I'm not sure how it all started, as I think I was invited long after the idea had started, but a few people from the university video games club decided to start a games club. Similar to a book club, where you are assigned a book and come together to discuss it, there are three games assigned each month.
One game will be the main game, and it will generally be a game that you need to get into before you can review it properly. One game will be a free-to-play game. And the last game is a multiplayer game.
This month's games were: Super Mario RPG, Namco High and Jackbox.
I had meant to play Namco High, but didn't get a chance before Christmas, and after the break, spent too much time playing Town of Salem and Dota 2.... T_T
I also didn't play Super Mario RPG.
I know that part of the point of the club is to try new games, but I'm starting to feel like maybe I'd rather be doing other things with my time.
But I digress. The one game I did play was a series of games included in the Jackbox Party Pack (we bought versions 1 and 2). The Jackbox games are played on a central screen, and each player goes to jackbox.tv on their mobile device and enters the room's unique code to join.
My favourite game is Drawful, which is where today's picture comes from. Each player is given a prompt to draw a picture for. Then each picture is shown to all players who enter their own description of what they think it is. Once that's done, all descriptions are shown, and players try to pick out which one was the original prompt.
You win points if players manage to guess correctly. If you managed to trick one of the other players into choosing your prompt, then you also get points.
I think it's a game that's made more fun when the people playing can't draw, although this drawing of Zach's was pretty cool.
Though I think he out-meta'd himself, as he drew a girafarig, which both Goaty and I submitted as an alternate prompt, but the word was actually "palindrome", which the name of the pokémon happens to be.
There were some other funny ones, but some of the prompts were a little NSFW, so I thought it might not be appropriate to post on my blog.
One of the games I enjoyed was Fibbage, which is where a random trivia question is displayed, and each player needs to submit a credible lie to try and trick the other players into believing it's the real answer. I think trying to choose the right answer from the lies is more fun than creating the lies, but the people who played today are pretty witty, so some of the lies were pretty funny.
A couple of the other games that were fun in the pack were Quiplash where two players are giving a prompt and need to come up with a witty response and the other players vote on which is best (somewhat like Cards Against Humanity, but more freeform), and Bomb Corp. where all the players need to work together to defuse a bomb (a bit like Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes). I think Quiplash can become quite funny, but the neurotic part in me worries that it can go down the path of bullying, where one of the prompts will result in a witty comment about someone else, which gets a lot of votes, but then that theme keeps coming up and that person gets made fun of over and over again. Probably not an issue with close friends, and I think I'm overthinking it, but that's just how my mind works! Bomb Corp. is probably a bit too serious if you just want some casual fun.
We also played Earwig (one player chooses a prompt, and the other players select 2 sounds to try and represent that prompt) and Lie Swatter (basic TRUE / FALSE trivia game). Earwig seemed a bit random, as it felt a bit like whoever got lucky with the sounds would end up winning, as each player was given different sounds at random. Lie Swatter was just a bit lacklustre compared to the other games.
We saw the Jackbox 3 being played at PAX, and it didn't seem like too much of an improvement over the second version, so I didn't think it was worth buying.
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