Jackbox, creators of the popular You Don’t Know Jack series of yesteryear, has released their latest game on the Xbox One – Fibbage: The Hilarious Bluffing Party Game.
If you haven’t played You Don’t Know Jack, then you’re in for a treat with Fibbage. Jackbox invited us to try out Fibbage before it launched – we would have had this review up sooner but had no idea it was launching so soon!
Fibbage is the lying, bluffing, fib-till-you-win multiplayer trivia party game from the makers of YOU DON’T KNOW JACK! Play with 2-8 players! Fool your friends with your lies, avoid theirs, and find the (usually outrageous) truth.
Before we begin, check out the trailer for a quick look at what Fibbage is about.
In my opinion, one of the coolest features about Fibbage is players use their phone or tablet as the controller – no need to pass your Xbox One controller around or have to purchase extra controllers. This makes it really easy to just pick up and go when you have people over, because who doesn’t have a smartphone on them these days?
Gameplay
The gameplay is straightforward – fire up the game, and you are shown a room code.
Players then visit the website on their phone or tablet, enter a username and the room code and once everyone is in hit the “Everybody’s In” button.
Once in, a random player is prompted on their device to choose a category.
Once the category is chosen, the question is displayed on screen.
All players are then prompted to enter a lie on their device (and offers to help you out if you can’t think of one)…
..and the game then displays the lies and players must pick their choice on their device.
Pick someone else’s lie and that person gets points, pick one of Fibbage‘s lies and you lose points. Pick the truth and you score big!
Another player is then selected to pick a category and the game continues through two rounds before finally presenting everyone with “Final Fibbage” – one last question worth big points!
The creators of Fibbage also added another fun element to the game. After you pick your answer choice, you can toss a thumb’s up for other answers you thought were clever. Get the most thumbs ups and you win the Thumbs Cup at the end of the game!
The Review
I initially tested the game using my phone as one player and my tablet as the second. Not much fun playing by yourself, but hey, what can you do? I immediately saw the potential for Fibbage to be a fun party game. The questions are just zany and out there enough that almost any answer given is believable. I convinced my wife to give it a go (she’s not a big gamer), and an hour later we were still playing. One major concern with quiz type games is the size of the question bank. We’ve played Fibbage a couple times now, and while we’ve seen the odd category repeat (and not often), we’ve yet to run across the same question twice. According to the Xbox One Smartglass App, we’ve only played 0.310344827586207% (yes that is the exact number the app spits out for Fibbage) of the available content. If accurate, there’s more than enough content in this game to hold you over for many sessions.
Jackbox let us know that there is no shortage of questions currently in the game.
Every question has a unique category, so those numbers are basically the same number. There are over 200 fully recorded questions with custom host audio. At 12-15 minutes per game, that makes for 6-8 hours of unique gameplay. At $6.99, we think that’s a bargain. Then again, you’ll probably forget some of the true answers the second time around – and you can always play with different people and make up different lies!
We are keeping an open mind re: adding more questions, of course. If there is enough demand for it, we will definitely consider it.
I was very impressed with the lack of lag between the game itself and the phones. I was connected through mobile data while my wife was on wifi. The instant the game directs you to enter in an answer or pick a category, it’s up on your device screen the moment you look at it. As soon as you’re done on your device and the Fibbage logo appears, the game has already moved to the next step in the process on your TV.
The one area that I think Fibbage can use some work in is the achievements. Don’t get me wrong, I’m an achievement hound and I won’t complain at easy achievements, but Fibbage only has 10 achievements – for a total 1000 gamerscore. After an hour – and more likely within the first 1/2 hour of play, I had already hit 7 achievements for a score of 700/1000. These achievements range from simple – entering a lie for 50GS, to the extreme – playing through all the questions in a game for 100GS, which seems a bit low score wise considering entering in the truth as a lie (which the game will then tell you to enter a different answer) is worth 200GS.
One thought I had while playing was wondering why the game does not have full XBL online gameplay support – although I imagine most of the fun comes from playing with people you know. Jackbox told us that they currently have no plans for an online multiplayer version at this time.
Currently we do not plan to support a full XBL online gameplay for this version. However, as we have already seen, since the game is playable essentially via the web on mobile devices, there are creative ways to video/screen share the game with anyone, anywhere, if you really want to. We’ve already seen people doing it!
A quick search on Twitch shows gamers are already broadcasting – and playing remotely – via the Twitch app.
In short, I think Jackbox has a winner here and Fibbage marks a great start as far as group party games go. By using smartphones and tablets as your controllers, the game is much easier for everyone to join in on the fun. The game itself is a simple concept, but sometimes – as is in this case, simpler is better.
For the low price of $6.99USD, Fibbage can easily provide hours of entertainment for you and your friends. Jackbox will be releasing the game on PS3 and PS4 in early September, and told us that “yes, it WILL be a cross-buy game” so you’ll only have to pick it up once for both consoles.
Let us know if you’ve tried out Fibbage yet in the comments, or over on Google+, Facebook, or Twitter!
Last Updated on November 27, 2018.
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