs filling the gap, most years deliver five new games you can easily set up. All you need is one copy for your group, and everyone else can take part through a web browser be it on a phone, laptop, tablet, or T-Mobile Sidekick (has anyone tried that yet?). To that end, Jackbox Party Pack 11 is no exception.

What's here is another enjoyable selection with its highs and lows, requiring you join through Jackbox.tv with a room code. Up to eight people can join depending on the specific game, with audiences also able to participate. For this review, I played with a group of six locally. Because they greatly differ, Jackbox Party Pack 11 is best viewed by assessing them individually - I did the same for Jackbox Party Pack 10. Here's what you can expect.

Doominate

Doominate is my #3 favourite pick from this pack, which while feeling derivative of Quiplash adds enough of a new spin to keep things interesting. This one involves twisting more wholesome or innocent ideas, asking you to twist the wording based on prompts like “who do you respect?” or things that you love. The party then votes on these, with another stage tasking you with untwisting the twist. Work with me here.

These type of games live and die by your group's chemistry, making it a “your mileage may vary” situation. In my case, this never stopped being hilarious. Between corrupted prompts like “Max Verstappen, Drift King” to lamenting distribution event only exclusives in Pokémon, we got a few more rounds in. Doominate isn't exceptional, yet there's a perfectly competent vehicle for delivering good laughs.

Hear Say

Hear Say is easily the worst game here because its fundamental execution is pretty subpar. You record voice lines and sound effects using your phone's microphone based on a prompt, usually competing against two or three other people. Seeing the winning audio played over unusual video clips you're not initially shown can be funny. But unless you've got a large house where everyone can split up into different rooms, which is hardly ideal in itself, this game just doesn't work locally - which is a strange thing to say about series that has been built on local play.

It's almost impossible to keep your answer a secret, and everyone else's voice gets picked up on your microphone in the same room. That's especially annoying with the minigames, which involves controlling your path through sound detection and you need to see what's on-screen. Having no control in minigames because of everyone else's voice gets registered is frustrating. Playing over Discord or on a live stream might be better for this if you all mute your mics, though I'm not inclined to return.

Cookie Haus

Cookie Haus is the obligatory drawing game you'll always find in each Jackbox Party Pack, this time roping you into assisting a bakery with questionable work practices. From Steve Irwin caricatures to cephalopods enjoying modern life, each customer has a straightforward theme request like hats or Las Vegas. I'm terrible at drawing even with various icing settings, and the execution is middling at best. I'd call it the second-worst game in the pack.

Though I didn't personally experience this myself on a Samsung Galaxy S24, half of my group reported this running slowly. Rendering the 3D cookie through your phone caused some lag on phones with mid-range specs for both iPhones and Android devices. Getting creative with cookie designs is nice, though significantly hampered by only being able to undo your very last action. I can see potential in the idea, yet this doesn't surpass past hits like Tee K.O.

Suspectives

As someone who's sunk countless hours into Among Us and Gnosia, I'm always up for a new social deduction game. Fakin' It on Jackbox Party Pack 3 is a series favourites, so I'm delighted this type of game is back with Suspectives. One of you is secretly a criminal that everyone's trying to unmask, with your only clues coming from survey answers. Ever tried catching criminals by their choice of which Sex and the City character you most identify with?

You don't find out who's guilty until answers are submitted, a practical approach to reduce deliberately wrong answers. The criminal's survey answers are the evidence that's revealed piece by piece, leading to familiarly heated conversations where the crook lie at all costs as everyone else protests their innocence. To throw things off, one of the criminal's answers is deliberately changed to keep you guessing. It's tense and that enjoyably tests how well you can hold your poker face.

One person can put someone else under the spotlight for questioning each time, though you can call the vote whenever. It's a great laugh that's best experienced with a group you know well, offering plenty of laughs and nerves alike. It's my #2 pick when looking for something to play from this Party Pack, if only to see someone deflect or deny they chose New York City itself as a relatable character in Sex and the City. Either way, this is hilarious fun.

Legends of Trivia

Finally, we come to the star of Jackbox Party Pack 11. Legends of Trivia feels like where most of this year's budget went towards, giving us fully animated intros and three separate regions you can gradually unlock​ to advance through the story. Each character has different stats for attack, health, and gold earned, cleverly testing your knowledge with a gradual difficulty curve while dressing this in a turn-based fantasy setting.

Legends of Trivia has considerably more depth than everything else here; me and my group were all compelled to see this through to completion. Monsters blocking your way are fought across several formats like standard question and answers, multiple choice, or true or false rounds with accompanying images. Multiple answer rounds such as “Greek gods you kill in God of War” or “Items only available in Summer on Stardew Valley” keeps this well varied.

Branching paths let you decide your fate, sometimes featuring shops for useful items like health potions and auto-revives. Riddles are challenging without ever feeling overly obtuse, healing your team if successfully guessed. Working co-operatively across these mini campaigns feels rewarding, providing a refreshing thrill compared to the more competitive options. This is undoubtedly my top pick for Party Pack 11; it leaves me hopeful for the standalone Trivia Murder Party 3 game arriving next year.

Overall Thoughts

Anyone who's previously played Jackbox will know exactly what to expect, and Jackbox Party Pack 11 remains entertaining. It's another uneven set of games, with Hear Say and Cookie Haus falling flat, yet this new pack has just enough here to avoid feeling stagnant. Doominate and Suspectives bolster this well, while Legends of Trivia is the real star with its compelling co-op premise. I only wish the remaining four games had similar depth.

This latest entry won't set the world alight, so anyone fatigued by this series probably won't be convinced to return. Still, what's here is worth considering with the right company, and I'll be coming back in the near future. For something easy to jump into with friends, Jackbox Party Pack 11 delivers another hilarious game night.

6/10

The Jackbox Party Pack 11 was reviewed on PC, and a review code was provided by the publisher. It's also out on October 23 on PlayStation, Switch, Xbox, iOS, and Android.

Rewinder uses a 10-point scoring scale in our reviews, and we've detailed our review scoring policy here for more information.