A word association game and a personality quiz walk into a bar. MegaPals is what happens next.
The original concept for Jackbox Party Pack 12 pitched by Liz Anderson and Chase McClure drew from the classic game of Mind Meld – you get a word, then try to land on the same response as another player. In this game, making matches awards you points, but it’s voting on hot takes from the unmatched words that leads to your next starter, and see how far you take it. It’s an exciting riff on the Jackbox origin story: the blending of improv comedy with technical artistry. We wanted to reward group-think and individual creativity equally.
MegaPals poses the question: who are the closest friends in this group? Who thinks the most alike? The two players who make the most unique matches with each other across the game become the MegaPals, or the ultimate duo who steals the crown. Yes, there are two winners! A first for us that felt very fitting to a party game environment.
The winners are not always who you think and frequently change throughout the game. The game provides many ways to collect match points (matching with others, having answers selected to riff on, etc.) so the best strategy is to just be yourself. Write what you think is fun and likely to get someone else in the room to laugh along. We’ll show you highlights of what’s on everyone’s mind as you play.
Not interested in sharing your victory? We have bonus awards for individual performance at the end too!
Thanks to our controller engineer, Ryan McGill, your phone screen provides a lot of real-time information on what others are submitting as you enter your own words. This lets you stay in a stream-of-consciousness mode while you’re writing all the while clueing you into different players’ wavelengths that can score you the big points.
Courtesy of more great teamwork between engineering lead Ariana Miles and art lead Owen Watson, our dynamic “likes” screen is another game moment for players to chatter around ideas rising to the top as the group votes on favorite words.
The minimap between rounds is the players’ relationship chart, or the map of who you’re closest to at this point in time. In an eight-player game, there are 28 possible winning pairs. That’s a lot to show. A map surfaces group information in a way you couldn’t get from a conventional list or scoreboard. It pairs each player with their highest scoring friend, and gives a quick dramatic replay of the words that made or broke friendships.
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2026/10/02/the-science-behind-best-friendship-in-the-jackbox-party-pack-12/
