The Jackbox Party Pack 12 Launches on PC and Consoles: Every New Minigame Turning Your Phone Into a Controller
Chicago-based developer and publisher Jackbox Games is keeping its autumn party tradition alive with the official release of The Jackbox Party Pack 12. Available now for $29.99 on Steam and major digital storefronts, this twelfth installment refreshes the formula with five brand-new games built from the ground up for living room gatherings, game nights, and online streams ahead of the holiday season.
True to the series' signature accessibility, no extra controllers are required to get a lobby running. Only one player needs to own and host the game on a main screen, while everyone else joins in seconds through the web browser on their smartphone, tablet, or laptop via Jackbox.tv.
Five All-New Party Games for Up to Eight Players
Rather than relying on direct sequels this year, the comedy writers and designers at Jackbox Games crafted five original concepts spanning word association, chaotic photo manipulation, greeting card design, team trivia, and town-hall debates:
- MegaPals (3 to 8 players, Speed & Guessing): A mind-melding word-association game that celebrates both old and new friendships. Players type out impulsive responses to prompts and face off in explosive match-ups to see who really thinks alike.
- Hyperface (3 to 8 players, Head-to-Head & Photo Editing): Players snap live selfies on their phones (or pick from stock portraits) and smudge, yank, squash, and draw over them to answer bizarre prompts like "your face when you've just seen a bear."
- We Forgot a Card (3 to 8 players, Design & Joke-Writing): Running late to a major event, you stumble into a shop with barely any stock left and must design ridiculous greeting cards for strange occasions, complete with an option to order physical prints of your creations in real life.
- Idol Factions (2 to 8 players, Teamwork & Trivia): An action-packed battle of facts where two teams race against the clock and yell out instructions to sort a relentless stream of answers into the right categories.
- Debate and Switch (2 to 8 players, Presentation & Head-to-Head): Styled as a lively town-hall talk-em-up tournament, this mode challenges competitors to persuade the room to vote for their absurd and passionately defended opinions.
Supported Platforms and London Launch Celebrations
The Jackbox Party Pack 12 is available now across PC (Steam and Epic Games Store), PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch (including backward compatibility on Nintendo Switch 2), Apple TV, iPad, and the Mac App Store. On Nintendo's hybrid hardware, where couch multiplayer staples regularly top the Nintendo Switch eShop charts, the collection transitions effortlessly between TV dock mode and tabletop sessions.
To celebrate the launch in the UK, Jackbox Games also hosted an official launch party at London's Loading Bar. Alongside hands-on stations featuring all five games from Party Pack 12 and live caricature portraits, attendees were able to test a playable demo of My Arms Are Longer Now, an upcoming quirky heist game published by Jackbox Games where players control a thief with an impossibly stretchy arm.
My Test Bench
I still find that the biggest strength of the Jackbox formula is its zero-friction setup: throwing a four-letter room code onto the TV and having eight people jump in from their phones without pairing a single extra controller remains unmatched for casual game nights. In this twelfth pack, Hyperface and We Forgot a Card immediately stand out as the crowd-pleasers thanks to their visual punchlines, while Idol Factions brings a welcome burst of frantic team communication when the room needs a faster pace.
PC hardware enthusiast and competitive gamer, Arthur 'Heimdall' splits his time between France and the UK working in enterprise B2B software solutions. A business school graduate passionate about component benchmarking, he has been building, modding, and tuning PCs since childhood, optimizing every thermal degree and millisecond of display latency. An avid gamer across Assassin's Creed and sandbox titles, he forged his alliance with Grimtag and Chaya during late-night World of Warcraft raids before joining Pro-Gamer.
