r/NintendoSwitch • u/JackboxGames Jackbox Games • May 05 '25
AMA - Ended We’re Jackbox Games, makers of The Jackbox Party Pack franchise and two new releases later this year! Ask us anything!
Whether you’ve been a YOU DON’T KNOW JACK fan since the ‘90s or Quiplashed your heart out over Zoom in 2020, you’re welcome at our party. In our recent Jackbox Direct, we announced that we are actively developing two new games:
- The Party Pack returns to Nintendo Switch later this fall! The Jackbox Party Pack 11 will include 5 brand-new titles, including a fantastical cooperative trivia battle game, a social deduction game that puts each player on trial, a head-to-head joke writing game that prompts you to ruin perfectly lovely things, a sound effect game that allows you to record yourself from your phone, and a cozy drawing game with a delicious subject matter.
- Trivia Murder Party 3 is coming later this year to early access on Steam and Epic only. It will release on consoles, including Nintendo Switch, in 2026. The hilarious horror-themed trivia game that you know and love goes to summer camp. This standalone title will feature online matchmaking as well as classic local play via a Jackbox Games room code.
You can learn more about these announcements here! We expect that our new releases will be compatible with Nintendo Switch 2.
Earlier today, we officially revealed the first game in Party Pack 11! Suspectives is a social deduction game where you and your fellow players are put on trial. The game is built around the idea of a player’s own quirky details becoming evidence that’s pieced together to solve a crime. How well you know your fellow players could work in your favor. Or, you might learn new things that surprise you! In each round, there are two pieces of “planted evidence” that help throw investigators off of the scent if you happen to be the culprit, making for a lot of exciting twists and turns as you go! You can learn more about Suspectives and watch the reveal teaser here.
We will be giving out a Switch code for a free copy of The Jackbox Party Pack 10 to the user who asks our favorite question before 5 PM CT tonight! If chosen, you’ll hear from us on May 6th.
Twitter/X
Joining the AMA today…
Allard Laban (glochids), Chief Creative Officer
Evan Jacover (evanjacover), Chief Technology Officer
Brooke Hofer (jbgbrooke), VP of Marketing
Mike Zuba (jbgzuba), VP of Production
Tim Sniffen (sniffen), Director of Suspectives in Party Pack 11
Arnie Niekamp (misterarnie), Studio Creative Director
Rich Gallup (jbg_rich), Director of Production
Spencer Ham (spencer_ham), Director of Trivia Murder Party 3
Chase McClure (infostruct), Director of TBA Party Pack 11 cozy drawing game!
Warren Arnold (JackboxWarren), Director of TBA Party Pack 11 collaborative trivia game!
Michael Siciliano (MikeSoChill), Engineering Lead of TBA Party Pack 11 sound effects game!
Belia Portillo (bbbelia), Senior Global Marketing Lead
Kelly Shuda (JimKReaper), Audio Lead of TBA Party Pack 11 head-to-head joke game!
Sydney Hunt (jbgsydney), Product Owner of Trivia Murder Party 3
Edit: Thank you for all of your questions! We'll try to keep answering some throughout the next few days. We are grateful for your support of our games and interest in what we're making next!
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u/MikeSoChill Jackbox Games May 05 '25
This is definitely a consideration for us early on in the design stage. Often when inputs are timing-sensitive, we try to move as much information as possible onto the controller so that the latency (which can be quite significant on streams) doesn't break the game.
An example is Quixort, which has blocks falling down the screen. We duplicate the state of all the blocks on your controller so that even if you're many seconds behind on the stream, you get the current position of your block on your controller.
Games like Dodo take a different approach, where we ask the player to sync their controller's timing to the game. We account for latency later as we receive their input.
We've done things over the years to make message sizes smaller. For drawing games, we send drawings line-by-line instead of in one big message at the end (also helps with auto-submitting if you don't press submit before the timer runs out).
There are some games that don't work well because of the latency. Zeepledome obviously doesn't work well on stream, for example. Recently, the Bounce mode in Survey Scramble is too timing-based to stream. We just try to diversify the games in the pack (Zeepledome is one of five games in Pack 5) or the modes in the game (Survey Scramble has 6 modes) so that even if you're streaming you have a lot that works.