Quiplash

A judging game created by Jackbox Games

Target Audience

This game is targeted at teenagers and college students. The game does have a “family friendly” setting but the prompts are targeted towards a more adult kind of humour. I would put it in the same category as Cards Against Humanity: a game that young adults can play during a casual hang out,  and might get even more fun in a party setting.

Formal Elements

• Player Count: 3-8 players
  • One interesting twist is that there can be an audience of up to 10000 people, who can also engage in judging but cannot submit their own answers.
• Length of Game: ~15 mins
• Rules and Procedures:
  • The game has 3 rounds: In the first two rounds, each player is given two prompts to write an answer for. In the final round all players reply to the same prompt.
    • During the first two rounds, each prompt has 2 answers and the audience members who did not supply the answers get to vote on which one was funnier. The players get points divided by how many people vote for their answer.
    • In the final round, each player has 3 votes (they can distribute across multiple answers or double up on an answer, etc. )
    • The player with the most points at the end wins.
• Player relationship: multilateral competition. This is interesting because each player might be pitted against multiple other players in the same round. You also have to know who you’re appealing to and what the group’s sense of humor is.
• Resources: there are no additional resources, as this is a video game, the interface is really just your shared TV screen/monitor and your personal device on which you write your responses.

Kind of Fun

This game is social fun and also challenge. The game plays heavily on the social relationships between the players and the strategy of getting in the headspace of your fellow players who will be voting on your answers. The fact that voting is not anonymous also creates so many special moments of “come on!! how could you!!”.  You could also say that there is challenge, in that there is a strategy to winning (instead of voting for someone who has a ton of points, vote for the less funny one with fewer points). But I have found that most people don’t play it that way.

Why does it work

The game is compelling and it works because it plays on existing dynamics in friend groups,  while providing a nice framework of fun prompts. The prompts feel random, but they aren’t weird enough that you have to have a specific set of knowledge or sense of humor to participate.

Improvements

I think the game would be even more fun if there were ways to write your own prompts ( I could not find this function, but it might exist already).

Differentiators

Unlike Apples to Apples or Cards Against Humanity, Quiplash haas multiple judges for each round. In addition, you get to play an answer every round, and never have to sit out to be the judge. This is interesting because with other games there can be a bit more strategy (e.g. I know Polly is judging this round and she thinks ____ is funny) whereas with Quiplash you’re really just playing to the collective humor of the group because you don’t know who will be judging you. I think this is a better model.

Vulnerability

This game doesn’t require you to get vulnerable, it is mostly just surface-level humor.