The Jackbox Party Pack 10 Review (SilokHawk)
Even as someone who buys every pack at launch, this is a tough sell
TL;DR is that Pack 10 will still be great to play at parties or with friends over streams, but $35 is a bit much unless you're a returning fan. As for the individual reviews:
Tee K.O. 2:
The fan favorite returns with better drawing tools/better customization, the ability to redraw someone else's art, but unfortunately with a lesser final round that asks player to button-mash on what they think should win instead of a typical voting system. At the end of the day, it's still Tee K.O. at its core which is a great drawing game; However the chance to implement a scoring system that rewards good art and slogans, and not just who was lucky enough to be sent the best stuff, was a sorely missed opportunity. 3/5
Time Jinx:
A trivia game solely fixated on questions about the specific year or era certain events happened. Restrictive on paper but they do a great job keeping things fresh by constantly changing up the format of the questions. Unlike Trivia Murder Party or Fibbage, Time Jinx is straight trivia with no other elements players can excel at. If you like trivia then this is a very well paced game, but there's little else on offer if trivia isn't your thing. 3/5
FixyText:
You're all sent a message on the screen (which players often ignore/forget), and then on your device you all simultaneously write a response to said message. Beyond other players voting for what words they liked the most, there is essentially no structure to this game. It goes on for 3 rounds with no gimmicks to shake things up, and the end result is always unintelligible word salad. Even the game's great presentation can't salvage what is the equivalent of 4 people all jumping in a public Google docs, and hammering away on their keyboard. 1.5/5
Dodo Re Mi:
If there's any game worth buying pack 10 for, it's this. Dodo Re Mi is a rhythm game very much in-line with stuff like Rock Band or DDR. There's an impressive number of songs, a great variety of instruments, the music itself is super solid, and the ingenious "tap tap tap" sync system assures all players will always be in-tune with the music even over streaming. Dodo Re Mi is so good it could be sold as its own stand-alone title. 5/5
Hypnotorious:
Easily the most complicated in the pack, this is a social deduction game where you're assigned a secret role (like "astronaut" or "olympic diver") and need to deduce who else is in your assigned group. There's a single "outlier" each round that will not fit in with the other assigned groups. The inclusion of the outlier is why players shouldn't flat out state who they are, since the outlier could be you, and if that's the case, you need to realize that ASAP so you can blend in afterwards. A very interesting concept albeit poorly paced; And players who don't answer, or enter jokey submissions, are actually rewarded since it reveals nothing about themselves whilst they take in all the information of their opponents. 2.5/5
The Jackbox Party Pack 10 might be the most experimental pack to date; And in the case of Dodo Re Mi that risk was definitely worth it. Regrettably that's one home-run in a pack that is otherwise a bit rough. My friends and I love playing Jackbox so I can still see myself booting this up plenty for the next couple of weeks; But given a few months, the only games I can see myself revisiting is Dodo Re Mi, and maybe Hypnotorius for its intriguing premise. This has the highest retail for a Party Pack to date, and I could only recommend it for its asking price of $35 if you're like me, love Jackbox, and just want to play the new games.