Got first place a few times, and now I think I'm done. Random matchmaking works well on a technical level, but your game will only be as good as your group. Sometimes you'll get 5 or 6 genuinely funny people who score each other highly. Sometimes you're stuck with 7 curmudgeons who give basic Jacksfilms reference-based answers for every prompt and downvote everything.

In a standard game, you'll get three rounds. I played about 15 games and saw most prompts repeated 3-4 times. If the idea is to cycle new prompts in every week or something, then this is probably fine. But if this is the whole list? Things are getting stale fast.

The scoring system is a bit nebulous. You can laugh, smile, grimace, or rage at someone's response. But every time you push the button, it sends a wave of emojis at the other player, and the scoring amounts vary WILDY. Sometimes someone will score 1,600, sometimes -1,000. Most tend to be between 500 and -500, but what makes the scoring so volatile? Does repeatedly pressing your reaction button skew the score more? Does it make a difference if you press it immediately as opposed to waiting until the end of the timer? How many points are the purchasable Golden Roses or Tomatoes worth? If one person just mashes the angry emoji on every other player's submissions, does that completely throw the match? I have no idea!

It's a cute, free-to-play Jackbox type app, worth a shot if you've got time to kill, but would probably be best played with friends instead of randos.

Uma adaptação da aclamada série de vídeos do youtuber Jacksfilms:

YIAY (Yesterday I Asked You)

Tendo já iterações na forma de um jogo de tabuleiro e de um game show ao vivo, agora é a vez de um jogo digital para PC e celulares, intitulado de Be Funny Now! numa vibe meio Jackbox Party Pack.

· · · · · · · · · ·

Nos vídeos da série YIAY, Jack analisa as respostas dos seus espectadores à pergunta que ele fez no final do vídeo anterior, daí que surge o nome da série.

Be Funny Now! funciona um pouco diferente. Ao começo de cada rodada de uma partida, são dadas aos jogadores três opções de prompts, como:

· No novo GTA 6, jogadores finalmente poderão...
· Complete o poema: Rosas são vermelhas, violetas são legais...
· Desenhe o encanador mais amado do mundo.

Dependendo dos jogadores que estão na sala, as respostas na maioria das vezes serão minimamente divertidas. A feature de poder jogar Public Games é interessante e deve brilhar nos primeiros dias. Mas acredito que a melhor forma de jogar esse jogo será junto com os amigos.

As mecânicas do jogo são um pouco confusas, principalmente quando se trata da forma que é distribuída a pontuação dos jogadores, que é medida por reações de carinhas e itens especiais que são jogados ao palco como rosas de ouro e tomates. Não sendo especificado o valor de cada um desses elementos. A mecânica de votação também pode incentivar partidas onde falta o fair play, alguns podem votar negativamente em respostas de outros jogadores, com o objetivo de diminuir seus pontos ganhos.

O jogo tem seu charme com um visual fofo e avatares personalizáveis. A trilha sonora é formada por versões instrumentais de algumas músicas compostas por Jack ao longos dos anos para o seu canal no YouTube.

É uma pena que o jogo às vezes pode ser muito dependente do conhecimento em Inglês do jogador, o que pode afastar algumas pessoas.

Be Funny Now! funciona mais ou menos como uma carta de amor do Jack aos seus fãs e uma tentativa super honesta de atingir um público maior que vai além da sua comunidade. É um jogo que diverte, cativa e que vai te fazer juntar os amigos para dar umas risadas.

I didn't play before the new update that "fixes the game", but it still kinda sucks.

The entire format is repetitive, you have to view the same jokes over and over in the voting process, and with these types of games the initial shock value/impact is usually what makes these kinds of jokes funny, so having to see them again kind of kills that. This format also reveals the loser of each vote first, which is kind of demoralising, when you make an unfunny joke you'd rather just move on, but instead you and only you are pointed out to the voters.

The cosmetic system is also bunk, you start with next to no clothes, and when creating a character its set to random cosmetics, but 99% of the cosmetics are hijabs which cover your entire head so you can't see what hair you have until you go and turn that off, just give me an option for a blank slate to start customising. The store has a teeny tiny amount of things to buy at a time, which is just stupid, I'm not going to be checking the store of this game to see the items change, just let me buy what I wanna buy.

The matchmaking is OK, but there's no way to add people you've met in a lobby or even so much as speak to any of them at any point, which is a bit of a downer for such a social-based game.

The music is also insanely annoying and repetitive, and there were some visual oddities, the game clearly isn't made for a widescreen/1080p+ display.

It's one thing to not be funny in a room full of people who know you. But if you ask me, it feels a whole lot like public shaming when you fail to amuse a group of people you've never met before, which can kill any and all enjoyment you get out of an experience.

Lingering insecurities aside, I don't think Be Funny Now! is an experiment that's working. Jack Douglas and his team have attempted to bring Jackbox to the masses. There's one problem with this approach: Jackbox in a room full of people you can't talk with doesn't work. But if you try to remedy that issue by maybe adding voice chat, you run into another beast entirely: Jackbox in a room full of strangers is a terrible, bad, god-awful fucking idea. Can you imagine the sheer amount of shit-talking and bad-mouthing that would go on? You'd be playing a round casually, and someone would call you the n-word in a string of slurs.

So between bouts of public shaming that can trigger an intense feeling of inadequacy in the wrong person and vitriolic abuse, the very conception of Be Funny Now was never going to be more than a toss and a miss. But here's the thing: a game like Be Funny Now can work because Skribbl.io exists. I know it's silly to compare the two games because Be Funny Now has loads of evident production value put into it, but the difference is the point. Skribbl.io is a comfort game: you can put it on, do a terrible job at guessing what all of the words are, and still have a ton of fun. Even when I leave that game feeling befuddled, I've had a good time. It's a social game where you can be judged, but that judgment is easy to ignore. Other people are technically a part of the game; it wouldn't be as much fun without them. But inherently, it's a game about you.

In Jackbox, you don't matter. You are one player in a room full of six or seven, and that's the appeal. Even if your jokes don't land, someone else's will, and that inspires you to keep iterating. Nobody wants to look you in the eye and tell you that you're unfunny and annoying, and if they do, they're the exception. In a room where you know everyone, trying and failing is not a fool's game; it's the establishment. The problem with commodifying this experience into a game with public lobbies is that the establishment shifts somewhat. All online games with strangers, whether you'd like to believe it or not, are intrinsically selfish ventures. When someone throws their controller across the room or smashes their desk, it's because both are extensions of themselves. Your controller does all the work for you; likewise, your desk is where your mouse lives. When you lose at a game, the parts of you that helped you lose are just as problematic. The tools of the trade have failed you.

Votes become bullets. The blaring sound of taunts and emotes are your only forms of expression. The battleground is a game of wits, a hand that few can play well and fewer can make careers out of. But empathy isn't a present option. There's nothing you can do to tell someone that you liked their effort, even if it did nothing for you. And even if there was, the push towards doing what satisfies you means that the incentive to be understanding has to be a personal one.

The best part of Be Funny Now is when the game tasks you with drawing something. Draw Mario, or draw the saddest thing you can think of. And for a brief moment, the game gets as close as possible to its inspirations. Even if someone draws a photorealistic Mario, another person might draw one that makes you reminisce on how cute your childhood was, and the person after them might make you laugh. The only wrong way to draw something is to hide in your shell and draw nothing at all. But then the game still gives you the opportunity to throw tomatoes at people and shower others in roses, and what was initially cute becomes perpetually isolating. In Skribbl, a bad drawing of Mario is still Mario. It's not better or worse than anybody else's. And yet the game isn't a hugbox: it is what it is, and value is not part of that equation.

Be Funny Now started out strong, with over 500 people playing it when it first launched on Steam. That number has shrunk to double digits, and the game's only been out for three months. You could argue that that number doesn't account for players on mobile devices, but when the queue times are as long as they currently are, it's not hard to guess how well this is doing on those platforms. Jack Douglass put up a billboard for this game as a bit of advertising in the weeks leading up to release. He put down a hefty chunk of money for it to be in a spot he knew would catch the attention of many. But like Frances McDormand fighting with a sheriff, we only know what it was supposed to say because he made an effort to preserve it as it was meant to be seen. The most important part of the ad, the part that led you to the game's website, was all but impossible to spot unless you were standing under the ad. I must say, that's the most accurate piece of advertising I've ever seen for a game.