For so many years, Jackbox Party Packs have been one of the go-to party games. From New Year’s Eve parties to Pax events or a random Saturday night, these games are phenomenal for all to enjoy! There have been moments in recent years where the developers will spin off some of their more successful games into standalone titles. This time around, it is Trivia Murder Party 3’s time to shine! While a full release is still a bit off, as it was launched as an early access title, it is time to read the writing on the wall and see if this new entry is poised to be successful or a flop.

For those who don’t know, Trivia Murder Party 3 is a party game that is developed by Jackbox Games Inc. In it, up to eight players will go head-to-head answering trivia questions that are given by a mysterious killer who has kidnapped everyone. Once a question is answered incorrectly by at least one person, the setting transitions to a mini-game where those who answered incorrectly have a chance to be killed through a variety of different methods. Sometimes it will be from an action done by the killer, the players who answered the question correctly, the players who are already dead, or by your own hands. Once the pool of players is whittled down to just one survivor, the final mini-game is initiated! This involves the player answering a series of questions correctly in order to make their escape. Meanwhile, the dead players have a chance to also escape by answering enough questions to come back to life and also avoiding the mystery killer who slowly approaches the escape.

This is one of those games that, at first glance, is a bit hard to analyze as it relies heavily upon the quality of the company you keep. However, there was one glaring issue that seemed to hinder this game: the Jackbox website. For those who don’t know, you typically play Jackbox using the Jackbox website via a cellular device or tablet of some sort in order to play the various games. The website caused quite a bit of havoc for the sessions we played.

I personally got locked out of a game after using the various emotes seemingly too much, another friend joined the lobby despite the fact that his phone said that he was unable to load the match, and a variety of other strange things. It is hard to tell if this is a direct issue with the game or with the website. I hope that the developers will put some effort into isolating these issues and stabilizing whichever software is causing the issues.

The questions that are asked of all the players throughout Trivia Murder Party 3 are a good smorgasbord of various subjects. The questions ranged from recent US musical drama to ancient religious icons to other things that kept many of us on our toes. There were only one or two questions that a majority of us knew the answer to, which was perfect as it kept leading to more of the minigames to figure out who would be eliminated. The only downside is that this led to us getting repeat minigames, so I don’t know if that is because there aren’t that many minigames for it to rotate through or if the randomizer was just favoring certain ones.

The one that we became very familiar with was the archer range where safe players had to shoot a target that the in-danger players had to be attached to. The one randomizing feature in the game that I wish we got more often was the Plot Twists. This is a game mechanic where a unique change is added to the game. In the very first round we played, each player was given at least two jump scares that we could activate at any point. We found this to be perfect for messing with each other during certain mini-games, as there were a few times where one of us would die due to a jump scare throwing them off. Sadly, that was the only Plot Twist we were ever able to get during our initial session. I hope that these will be more frequent in the full release or that there will be a setting option where they can be enabled every round.

Overall, I find this to be a good start to the next entry in this series. Some things still need to be fleshed out, such as additional lines of dialogue for the killer, but that can be done fairly easily. It is a bit shocking that this wasn’t included in the upcoming Jackbox Party Pack 12, but it looks like Jackbox is more interested in experimenting with a whole swath of brand new titles to the party game series. My hope is that this decision doesn’t come to bite them in the wallet and that these new games are all enjoyable! If you are looking for more interesting games in early access, consider checking out Alexx’s preview of 1666: Amsterdam right here.

A PC Preview copy of Trivia Murder Party 3 was provided by Jackbox Games for this preview.