Review | Jackbox Survey Scramble - Game Night Warm-Up
You know that feeling when you watch Family Feud and think you could do better than the contestants? You can put that cockiness to the test in the newest Jackbox game, Jackbox Survey Scramble which will have you and your friends and family compete for your knowledge on random surveys.
It’s important to distinguish that Survey Scramble is not a party pack and if you go in expecting a variety of games you'll likely be disappointed. That said, the four different modes do a good job of keeping the concept varied enough, but they still can only do so much and you're gonna want to switch to another Jackbox game soon if you plan on keeping your party entertained during longer game nights.
The gameplay works like any other Jackbox game, only one person needs to own it to host a room and everyone will need to go to jackbox.tv to connect to it. Once inside, the game will ask everyone optional questions to respond to while waiting for the game to start; this is where Jackbox collects the data for the surveys used in the actual gameplay. The host of the game will then choose from four modes available, with an option to choose a random one and another to go through all of them in a row.
The first mode, Hilo, will ask players to guess the most popular answer to a question and then the least popular, giving scores based on the ranking of each guess.
The next mode, Speed, is probably my favourite and it will ask players to guess as many answers as possible to a certain question, with each correct guess from any player resetting the timer. When the timer reaches 0 the game is over and it will tally up the number of correct guesses for each player.
Moving on to team modes, Squares will pit two teams against each other in a match of tic-tac-toe in which the squares are divided into ranges of popularity for the answers to the question at hand. To claim a square, the players will have to not only correctly guess an answer but also correctly estimate its ranking and which range it would be in. The team who first claims three squares in a row wins.
The last mode, Bounce, seems to be unanimously disliked, at least by all the friends I played with. It's a game of pong in which teams will take turns moving their bumper so that the ball doesn't hit the bottom of the screen. The bumper can be moved by guessing a word gauging whether it would be a popular answer to the question given (which will put the bumper closer to the left) or a less popular answer (which will put it to the right). It's pretty clunky but I thought it could be pretty fun once you get the hang of it, though my friends didn’t seem to agree. Both team modes are also nothing spectacular in terms of teamwork, each team member goes one at a time with the others being able to suggest words when it's not their turn.
As I mentioned the four modes give a good variety to the concept, but once you play all four you'll soon find yourself wanting more, just a couple more modes would have balanced it out better, even adding previously released games such as Guesspionage from Jackbox Party Pack 3 which I feel fits the theme perfectly.
The game is made for up to 10 players with the ability to drop in and out which is a very welcome change from past entries which made it more of a chore to change players. All modes are also playable with only two players which is a rarer occurrence in Jackbox games, with most being playable only for three players upwards. It also once again supports audience players, up to 10,000 people, which is perfect for Twitch streamers who want to play with their viewers, especially with specific Twitch dedicated settings enabled such as account integration and allowing your moderators to approve or reject input.
The most welcome additions however are the localisation settings, specifically being able to choose the locale from where the survey data will originate and, my personal favourite, the one which filters US-centric content coming back from previous games.
Overall, I would describe Jackbox Survey Scramble as a nice appetizer to serve at a party before moving on to the main courses which are the Jackbox Party Packs, but if you're looking for a game to occupy a couple of hours at the very most this is a fun time to play with friends and family whether in person or online.
