Jackbox Games is adding to its large portfolio of party games with Survey Scramble, a series of games where you do your best to find the answers to popular survey questions. These games approach the survey format by guessing several variations of popular answers. Do you guess the most popular answer or the least? Are your guesses better than the others?
It’s a fun format and Checkpoint Gaming had the chance to not only try out the game, but also interview Allard Laban, Chief Creative Officer at Jackbox Games to learn more about Survey Scramble.
Survey Scramble is an extension of Guesspionage, expanding the guessing to survey answers. Guesspionage is a party game where you guess the accuracy of a statement from 0-100%. In Laban’s words:
“People loved Guesspionage and asked if we could expand on it. They would ask if we could add more variety to the guessing. We thought about what we could do to add more variation into Guesspionage. We experimented with several ideas and eventually Survey Scramble was born.”
Gameplay is largely similar to Family Feud where you guess the most common responses to a question. Thanks to the wide array of answers, there are several chances for players to guess the right answer. It’s not always easy to figure out what the most popular answer is and you must figure out the least popular ones too. This leads to lots of unexpected fun because you never know where your answer ranks. You can’t send invalid answers but that can change over time.
One of the best parts of Survey Scramble is that while some answers may not be accepted at first, future sessions may include them. Survey answers are always coming in and the Jackbox team takes a look at new submissions. Unrelated, obscene, or offensive answers are thrown out but there may be new answers depending on social trends. Those answers are included and may become popular options in the survey. This allows Survey Scramble to evolve and accommodate players who know more recent answers to survey questions.
One big question was how Jackbox Games would accommodate answers from different regions, considering the cultural differences between different parts of the world.
“We have teams around the world looking at the survey answers that are popular in different countries,” Laban said. “This will show up in the game’s rankings when our team sorts through the answers. That way, the game is as accurate as possible when it comes to the most popular answer.”
This helps keep any cultural significance for some answers while ensuring that answers aren’t dominated by any world region. Similarities will exist but you may also have answers that won’t appear in other regions.
Most responses for the survey questions will stay with one-word answers for simplicity. There are cases where some words are combined to create a single word, such as “ice cream” or “X Ray”. Survey Scramble is also intelligent enough to bundle words together in similar groups in case you can’t think of the exact word. For example, “rich” and “wealthy” are classified as just “wealthy” but you still get points for answering “rich”.
Having one-word answers also ensures that you can’t be overly complex with your responses. It also prevents answers from being misinterpreted or someone trying to game a survey response. New words are always curated with time and sometimes another two-word response is combined into one word. But by keeping responses to one word, it helps Survey Scramble remain accessible and easy to play.
Jackbox Survey Scramble is coming out on October 24 this year, with a demo on Steam if you would like to try it in advance.
About the Author
Victor Tan
He/Him
Victor spends his time trying to help players out of tricky situations and give them the guidance they need to succeed. Outside of the video game world, you can find him training at the gym or doing simple improv activities.
