Quiplash: one of myriad digital experiences in Jackbox Games’ arsenal of quirky, bite-sized party games. Due to the open-ended nature of the game, Quiplash is a great fit for any small-to-medium sized group of friends looking to have 30-60 minutes of fun, although a group of strangers may find enjoyment in quipping together as well. Due to the fact that players must garner a simple majority of votes to win a round, Quiplash encourages its players to cast a wide net in catering to one’s entire audience, whilst simultaneously encouraging players to think outside of the box in an effort to differentiate themselves from the competition.
The formal element of multilateral competition is the core component of Quiplash, which is quite interesting in comparison to most other multilateral games – usually, you don’t have to cater to your competitors! In Quiplash, one has the best odds of winning a round by cracking wise in a way that is as broadly appealing as possible, without sacrificing ingenuity (what’s expected is also what’s not funny). By providing its players free-response opportunities to a suite of eclectic prompts, players can leverage their ingenuity in a way that directly appeals to their audience, allowing for very esoteric responses to potentially perform quite well. Further, due to the wide variety of prompts, players have plenty of room to make up for previous losses caused by not knowing how to respond well to a prior prompt. There’s also a brilliant catch-up mechanic in round 3, wherein the best-performing player can win significantly more points than what was possible in the previous rounds!
In the version of Quiplash that I played, for the first two rounds the competition at any one time is limited to 1v1 showdowns, with every player not submitting a response voting on their favorite. Because players do not know who submitted a given response, it prevents players from gaming the system (unless the response was clearly written by a specific player) and stopping the player in the lead from getting more points, even if their response is the funniest. Due to the fact that one can see who picked what prompt at the end of every round, players can fine-tune their responses in an effort to cater to the players with whom their humor isn’t resonating. One is further encouraged to be as broadly appealing as possible due to the fact that if one receives all of the votes in a given round, they earn a “Quiplash” which comes with extra points. This results in a thoroughly interesting dichotomy between being esoteric (as that’s quite often the funniest route) and being broadly appealing!
In the many times that I’ve played Quiplash with a large group of friends, I’ve found that the easiest route to positive judgment comes from very specific references that catch one off-guard. For example, playing with a group of my high school friends, one will often see that referring to wacky characters from our high school, or to specific teachers will garner the strongest laughs and the most points. This facet of Quiplash differentiates it significantly from other judgment games, such as Cards Against Humanity, in the sense that one is encouraged to be esoteric in a way that the audience will understand; whereas in CAH the potential for esoteric responses is essentially nil given that players cannot draft their own responses. This is a huge strength on Quiplash’s part, as the allocation of space for esoterism allows for some truly unexpected responses to prompts, and with that the potential for some seriously hearty laughs. I would like to offer a piece of criticism, however – some of the prompts are straight-up garbage. For example: “A good sign that you’re bad at playing League of Legends” is far too esoteric to make for a good prompt, unless your friends all happen to be Leaguers. Quiplash would find more success with prompts that are both broadly applicable and conducive to esoteric responses, rather than having prompts that are esoteric in and of themselves. One could also address this issue by allowing players to draft a few prompts of their own at the beginning of the game, and then shuffle them into the provided prompts to add more of a “wild card” feel to the game.
