Fibbage Review: Your Next Hit Party Game

There are a few really great party games. In our household, they’re almost exclusively board games — Say Anything, Cards Against Humanity, the standards in the social board game pantheon. We have plenty of consoles, but the problem will always remain the same: your player capacity is capped at 4, someone is always left watching everyone else have fun. 

Fibbage comes from a fairly noble parentage, if you consider Cookie Masterson noble. Jackbox games, the folks behind Fibbage are also responsible for one of our other favorite party games (for the Xbox 360) You Don’t Know Jack. Equal parts trivia and irreverent humor, You Don’t Know Jack is full of quick quips and easy accessibility for a wide range of people. But that’s a different review for a different day. 

So What About Fibbage? 

Fibbage is a fairly basic premise. Each round you are presented with a prompt, a fact with a blank missing. 

Each person then fills in a bit of bullshit that is close to the truth, but not quite that. Then your lies and the truth are mixed together on screen. Everyone is supposed to guess the correct answer without being suckered in by one of the lies.  Points are awarded to whoever’s wrong answer is guessed, as well as whoever guesses the correct answer.

Higher scores are awarded for guessing correctly rather than fooling your neighbors, but those points for screwing over your friends are definitely helpful in the long run. 

The Beauty is in the Controls

The real note of genius with Fibbage is in the execution of the controllers. Instead of passing around a handful of Dualshock 4’s, Fibbage is controlled through smart phones, computers, anything with a browser. That’s another good move on the part of the developer — there’s no app to install, you simply have to go to the website and enter the room code and you’re in. Getting 8 people (because the system can support that many players) hooked up and ready to play took a few minutes. Sorting out drinks took way longer. 

This control scheme is ideal for a couple of different reasons. As twenty-somethings, we almost all have smart phones. And if we don’t, there’s an iPad and a few laptops lying around for the people without. This means no extra purchases for controllers. 

The lack of app is equally appealing. I don’t have to log into a uPlay or Steam account just to play the game, which is appealing for all kinds of players. It doesn’t feel like a “game” necessarily, but a round of trivia which is good for players who might be a bit game-shy. 

This integration also allegedly works in concert with the PS4’s Twitch functionality, but I can’t comment on that as we only used local multiplayer. 

Does Fibbage Bring the Funny? 

When you know the game is coming from the creators of You Don’t Know Jack, you expect a certain level of wacky, slightly corny humor. Fairly PG, but still kind of offbeat — and that expectation is there even more when you have Cookie Masterson on the mic. Unfortunately this is where the game fails to deliver. 

In You Don’t Know Jack there were several rounds, a wrong answer chicken that would go through once in awhile, and a just general silliness. Fibbage is a bit more serious. The questions have their own level of wacky, and Cookie will make some cracks every now and then but it feels relatively tame. The trademark style of You Don’t Know Jack is just not there. It doesn’t seem fair to compare a game to a different one, but the comparisons are basically requested when the Jack name is plastered everywhere and the announcer from the old games is in the new. 

If the thing you hated about You Don’t Know Jack was the humor, then this shouldn’t be a problem for you. 

Replayability

The game has a pretty good track record as far as replayability. For starters, in the six or seven rounds we played over the course of a week we didn’t encounter any duplicate questions. They ranged in theme from Greek Gods to modern celebrities and had a little bit of something for everyone. 

There are a few hang ups in the system when a couple of people will guess similar objects (one game we had someone fib the word debt followed by another person saying debts) and that can make the game feel a bit strange, but it’s still an incredibly interesting experience and definitely a game my household is proud to add as a party game staple.