October 14, 2021 | Anne Kirn

New Features and Fixes in the Jackbox Party Pack 8 patch

Because the Jackbox crew is so dedicated to giving you the best possible gameplay experience, there are tiny details the game teams keep working on right til the last moment! Our amazing streamer friends have also been stress-testing The Jackbox Party Pack 8 out in the wild with their passionate communities, and we’ve received a lot of valuable feedback from them we wanted to incorporate as well. So we’ve put many fantastic tweaks in a patch to make great games even better. If you’re playing The Jackbox Party Pack 8 via Steam, you’ll already have these changes in effect immediately and you won’t have to lift a finger! Stay tuned for more updates about all the other platforms.

We want to put a spotlight on the very hard work our QA and engineering teams especially have been doing as part of the patch. Here are some of the best highlights in improvements, additions, and fixes you can expect from the patch:

Drawful: Animate

New Featured Content episodes
Aesthetic improvements to audio and art, as well as in Friend Mode
Menu screen updated to add clarity for the PLAY button
The Double Down can now be used once per round in two-round games
Miscellaneous controller and timer fixes
Consoles: entering text behaves normally and will not delete typing
Drawful Animate remains stable even if players submit just as the timer ends

The Wheel of Enormous Proportions

Improvement to timer length, to keep the gameplay moving even with a big audience
Players will now have an undo and a submit button when placing their slices on the Wheel
Accessibility for screen readers
5 new Slice types! What do they do…? You’ll have to play and find out!
- Audience: Points to Slice Count
- Audience: Skull Swapper
- Audience: Slice Enhancement
- Power Slice: Rainbow
- Power Slice: Replace Slice
Game screen updates during rapid fire/matching type questions to help keep the audience in the action
Audio effect and EasterEgg additions

Job Job

New animated goofs during the writing phase! One has an audio component with a ton of variations; some useful, some just plain funny. (You’ll have to keep playing if you want to hear them all!)
The motivational poster feature for Audience now has even more photos to choose from!
Added feature to end the game and return to the menu if no one has voted 5 times in a row, or if no players answer their interview questions in a round (in case all the players are spirited away by aliens)
Switch: winner reveal at the end of game no longer creates lag
Job Job responds normally even if players submit just as the timer ends

The Poll Mine

Improvement to timers in Streamer Mode, to make sure large audiences have time to submit but the gameplay keeps moving
Improvements overall to both Streamer Mode and audience interactions
Change to timers in all modes to improve gameplay flow
The final remaining choice in all rounds will now automatically reveal
In the Final Round when both teams answer incorrectly, answer rank will not be revealed if 5th or lower, so teams can make a comeback even in the last round
New host voiceover and audio effects
Consoles: players will always have their turn picking a door in Round 3
Consoles: no longer possible to accidentally have a team of zero

Weapons Drawn

Points are awarded to the person first to place their vote to accuse a suspected murderer
New soundboard feature allows audience members to vote on sound effects combinations which will play in the game
New audience “Stab” button during the Murder Phases, stab away for fun (but non-murdery) results!
Improved credits screen will now show every player’s stats
Animation and controller additions
Easter Egg additions (we won’t tell!)
Consoles: adjustments to scoring (including ensuring audience can’t get away with points murder)
Weapons Drawn responds normally even if players submit just as the timer ends

All this is just a small sampling of the fine-tuning the team has been doing behind the scenes! We’re proud to not only put out 5 amazing games every year, but keep finding ways to make them even more fun for our players. Please note that patches do not take effect on all platforms simultaneously, but rest assured these updates will be coming to your favorite platform soon.

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