I know there are fans, this has come out in the UK on Steam (I don’t know if home consoles will be getting it in the UK, which would be useful because of big screens and that). It features You Don’t Know Jack ’15, Fibbage, Drawful, Lie Swatter and Word Spud, and the idea is that everyone can play along on their mobiles or tablets. Features clever questions and US “humor”.
Right now it’s £17.09. Windows only right now, probably much better if you have a way to connect up to a big telly for large gatherings of people.
Drawful would be an amazing gameshow.
I have watched the Agon Channel Italia’s grand opening show, and there Pupo revealed their gameshow line-up.
the regular programming will begin next week.
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Una Canzone Per 100000: five contestants enter, one leaves after every round. the survivor has a chance to win up to €100,000 by guessing a song title.
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A Fior Di Pelle: not much was told about this show, but it will involve body-painting somehow.
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La Fortuna Fa 90: three contestants take turns at picking spaces associated with numbers from a board (like “number of Oscars won by Titanic”) trying to get the most points without going over 90 (99 on the Albanian version)
Ah, but a big room and a telly’s not necessary if you can livestream it! I got involved with a stream earlier this week (Bob Hagh retweeted someone doing it), and I played with them in a few games. To play, you go to a website (jackbox.tv, I think) on your mobile device and enter the four-letter code shown on the screen, plus whatever handle you want to play as. The stream only had a couple of seconds of delay, so I was able to play along very well (the games we played didn’t have too strict of time limits, so it didn’t hurt much; I don’t know if the games would work as well on Twitch or Googlewhatnots, where I think the delay is longer).
I got to try three of the games:
Fibbage XL is a Balderdash-esque bluffing game. A partially-completed fact appears on the screen (“A legislator in New Mexico tried to pass a bill requiring speakers to wear a *blank*”, for example). Everyone submits a bluff answer to fill in the blank (or you can let the game make up a bluff for you, but you get half points for the round). All of the submitted bluffs plus the real answer are scrambled up on screen, you have to guess the correct answer from the lot. You get 1000 points for picking the correct answer and 500 for each player who picks your bluff (later questions are worth 2000/1000 and 3000/1500 for the final question). High score after a few rounds (I think six?) wins.
Drawful is based on a similar premise, but instead of using facts, everyone receives a different phrase (the two I got were “shark fedora” and “how i got my hickey”), and everyone draws a picture based on their prompt. One at a time, a picture is shown, and everyone (aside from the drawer) has to create a caption for the drawing. Then, all the captions and the original prompt are shown, and players have to guess what the original prompt was from the lot. +1000 for a correct guess, +500 for anyone who picks your caption. I don’t think there’s any bonus for the drawer, but I wasn’t paying attention. Once everyone’s drawing has been used, the high score wins.
It’s worth noting that for both of these games, after you guess at the correct answer, you’re given the opportunity to mark off your favorite answers among those submitted. The player who accumulates the most nods also receives recognition at the end of the game.
The final game we played was Word Spud, and it’s really more of a word association activity than a proper game. A randomly-chosen player is given a word and must enter in a word or phrase that follows that word (for “dog” you might use “house” or “park” or whatever). Everyone else has a couple seconds to vote whether they liked the answer or not. Every Yes is +1 point, every No is -1 point (and if you don’t respond in time, it just counts it as no vote, worth nothing). Another player is chosen to make a new phrase using the previous player’s last word (unless it got more No votes than Yeses, then a new starting word is supplied). This continues for a few minutes, and whoever has the highest score when time is called wins the round. Not much to see, it’s basically word association around the table with points attached.
I didn’t play YDKJ or Lie Swatter on the stream, but I imagine they function closely to their respective existing games/apps. On the whole though, I had fun, and I’d strongly consider it for parties, or if you can make it work, livestreams.
I’ve seen the streams, but I’m not in a position to buy it at the moment as I can’t access my Steam rig. The idea of being able to do BYOD stuff appeals.
I have to say, good for Victoria Coren-Mitchell for standing up to her principals- she quit her PokerStars Pro position because she didn’t want to be associated with them after they announced they were introducing other casino games; she thinks online poker is OK because it’s a game of skill, but has issues with other online games because of potential addiction issues..
http://www.victoriacoren.com/main/blog/archive/goodbye_team_pro