What to play when one person owns Jackbox and nobody wants to set it up

The problem is never the games

Jackbox invented a genuinely good shape: one screen everybody looks at, one phone each, and prompts that turn a group of friends into the content. When it works it is the best thing at the party.

What goes wrong is always the same five minutes. One person owns it, so it has to run on their laptop. Their laptop has to reach the television. Somebody has to share a screen, and on a video call that means sharing audio too, which nobody remembers how to do. By the time the room code appears, two people have drifted into the kitchen.

The games below are the same shape without that five minutes: everyone opens a link on their own phone, types a six-letter code, and you are playing. Nobody buys anything and nobody installs anything.

For the "everyone writes something funny" round

Fill the Blank is the closest thing to the format most people mean when they say Jackbox. A prompt with a hole in it, everyone fills it, everyone votes, the best line wins. It is the one to open with because it needs no explaining at all — the first prompt explains it.

Fake Answer is the sharper version. You get a real question with an obscure real answer, you invent a convincing fake, and then everyone has to pick the truth out of the pile of lies. The good round is the one where somebody's invention gets more votes than the actual answer.

Dictionary of Lies does the same trick with words instead of trivia. You are handed something like *quidnunc* and have to write a definition that sounds like it came out of a dictionary. People who are good at this are unbearable about it.

For the round where you are trying to agree, not compete

Think Alike is the one that surprises groups. Everyone answers the same prompt and the most common answer scores — so the whole skill is being obvious, which is the opposite of every other game in this list. It levels a table in a way the writing games do not, because the person who is quickest with a joke has no advantage at all.

It is also the best of these on a video call. There is no performance, no turn order and no waiting: everyone types at once and the results land together.

If you do want a screen involved

You do not have to give the screen up. Any of these can be put on a television from the host's controls — it shows the prompt and the room code large, while everyone still answers on their own phone. The difference from a screen share is that nothing is being mirrored: the television is just another viewer, so it cannot lag behind or show your notifications.

That also fixes the latecomer problem. The room code stays on screen the whole time, so the person who arrives forty minutes in can join without interrupting anybody.

A running order that works

Open with Fill the Blank while people are still arriving — it tolerates a changing player count better than anything else here. Move to Fake Answer once the group is settled and warmed up, because it needs everyone paying attention to be any good.

Save Think Alike for the point in the evening where the writing games have started to feel like work. It asks for less and gets more laughs per minute at that stage, and it is a good note to end on.