Recently, Jackbox Games released The Jackbox Survey Scramble. This is a new collection of survey-based games that you can purchase for $9.99 now for Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation, and Xbox.
The Jackbox team was kind enough to provide me with a digital PC copy for the purposes of this review, but all thoughts below are my own. If you want to play, you can purchase it from your preferred storefront including Humble (affiliate link).
Discover how people across the country think! The Jackbox Survey Scramble is a collection of hilarious survey-based games, using real one-word answers from real people. Really!
At first glance, Survey Scramble sounds like a Family Feud-type game, but there’s more to it. First, it’s not just a single game. There are currently four unique games and two more are “coming soon.” Plus, the game does say that it collects information from answers provided to influence the answers in the future which is maybe good but also maybe questionable? Discuss in the comments.
The first game to talk about is Hilo. In this game mode (and all the others) all the players vote for the topic from a list of three. Then, for a few rounds everyone guesses (with one-word responses) the answers to the survey that ranked the highest.
Eventually it will switch and you’ll try guessing the least popular answers. After a few rounds of that, it might go back to looking for more popular answers or it will call it and name the winner. Much like Family Feud, some of the answers will shock and horrify you.
However, unlike Family Feud, there are sometimes hundreds of responses on the list giving you a large window of potential. You’ll want to be careful too because if multiple players guess the same answer, then the points get split among you. Hilo was probably my favorite of the four current games, but it was close.
Next we have Speed. In Speed, everyone is just guessing as many answers as fast as they can to rack up points. Over time you’ll get multipliers to get even more points.
This one truly feels like madness, but in that fun sense. During the brief breaks where the game introduces a multiplier, you can even see the percentage of answers everyone has guessed. Also, at the end, it shows you all of the correct answers on the list and who guessed each one. This one is also fun.
Third we have Squares which was probably my second favorite of the bunch. This is a team game where your team is guessing answers while also playing tic-tac-toe. There are nine squares with different ranges of answers needed to score that square.
For instance, the top two answers for the survey are the first square, answers three through 6 are the second square, etc. Each person on the team gets their own turn, but the other team members can type in suggestions (so the other team doesn’t overhear) for that player to use on their turn. If you guess the top answer of a square, you lock it and it cannot be stolen.
If you guess an answer higher than what is already guessed, you steal the square. If you guess an answer not in a square or below the square’s current value, then you do get to try again. Once you get the hang of it, it’s a lot of fun.
Finally, we have Bounce. My group and I did not like this game. It’s like a competitive version of Brick Break where after the ball bounces off the paddle, control changes to the other team and the paddle moves based on how popular your guess is in the survey.
The top answers are on the left and the bottom answers on the right. It’s a weird thing because you have to be fast, but it’s also slow, and it just doesn’t feel good to play in our opinions. I don’t think any of us liked it very much.
Survey Scramble also has two great features from the get go. When you first boot up the game, I would highly recommend selecting Tour. This will take you through one game of each of the four included games. This is a quick way to get to play all of them once and see what you like and don’t like.
The other is Pick For Me which just selects one of the games at random. My only complaint here is that I wish I could say to exclude certain games to meet the group’s likes and dislikes better (for instance my group would remove Bounce as an option).
Looking forward to the future, the new game modes are Dash and Dares and they both sound like they have potential. I’m definitely interested in checking them out soon as a free update.
Dash
The race is on! You’re competing against your fellow players: find the most popular answer in a group of options taken from one of our enormous lists to move ahead. Double down on your choice for more progress (or more punishment), send extra choices to your opponent’s list to slow them down, and tune into public opinion to outpace everyone on your way to the finish line.
Dares
Decide the stakes for fellow players! You control whether a fellow player must guess something higher or lower on the list than what’s just been revealed. Throw them a nearly impossible challenge… but don’t be shocked when they nail it and rake in the points. After you’ve completed a dare, turn around, share the love and dare another player.
Honestly, I really like Survey Scramble. It feels small because all of the games are survey-based, but I think they’ve found some great ways of making each one unique. I would definitely recommend this to anyone who likes Jackbox and Family Feud.
