Currently, to play hilarious Jackbox games like Bomb Corp and Survey Scramble, you need a PC, console, or mobile device. And some friends. That’s changing soon as the games make the leap to smart TVs. But you’ll still need friends.
For years now, the Jackbox games have been some of the best ways to have fun with a large group of friends without having to pull out controllers or teach people a complicated tabletop game. All you need to play is one person who owns a Jackbox game, a way to play it, and some phones. That’s it. And this has led to these games becoming incredibly popular as anyone—even your Qanon-pilled grandfather—can play easily, assuming they can use their phone’s touchscreen effectively. And soon, it’s going to be easier than ever to play games like Fibbage and Quiplash as Jackbox plans to bring its entire catalog to smart TVs via a new app. And some of the games will be free to play, too.
On March 6, Jackbox announced plans to begin bringing its games to select smart TVs. The company is partnering up with Amazon to use the power of the cloud to eventually get its whole catalog of comedy games up and running on a smart TV near you.
“It has always been our goal to bring these games to as many people as possible and make them as easy to play as we can,” said Jackbox in a blog post on its website.
The studio says that the first version of this upcoming app will offer a small collection of free, ad-supported games. But as they expand the app and get it on more platforms, they intend to bring the “entire [Jackbox] catalog of games” to the app via a subscription fee. The plan is to launch a beta version of the app in Spring 2025.
Personally, I’m very excited about this because it means that if you and a bunch of folks are at a friend’s house and people suddenly want to play something, all you need to do is log into your Jackbox subscription on their smart TV and, in theory at least, you’ll be able to start playing Fibbage or Drawful in seconds. Sounds awesome. I hope it works that flawlessly in the real world.
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