What Is Jackbox Game

Let’s be honest: nothing kills a party faster than pulling out Monopoly and watching your cousin slowly flip the board. You know what doesn’t? Jackbox Games. It’s the digital party starter that turned my living room into a chaotic comedy club, and you don’t even need a console controller.

What exactly is this sorcery? Jackbox is a collection of party video games you play using your phone or tablet as the controller. One person buys the game on a console or PC, streams the screen to a TV, and everyone else connects by entering a room code at jackbox.tv. It’s like online trivia meets stand-up improv, minus the embarrassing microphone failures.

Here’s the kicker: your phone becomes the star. You’re not mashing buttons on a controller—you’re drawing, writing jokes, and answering ridiculous questions right from your couch. The game tells you to “draw a horse playing a trumpet,” and suddenly your aunt’s stick figure looks like a sad potato with lips.

The Games Are Weird and Wonderful

Each Jackbox pack includes five different games, and they range from brilliant to absolutely unhinged. Take Quiplash: you’re given a prompt like “the worst thing to hear from your dentist,” and you type a punchline. Then everyone votes. Yes, your “I said novocaine, not no job” joke might get zero points, but your friend’s “Open wide… for your divorce papers” wins the whole round.

There’s also Drawful, where you draw a prompt like “a haunted toaster.” Your terrible art gets captioned by other players, and then everyone tries to guess the original prompt. Someone will inevitably draw a shape that looks exactly like a certain body part, and the room will lose it for five minutes.

Do You Need A Computer To Play Jackbox at Molly Carmichael blog

The Surprising Truth

Here’s a fact that’ll blow your mind: Jackbox Games don’t require that many people to be fun. You can play with as few as two people, but the real magic happens with four to eight players. And get this—audiences can join in! While you’re playing, up to 10,000 people can watch and vote online. Yes, ten thousand strangers can judge your terrible horse drawing in real-time.

Another shocker: the games are mostly text-based. No fancy graphics, no explosions. But the humor comes from your own brain (and your friends’ questionable life choices). One round of Fibbage, the lying game, will teach you that your best friend once believed “panhandle” meant cooking with a frying pan in a desert.

How to Not Suck at Jackbox

First rule: lean into the chaos. The worst thing you can do is try to be clever. The best jokes are the dumbest ones. Type the first thing that pops into your head—even if it’s “I farted in the elevator.” Second rule: never trust your friend’s handwriting. Just because it looks like “banana” doesn’t mean they didn’t write “banana slug invasion.”

How to Play Jackbox Games, the Perfect Quarantine Activity - InsideHook

Lastly, buy the right pack. The newest one (Party Pack 10) has Timejinx, a trivia game that messes with time. But the classics like Quiplash 3 and Drawful 2 are still golden. Pro tip: wait for a Steam sale—you’ll snag a pack for the price of a sandwich and a sad soda.

The Bottom Line

Jackbox Games are the only video games where the person who’s never played a video game can win. Your grandma can beat you at Trivia Murder Party because she remembers obscure 1970s TV shows. That’s the beauty of it: your phone becomes a weapon of mass giggles.

So next time you’re hosting a party, ditch the board games. Hand everyone a phone, log into Jackbox, and watch your friends turn into stand-up comedians, terrible artists, and shameless liars. Just don’t blame me when someone draws a horse that looks like a potato with lips.