The Jackbox Survey Scramble is 'fun' in a single word

It's not often that Jackbox Games has two releases in a calendar year, but the team has a second game lined up following the September arrival of The Jackbox Naughty Pack. The Jackbox Survey Scramble is something a little bit different from the Jackbox team, but in going in a slightly atypical direction, the team looks to have found something fun and enjoyable. Shacknews recently tried out two of the upcoming title's game modes ahead of this week's Steam Next Fest.

The Jackbox Survey Scramble is all about questionnaires and their results. The team at Jackbox Games has been putting out numerous questions to the gaming public and looks to be collecting answers for the foreseeable future. Depending on the game mode, players must determine what's most and least popular for any of these questions.

Hilo (pronounced "high, low") is the primary game mode that takes advantage of The Jackbox Survey Scramble's concept. The game will vary between asking players to guess the most popular and the least popular answer to a question. This might sound like a variant of the classic Family Feud, but there's one major rule that extends across the entire title: answers can only be a single word. Answers with more than one word aren't allowed, though survey takers could get creative by creating compound words that don't totally fit the English language. It's a game that can be fun for entire families, but unlike more recent Jackbox offerings, it's also a game that's totally playable with just two players. Call this a fun date nite exercise.

Squares does something a little more fun than straightforward surveys and answers. This is a variation of Tic-Tac-Toe where the first player or team to create a line wins. Each square is represented by a select range of survey answers. What makes this mode fun is that opposing teams can steal a square by guessing an answer that ranks higher on its range. If a team guesses the #8 answer and gets the top-right square, the other team can guess the #6 answer and steal it.

What's most interesting about the questions used for The Jackbox Survey Scramble is that they'll always be in rotation. If a game is loading or if a crew is waiting for others to show up before starting a game, everyone is encouraged to run through the various Jackbox surveys to help add answers to the pool. What this means is that players can get a question in one session and if they draw that same question again in the future, the order of answers could be entirely different. It's a little detail that's going to keep The Jackbox Survey Scramble feeling fresh, especially if Jackbox Games wants to keep contributing more questions for players to answer in the future.

It's one thing to explain how The Jackbox Survey Scramble works, but experiencing it firsthand is a better way to go. Fortunately, Hilo and Squares are available to play as part of the game's Steam Next Fest demo, which is available now through the end of the event. Look for The Jackbox Survey Scramble to come to PC, PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo Switch, Amazon Fire TV, and Apple TV on Thursday, October 24.

This preview is based on a Steam code provided by the publisher. The final product is subject to change.

Ozzie Mejia

Senior Editor

Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?