Review: Can Netflix’s new TV party games compete with Jackbox?

With titles including Pictionary and Boggle Party available now, the streamer is making a move into social, living-room gaming – but are they any good?

Pictionary, released as a board game in 1985, is now a party game on your TV screen. Photo: Netflix

The goal is clear: if you’re on your couch, Netflix wants to be involved. And while the streamer still dominates subscription home viewership across television and film globally, it left gaming to its mobile app. Until now.

After years of development, Netflix has launched a suite of games that run directly on a television with players using their mobile phones as controllers. The streaming platform has tried to make the experience as social as possible, and its first wave of games includes party-focused titles such as Lego Party!, Tetris Time Warp and the upcoming Dead Man’s Party: A Knives Out Game.

To date, this kind of local social gaming has been dominated by the Jackbox Party Pack – launched in 2014 – which offers similar mechanics and mini games across a growing number of volumes. But because you have to pay for Jackbox, and because its phone-based controls can sometimes be fiddly and unreliable, there’s space for Netflix to move in with games that are free for its subscribers.

At the Netflix Game Studio in Helsinki, Finland, I got a first look at several of the titles and met the designers behind them. With five players connected from different countries, I tried three of the first wave of games that are available now – Boggle Party, Pictionary: Game Night and Party Crashers – to see how the system works in practice and whether these feel ready for a living-room setting.

Boggle Party

Boggle, a word game that hit shelves in 1972, is one of the first social TV games released by the streamer. Photo: Netflix

Like the original board game, the goal is to find as many words as possible in a shifting grid before the timer ends. Boggle Party keeps close to the look and feel of its classic versions. The grid on the phone is clear and easy to swipe through, with letters large enough to avoid mistakes. The TV shows the live board as the round unfolds, which helped keep the group I was playing with in sync.

As you play, you can unlock Netflix-themed avatars – including characters from Squid Game and the Demogorgon from Stranger Things – which adds a touch of personality. Word recognition works well, and adjustable difficulty made it easy for newcomers to keep up. It’s a fun, steady game, though more individual than the others, with most of the action happening on the phone.

Pictionary: Game Night

The Netflix version mirrors the familiar Pictionary set-up: one person draws, the rest try to guess the word before the timer expires. Pictionary: Game Night is the liveliest of the three titles I tried. The drawing tool on the phone is quick and responsive, with several colours available – useful when I needed to draw a pair of red speedos at high speed.

Rounds move quickly, and guessing feels fast and intuitive. Prompts vary in difficulty, and choosing harder ones earns more points, which gives the game a bit of strategy without slowing it down. There were no technical issues when I played, and the whole experience felt polished rather than experimental. Even engaging with strangers, it worked as an icebreaker and had everyone laughing the most.

Party Crashers

Party Crashers is one of the only original games in the suite, though it mirrors familiar social deduction game mechanics. Photo: Netflix

Party Crashers is a social-deduction game in the style of Jackbox (and many other home games that have similar mechanics), though not as wild in its presentation. The characters have human faces – including a hijab-wearing avatar – attached to cartoonish bodies that bounce and react. It’s a quirky look, but not distracting.

The secret-word mechanic is clear, and the interface made each turn easy to follow. It’s the type of game that becomes better after a few plays, once you learn how to bluff and read the group. Among strangers it stayed a little stiff, but with friends it’s easy to imagine the pace picking up. Technically it ran as smoothly as the rest, with no lag or dropped inputs.

Verdict

All three games are easy to try. Scanning a QR code opens the controller app, and entering a name is enough to start. The presentation across the board is clean, bright and functional, and the TV-phone pairing worked consistently.

Based on these early tests, Netflix’s new party games system feels solid. Pictionary stands out as the most instantly fun, while Boggle Party and Party Crashers offer familiar formats with a Netflix twist. None of the games feel unfinished, and all three are simple enough to work for a casual living-room group. The bigger test will come once more titles arrive but, for now, Netflix may have built the first real Jackbox rival in years.