Jackbox Survey Scramble is one of the most unique Jackbox packs I’ve played. It’s a smaller collection, with just four games - although additional game modes are said to be coming in a future free update. However, its strength is not in numbers, but in game length and simplicity. Each is very quick to play, and easy to dip in and out of.
Game nights can often be chaotic and there are frequent short chunks of downtime. Usually, while Jackbox games aren’t taking hours, you need a good 15 minutes or so to play. Until now.
The four game modes play surprisingly differently, despite all being based on the same core premise of guessing answers to a survey question, Family Feud style. Mostly you can play with just a 30-second explanation and five minutes to spare. This makes it ideal for a quick warm up or a break between other games.
Hilo - A 5-Minute Game With A 5-Second Explanation
Choose a topic from one of three choices, most player votes wins. Then guess two high ranking answers for that prompt, followed by two low ranking answers. Rankings are based on how many people chose that specific answer and the list is numbered, with one being the most popular. Finally, choose which word from two you think will place higher, then lower, on the list.
That’s all you need to know to play Hilo, and the whole game only takes about five minutes.
For a game that sounds, and is, incredibly simple to play, Hilo is surprisingly difficult to master. Finding the most common cute word for butt or the stickiest thing is fairly easy. However, things get tough when it comes to finding the least popular.
I’ve played with a few different people and all of us found it far more difficult to hit the second half of the list. The only saving grace is that the answer doesn’t actually have to be in the bottom half of the answers, it just has to be closer to the bottom than the words your opponents chose.
Scoring isn’t based solely on how an answer ranks compared to the others in that round. If your answer places highest up the chart in the high round you get maximum points. If it places highest in the low round you’ll get minimum points. Zeros are given to those who fail to find a word on the list in time.
Hilo is easy to play, difficult to master and, since the database will be changing as more players input their own additions, remembering answers if you get a dupe won’t necessarily help.
Speed - Hilo With Added Panic
Speed follows a similar pattern to Hilo but with the addition of a timer, and the inability to repeat words. In Speed, everyone guesses as many answers as they can against the clock, and duplicate answers won’t be accepted, so if anyone else guessed your answer first then you have to try again.
While the timer adds a level of both stress and difficulty, it’s the repetition which hurts the most. Sometimes you need to consider the less obvious answers. For example, the beach immediately came to my mind for holiday destinations, but it also did for everyone else, meaning several people racing to be the first to submit.
If you guess a couple of popular answers in a row you can end up in a cycle of guessing duplicates, especially with a larger group. One word movies saw me get Titanic through, but when I pivoted to Jaws, that had gone and started a cycle of me guessing things slightly behind the others.
If you love the competition and the ability to lock people out of answers, then Speed is your best individual round. If you find that too stressful, then stick to Hilo.
Squares - Tic Tac Survey
Squares is a team game with a twist. The board is set up in a 3x3 square and each box has a number range. As with the other games, you’ll need to guess answers to the question you voted on at the beginning of the round. The game cycles through players in rotation to give answers, but anyone can make a suggestion at any time, and it shows up on a list on your teammates phones, allowing you to help them out even when you’re not the one submitting.
This one got the most heated and was therefore the most fun. If your answer hits one of the ranges on the board you claim that square. However, if someone from the other team guesses an answer higher up the range, they can steal your square. The first team to make a line of three claimed squares wins.
The only issue we had with this game was one that we also found in others, two words which mean essentially the same thing both showing up on the board separately.
When guessing superpowers I added mind control, forgetting that we’d had telepathy. However, to my surprise, it was there. Similarly, tape and sellotape both appeared in the top ten for sticky things. There was also a slightly different issue of some words for the same thing not counting at all, when coins were listed as a thing you find in a junk drawer, but several other variations of loose change were not.
Bounce - Problematic Pong
The final game in this collection is bounce which also has the steepest learning curve. It’s essentially Pong, but you summon a paddle by, you guessed it, finding the answers to a survey question.
Along the bottom runs a graph and typing in an answer will place a paddle in the answer’s location on the graph. If you reuse an answer then the paddle it summons shrinks, meaning you’ll need to try and think of new answers frequently.
The hardest part by far here is the speed and timing. Not only do you have to guess and submit very quickly but you also have to ensure your answer is in the right place to deflect the bouncing square.
While some enjoyed the fast pace of this, it is more frustrating and much harder to master than the other games, leaving it languishing for most of us.
Short And Sweet
Jackbox Survey Scramble is a solid showing which offers a nice selection of short simple games to slip into your rotation as filler. The codes for the room remain on screen throughout, meaning people can drop in and out of the games for maximum flexibility.
The survey results could use some tweaking, to avoid you having to guess six different words for boogers when the question is sticky things, but since the intention is to adjust the survey results using player data anyway I have hopes this will improve over time. I’m excited to return in a few weeks and see how things have panned out.
