You have three weeks to cancel plans and make new ones with all your pals, as Jackbox Games have announced their next bumper bundle of local multiplayer foolishness is almost here. The Jackbox Party Pack 5 is coming on October 17th, which is a Wednesday so maybe shoot for the 19th or 20th to fill a room with your chums (or a chatroom, if you don’t mind wangling it online) to rap battle with robots, draw silly things, play an alien game show, answer weird trivia in You Don’t Know Jack, and more. It’s hard to guess which Jackbox games will be hits ahead of time, but each Party Pack is always fun to work through to discover the hot new weirdness.

Like the past four Party Packs, this here is a collection of silly multiplayer parlour games which are made to be played with everyone in the same room, as one main screen gives directions while players input their own answers (and drawings, and hot bars, and…) into a phone, tablet, laptop, or other convenient doodad with a browser. While they are made for local play, with the buzz of a room of fools, you can play just fine online by sharing that main screen with other players through Skype or summat.

And they’re good! Some games always stand out more than others, usually ones which have players come up with gags rather than the game providing its own, but Packs tend to have a few good’uns.

Jackbox’s long-running daft trivia quiz series You Don’t Know Jack will return in this Party Pack, but largely its games are new. Here’s Jackbox Games to explain ’em:

You Don’t Know Jack

The pop-culture trivia mash-up YOU DON’T KNOW JACK: Full Stream (1-8 players). The classic returns, full of wild new surprises. Split the Room

The what-if game Split the Room (3-8 Players). Create strange and divisive hypothetical situations. Mad Verse City

The lyric-writing game Mad Verse City (3-8 players). Channel your inner MC as a rap battling robot. Patently Stupid

The competitive drawing game Patently Stupid (3-8 players). Create odd inventions to solve bizarre problems. Zeeple Dome

The deadliest game show in the Crab Nebula, Zeeple Dome (1-6 players)! Fling yourself at bloodthirsty aliens to win millions of Zubabucks!

Zeeple Dome stands out a little there, as it is more action-packed than most of those thinkygames. Observe:



To experience this #content, you will need to enable targeting cookies. Yes, we know. Sorry.

Manage cookie settings



Huh! Weird.

The Jackbox Party Pack 5 will hit Windows and Mac on October 17th, coming via Steam at £23.79/€24.99/$29.99. (Or possibly the 18th in the UK, Steam says – time zones etc.) It’ll also be on PS4 and Xbone and Switch and Amazon Fire TV and Nvidia TV and perhaps even more platforms I’ve not heard of.