Making The Jackbox Party Pack 5

On October 16th, 2018, The Jackbox Party Pack 5 was released with five party games: Mad Verse City, Split the Room, Zeeple Dome, Patently Stupid, and You Don’t Know Jack: Full Stream

Check out the original trailer for this pack that was released on September 25th, 2018!

Mad Verse City

Have you ever wanted to taste the glory of winning a rap battle? Do you have friends that you secretly want to roast? You will probably love Mad Verse City. Huge robots have taken over and their main goal is to set the city on fire with sick rhymes and dope verses. Each player will go head-to-head with another member of the group in an all-out rap battle for the ages. Whoever isn’t competing can either show their support by cheering or their disgust by booing. After each battle, everyone will vote on who is the better MC to see who should get more fat stacks of cash. The player with the most dolla bills at the end is the winner.

We were thrilled to have Chicago legend Shadow Master MC as one of the hosts in Mad Verse City. Audio Lead Andy Poland shared, “Working with Shadowmaster MC on the Mad Verse City credits theme was a great experience. I gave him the music and he just did his own thing on the rap and it was amazing. It was fun creating multiple versions of the question 7 segue and making Pascal record them all in French. Also, the multiple question 4 sequels are always fun to create.”

Director and Lead Engineer Ben Jacobs continued, “When Brian showed me the final version of the credits theme song for Mad Verse City, I got EMOTIONAL. It was PERFECT. Shadow did SUCH a good job on it, and having a hip-hop song in a pack game was a big coup for me. Supporting Hector on MVC was also really fun. Getting to see him come into his own as a lead artist and build this world.”

Lead Artist Hector M. Padilla shared some early concept art for the Mad Verse City logo and robots:

Split the Room

We live in a world full of choices. Coke or Pepsi? iPhone or Android? Stay up late and play more video games or go to bed and get a good night's sleep? I’m sure you know what YOU would answer for these questions, but how well do you know your family and friends? In Split the Room you will have to come up with your own divisive questions that the other players will have to answer. However, the goal isn’t for everyone to agree on what to pick. What’s the fun in that? In fact, you want the room to be as divided as possible. You get more points based on how evenly “split” the responses are. The player with the best controversial questions wins!

When asked about directing this game, Director, Editorial Lead, and original concept creator Spencer Ham stated, “As an enjoyer of hypothetical situations, I explored ways to gamify highly charged debates and landed on a mechanic that challenges the player to create scenarios that would, well, split the room in how they would handle absurd situations.”

Here is a clip of the early development of the host and scoreboard:

You can also watch some of the original creators play the game for the first time on stream here:

Zeeple Dome

Imagine you are an astronaut traveling through space peacefully with your crew when all of a sudden you are all kidnapped by aliens! Now they are forcing you to compete in their violent alien game show in the Zeeple Dome. You’ll have to work together if you want to get back to your ship. Players use the controllers on their device to “zeeple” around the map and fight off the opponents. Throughout the game, you’ll have to collect power-ups, dodge obstacles, and attack scary bosses. Whoever is the best fighter wins the game show!

When asked about the development process, Jackbox VP of Production Mike Zuba shared, “Zeeple Dome was a very outside-the-box game concept that we greenlit…It went through many trials and tribulations early in development. It originated as a turn-based game where each player took turns flinging themselves into baddies. After months of tinkering and trying to find that one new twist to bring all the various mechanics together, we realized we just weren't happy enough with the turn-based implementation. A revelation occurred in a design meeting where someone threw out a crazy question: ‘What if it was all just real-time, no more turns?’ …the more we thought about it, the more it made sense. So we gave it a shot despite having no confidence we could deliver this big of a change in time. Yet, this was the key that blew the game wide open and made it wildly fun and entertaining…”

Jackbox artist Kyle Fleischer shared some early designs for the game:

Patently Stupid

Are you a genius inventor but aren’t sure where to get started? Well, then you’re in the right place! In Patently Stupid, you go through the entire inventing process to become the famous and wealthy inventor you always wanted to be. You’ll begin by doing market research to identify the big problems your fellow players are facing. Perhaps their food deliveries are taking too long, or their Aunt Michelle has horrible cooking skills. Then you will be tasked with coming up with an invention that will fix that problem. Maybe food delivery drones, or a ray gun that will make Aunt Michelle’s cooking disappear. Each player will get a certain amount of funding to give to the other creations. Whoever gets the most money, in the end, will be crowned the victor!

You can watch the Patently Stupid Trailer here:

Art Director David Innis shared some early layouts and sketches for this game:

You Don’t Know Jack: Full Stream

Think you’re a trivia master who has all the answers? Well, prepare for a reality check because, after a couple of rounds of this game, you’ll find that you don’t know jack! You Don’t Know Jack: Full Stream is a sequel to the classic Jackbox franchise You Don’t Know Jack. If you’ve played before, you know that you can expect plenty of twisted trivia questions and creative insults as you compete to see who knows the most random information. You’ll get points for having correct answers, and whoever has the most points at the end can forever be known as the least dumb one in your group.

Tonight Show Host Jimmy Fallon is a big fan of Jackbox Games and we had the pleasure of working with him on this game. Writer and Director Arnie Niekamp talked about his experience saying, “I was lucky enough to get to go to New York and record with Jimmy Fallon and Tom Gottlieb the voice of Cookie Masterson. Jimmy Fallon was very nice and a lot of it was improvised…the recording studio was amazing. Apparently, NBC Studios has some nice equipment. The coolest thing was that Jimmy Fallon was great and I was so impressed by Tom…no matter what was thrown at him he sounded exactly like what should be the final product in You Don’t Know Jack.”

Check out this clip of Arnie explaining the origins of Binjpipe, which is the setting for this game.

The team often pokes fun at one another and that can sometimes be seen in our games. Jackbox Software Engineer Michael Siciliano shared, “YDKJ had these fake shows along the bottom of the main menu. Unbeknownst to me, Ben, the principal gameplay engineer, took my LinkedIn profile picture, which at that point was my high school senior photo, and made a fake show thumbnail out of it. These were the titles: ‘Blazers’, ‘What a Good Boy’, ‘Real LinkedIn Profiles’, ‘How to Smile’, ‘Gorsh!’, ‘Jacket Guy’, ‘Trust Fund Tales’, ‘Let's Circle Back’, ‘Not in the Meeting’, ‘This Is Not A Cult’

This is the picture he is referring to:

Throughout the upcoming months, we’ll be highlighting the work that went into each of the Party Packs. Stay tuned for more behind-the-scenes snippets, live streams, discounts, and more. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok to keep up with all the behind-the-scenes content.