The Jackbox Party Pack has long been synonymous with, well, parties. Chances are that at some point or another you’ve pulled out your phone with a group of people and dived into one of their outrageous mini-games. With 10 official titles already in the series, and some additions like The Naughty Pack, developer Jackbox Games shows no signs of slowing down.
Today, the team announced that the official release date for The Jackbox Party Pack 11 is October 23, 2025. With this release date, we also got a peek at five new, all-original games: Legends of Trivia, Suspectives, Doominate, Hear Say and Cookie Haus.
In today’s release, Director of Production and Pack Lead on The Jackbox Party Pack 11, Rich Gallup, said, “This is the first Party Pack in years with no sequels, and that creative freedom really shines through. Each game began as a bold idea and grew through playtesting, collaboration, and a lot of laughter. Whether you’re recording the perfect goat bleat, interrogating your friends, slaying monsters with your wits, writing ruinous jokes, or decorating cookies for a stressed-out bakery boss, there’s something here for every kind of player.”
Lucky for us, we got to pick Gallup’s brain via email ahead of the release date announcement about all things The Jackbox Party Pack 11.
First, let’s get started by telling us a bit about your role with The Jackbox Party Pack 11.
Rich Gallup: Hello! I’m the Director of Production for Jackbox Games as well as the Pack Lead for The Jackbox Party Pack 11. In the former role, I manage the amazing team of producers who shepherd our teams and games from ideation through launch. In the latter role, I oversee the entire pack and its schedule, make sure the teams have the support and resources they need, and generate official feedback and guidance alongside company stakeholders for the teams. Or, put another way, I talk to everybody about everything all the time and play the games a whole bunch!
“So many people are involved with each new Jackbox game, all of the people!”
How many people are involved with each new Jackbox game?
Rich Gallup: So many people are involved with each new Jackbox game, all of the people! On a daily basis, the hands-on development team for an individual pack game ranges from 6-9 folks, but every game made at Jackbox includes the whole studio in some way. It starts with the pitch process, which is open to everybody. If you have the barest glimmer of a game idea, you are encouraged to explore it and pair up with others to expand it, regardless of your department or seniority.
For Party Pack 11 we also held a game jam, where the studio was randomly split across 10 teams to generate playable pitches over a dedicated week. During official game production, design discussions are open and fully collaborative, with all ideas heard, considered, and often folded into the overall direction. You could call it “Yes, And…” development, thanks to Jackbox’s deep connection to Chicago’s improv comedy scene. It’s also common for an individual to be involved in multiple games in a pack.
For example, a game will have a lead writer, but the entire editorial department will share in that game’s writing effort. QA testers will be assigned to a primary game but will form up as a group regularly for multiplayer testing, and engineers from all over will lend a hand or fix bugs when needed. And then there’s the playtesting!
Our games thrive due in no small part to our extensive playtesting; several times a week, we all crowd into our company Discord channels to play all of the Pack and share our thoughts and critiques. And we also thrive as individuals thanks to the welcoming, fun, and creative environment that is Jackbox Games. Building and caretaking such a great place to work is a constant effort unto itself; the people responsible for that deserve a ton of credit for our games, too.
Not a lot of games get to throw an 11 at the end of the name. How does the team feel about bringing eleven different versions of Jackbox to gamers?
Rich Gallup: That’s so many! Are we going to run out of room in the Jackbox Megapicker? I have been in the video games industry for over 20 years, and the output of this amazing studio is incomparably prolific for its size. We have several team members who have been here for every single Party Pack, and more than a few go as far back as You Don’t Know Jack in the 1990s!
They’re incredibly humble about making so many beloved games, and we are all very much appreciative of the years of support of our fans through it all. In my experience, the past of Jackbox is most often brought up as a specific comparison point for current ideas and efforts, “We tried that once in Pack 6, maybe we should try it again?”, or when somebody has a funny anecdote to share, “So there we were, shooting a trailer in this van…”.
How does the team keep things fresh after that many versions?
Rich Gallup: Inclusion and iteration help us keep things fresh. The team at Jackbox is a fun, diverse group of people with a myriad of interests and ideas, and we have Slack channels full of chatter recommending video games, board games, TV shows, movies, art, music, comedy, you name it! There’s a lot to share and pull from.
By including everybody in the creative process that I outlined above, and making the time and space to share all of our ideas, interests, experiences, and perspectives, we’re always finding new avenues to explore. And with our constant playtesting and iteration loops, each game, over time, finds its unique gameplay and presentation style.
What can we expect from The Jackbox Party Pack 11? Any highlights you can share with us? Is the content all new, or will we see some nods to past favourites?
Rich Gallup: The Jackbox Party Pack 11 features five brand new games, no sequels here, and what a line-up! As with previous packs, we are striving to provide a wide variety of gameplay and vibes to fit any and all parties and social gaming situations. If you are looking for a lively evening, Dominate is here with its iconic host, the most radical Jim Reaper.
Serve up some words describing something you like and watch your friends make it worse, all in the name of comedy. If you are worried that sounds a little mean, the whole thing ends with a lovely upbeat round of un-ruining, complete with stunning rainbows, an angelic choir, rock music, and a farting unicorn, which is equally stunning.
Hear Say is another raucous game where, for the first time in Jackbox history, you are prompted to record short bits of audio, which are voted on and played back at the audio track for random and hilarious videos. It’s totally ridiculous. Guaranteed to make my kids completely bonker balls both during gameplay and for several hours afterwards.
If you are surrounded by friends that you may or may not trust, play Suspectives, the social deduction game where you are a hardboiled detective in a room full of hardboiled detectives, with a jazz soundtrack that perfectly sets the mood. Which of you committed the crime? Under the hot lights of an interrogation, who will admit they don’t return their shopping cart!? Definitely not one of our writers! Trench coats not included, but encouraged!
Cookie Haus is our cozy game where you must decorate cookies for a wild cast of customers while your manic boss, Moonique, shouts gentle…encouragement. It’s ok, she means well, she’s just a stressed-out small business owner. In this economy! Am I right? And finally, if you and your band of knowledgeable adventurers are feeling particularly epic, answer the call of Legends of Trivia!
Reminiscent of a pub quiz, but with more weapons and death, this quest is a collaborative trivia game where you work together to answer tough questions, defeat monsters, solve riddles, and stuff your bags with countless gold on your path to Peak Knowledge (it’s both a mountain and a state of mind). It’s an awesome, awesome pack; the team kicked so much butt on it.
Are there any past games that players are begging to see make a comeback?
Rich Gallup: We have a great relationship with our fans, and they all have their favourites. We are incredibly grateful and appreciative that we have created games that people love so passionately. I encourage anybody who has thoughts on a potential sequel, general feedback, or is just looking for a cool group of people to hang out with to join our Discord.
What is the process that the team goes through to decide which games go into a new edition of Jackbox?
Rich Gallup: I mentioned our open and collaborative pitch process earlier. When it comes to deciding which of those pitches gets the green light, we have a committee of senior Jackbox employees who make the final calls. Forming a pack can start with a single idea, like a specific sequel we want to make or an overall theme. In Pack 11’s case, the desire was five all-new games, and the first pitches to receive the committee’s approval were Suspectives, Hear Say, and Legends of Trivia.
“By rough count, we had over 40 separate game concepts in various stages of creation by the time we finalized Pack 11.”
As a pack line-up starts to solidify, we look at the gameplay experiences it’s offering as well as the estimated scope and technical challenges they might bring in the year ahead. With those factors in mind for Pack 11, Doominate, with its quick-hitting joke writing and Cookie Haus’s cozy drawing mechanics, were picked as the perfect games to round out the pack.
Were there any ideas left on the cutting room floor this time around?
Rich Gallup: By rough count, we had over 40 separate game concepts in various stages of creation by the time we finalized Pack 11. As with previous years, all of these ideas are safely kept in our internal wiki, complete with all design docs, meeting notes, and pitch feedback. We’ll pull them back out in the days ahead for consideration in future Party Packs.
Last year, The Jackbox Naughty Pack was introduced. Is there any plan to bring that kind of content to The Jackbox Party Pack 11, or will that remain strictly separate?
Rich Gallup: The Jackbox Party Pack is rated T for Teen, as many packs have been before, and we also have a Family Friendly toggle to hide a small handful of prompts that people might not want their kids to see. Nothing we provide in Pack 11 is at the M-rated level of The Jackbox Naughty Pack, but where you, your friends or your family take our prompts as players is up to you! One of the magical aspects of a Jackbox game is how the players power the vibe, how your input for each game sets the tone of your party, and our goal is always to create games that support that.
Is there anything else you think people should know about The Jackbox Party Pack 11?
Rich Gallup: At Jackbox, we are sometimes asked when we know a work-in-progress game is good, and while I can’t tell you exactly when we started feeling that way about Party Pack 11, I can tell you exactly when I knew it had been blessed by the gods. Specifically, the Bread Gods.
On March 26, we had a big playtest at the Jackbox office in Chicago. I had flown in from Boston for it, and we had ordered some really, really good sandwiches for lunch. One of our game directors, Brooke Breit, took one look at that menu and zeroed in on ordering an entire loaf of sourdough bread. I mean, she got a salad too, but she knew the room would really benefit from a lot more bread. And she was right! We tore right into that sourdough, and it was delicious.
We were about halfway through it when we started our next game, and the randomly generated room code for it? LOAF. It was a sign! So thank you for your blessing, Bread Gods. We hope this hilarious and fun quintet featuring five all-new games, crafted to fit the vibe of any party, is found by our players to be as satisfying as the sound of a crackling crust, as joyous as an airy and chewy crumb, and as fulfilling as a warm bite of balanced, tangy flavour.
And just for fun, what is your favourite game in The Jackbox Party Pack 11?
Rich Gallup: I love all five games in the pack! I am tempted to avoid answering with the cliché “Don’t make me pick, it would be like picking a favourite child!” But instead, I’ll say Cookie Haus. Specifically because my son is the voice of a secret customer that will only appear in the game on rare occasions, and working with him on recording that is a core memory for both of us. Now please don’t ask me if he’s my favourite child…
The Jackbox Party Pack 11 releases on October 23, 2025, for $29.99 USD on Steam, Xbox, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation, Epic Games Store, Apple TV, iPad, the Mac App Store, Amazon Fire TV, and Amazon Luna (via the Jackbox Games channel). If you are looking to try it out early, players can try Doominate and Hear Say for free during Xbox’s Indie Demo Fest, available now until September 23.
