A Movie Talking Competition | RiffTrax: The Game Review
Off-Branded Jackbox Makes for a Great Party Game.
Off-Branded Jackbox Makes for a Great Party Game.
If you love party games like Jackbox, I consider this a must play! It’s such a simple game loop, and it’s executed perfectly. This is definitely going in my party game rotation; I consider you do the same! NameBrand
I’ve had a lot of fun playing Rifftrax: The Game! When I saw this pop into my Steam Discovery Queue, of all places, and read its premise, I thought it could be good to start branching into other phone based party games. After all, I’m no stranger to the Jackbox formula; I own almost every title in that series, and love the yearly tradition of cracking them open to play with people around October when they release a new one. I’m delighted to say that I think Rifftrax is a GREAT addition to my lineup!
The concept is unlike any game I’ve ever played before, but the process will sound familiar to many of you ‘movie talkers’ out there. In Rifftrax, you and your friends add your own ‘riff’ or joke to a b-movie scene, at a predetermined time. You could make a funny comment about what’s on-screen, or impersonate the actor/actress in what they might say next. Or you could forgo language entirely, and string together a bunch of sound effects. Whatever you think will win your group over to vote for your ‘riff’, is what you should do, as votes give you points, which add together at the end, and determine the winner after a few rounds.
While playing, I found the ‘riff’ system (accessed via a mobile website) to be complex, and it allows for a lot of creativity! At first, I wasn’t happy with the fact that riffs are always read by the computer through text to speech, but then I learned you can change the pitch, and you can “give it an accent” by changing what language the game reads the text in. Additionally, at any point in your riff, you can add sound effects from a long list. These combined open up so many combinations! It’s fun to mess with and come up with creative riffs in the attempt to make your group laugh.
The game rules are also very flexible and can be tailored to fit your mood or the needs of the group. When I was playing with some older folks, I gave them more time to type out their responses, changed from the default. You can also set how many rounds there are, if a bot joins the round as friendly competition, how smart said bot is during a round, etc. Coming from Jackbox, seeing so many options available to be tinkered with was a nice breath of fresh air.
My only critique is that I have been spoiled on the variety from Jackbox, which makes the singular game mode get a bit stale, doing the same thing for every round. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a good enough game formula that it’s perfectly fine to be this way, and very fun to play. But, I think about something like ‘Quiplash’ from Jackbox, and how in that game, the final round is a bit unique, and has a twist. I would have liked to see some flair each round… maybe you’re restricted to choosing a few words from a word pool, or, you’d have to use a specific sound effect. Something in that direction could really spice up the game and stretch your brain’s creativity. It’s a small change, but “guided” rounds like that would go a long way when it comes to replayability.
Brief aside: it works almost flawlessly on SteamDeck! When playing, I had a couple of weird playback issues where some clips wouldn’t play correctly, (they were skewed diagonally and had green lines). But even then, it was only a few clips, and only the clips. The game progressed normally through the rounds otherwise.
All in all, I really like Rifftrax: The Game, and I’m excited to play it with more groups of people, as I throw it in my rotation of party games. Lots of laughs have already been had, and I’m looking forward to showing more people something a little bit different in search of more good laughs. If that sounds good to you, I recommend your group gives it a try the next time you have a party game night.
Originally published at https://backloggd.com.