The Jackbox world is expanding.

Jackbox Games is the maker of Party Pack video games, which includes fan favorites such as Quiplash, Drawful, and Tee KO, and manages to bridge the gap between family-friendly fun and dirty laughter with friends. Maybe you have played these hilarious and easily accessible online games with friends or relatives from far away on your Zoom phone in the past year, or you may have watched a group of friends play Jackbox videos on YouTube or Twitch.

Now Jackbox is having fun offline, launching Champ'd Up: Slam Down, a custom trading card game that allows players to use their own artwork and stupid names on high-quality printed cards. Inverse talked with Jackbox Games CTO Evan Jacover and game designer Sam Strick to get a first look at the upcoming games.

Champ'd Up: Slam Down is a derivative product of Jackbox's Party Pack 7 game Champ'd Up. Players can create and draw different characters in it to compete for titles such as "Horror Creature Champion" and "Sweet Once Champion". You start to understand them . After playing the Champ'd Up game, players will be able to order a pack of foil-wrapped cards with the champion they just drawn.

Champ'd Up: Slam Down is a fully functional trading card game inspired by its online game, designed to be easy to learn and fun to play.

"If you played Pokémon cards when you were a kid, and even collected them a little bit, you would have enough legs to stand on," Strick told Inverse. "The goal of this game is to pick it up and play."

"As far as the trading card game is concerned, it is quite simple, but it is also quite in-depth because there is a lot of strategy and fun," Jacover explained. "We want you to be able to buy a deck of cards and be able to play the game-we don't want everyone who plays the game to have to buy a deck of cards. These decks can only hold 18 cards, so we are subject to certain restrictions."

These parameters came from talking to the manufacturer to understand what restrictions Jackbox would have if it wanted to sell custom cards, and then work backwards from there.

Champ'd Up: Slam Down is a two-player game with 18 cards consisting of 3 trainers and 15 champions. Each player chooses a trainer to represent himself and recruits champions to enter the arena to fight. If one player runs out of active heroes, another player can directly attack the trainer. To win the game, a player must attack another coach 3 times.

Jackbox has successfully provided players with a way to extend their gaming experience beyond the screen, allowing users to purchase the T-shirts they designed in the Tee KO game

"At Jackbox Games, anyone can promote the game," Jacover said. One of the team's goals is to find ways to expand the unforgettable experience created in its games. The idea of ​​Champ'd Up: Slam Down evolved from something similar to a baseball card into a complete game. Once the limits were determined, Stricker was invited to make suggestions because he had previous experience in making collectible card games that only required one card.

"The pendulum swings a lot because of how complicated it will become." Strick said: "We want a card game that makes you feel like you are playing a real trading card game instead of having to learn. The mental burden brought by Magic is really complicated. There are more than 16,000 cards."

Jackbox collaborated with The Game Crafter, a custom game store in Madison, Wisconsin, to launch the "Champ'd Up: Slam Down" print-on-demand game. Once the player orders a pack, the Jackbox server will select the 15 champions who have performed the best in their competition, and generate a balanced deck programmatically based on strength, cost, and abilities. Each ability has a certain rarity, which determines the possibility of it being included in the deck.

According to Strick, Jackbox can currently print up to 2,500 unique cards, and there is room for further expansion.

Balance comes from ensuring that the strengths in the deck are evenly mixed and that the abilities have a chance to be combined. For example, an ability can recruit a hero from your hand, which will trigger an effect on another card to promote one of your heroes, giving you the extra power you need to defeat a powerful hero. The game is balanced, with just the right combination.

"If there are too many of these people, the game will be messy and difficult to keep up," Stricker said. "If it's too little, it's almost like uncarbonated soda."

The most important principle of Strick’s design of Champ'd Up: Slam Down is simple: "No bummers". This means that the cards should be easy to understand and fun to play.

"If there is a concept that people didn't get, I wouldn't try to teach them another way; I deleted it," he explained.

Although its design pays great attention to rules, Champ'd Up: Slam Down is still a game where ordinary players design characters on their mobile phones: "The cards you play are stupid. The art is also terrible," Stricker said. This is part of the fun.

Jacover says that for people who don’t really play card games, it’s still a way to turn fleeting internal jokes into something less fleeting: “Sometimes, try these strange ideas and see what happens. is worth it."

The Champ'd Up game on Jackbox Party Pack 7.

No, but it helps. Players who want to purchase a custom pack will need to visit Jackbox Party Pack 7, whether that means they own it or play it through a friend's copy or live broadcast. Players cannot choose their own cards, nor can they mix and match from different games, unless they order multiple packs.

Jackbox plans to provide pre-planned card "family decks" for those who do not own the game or do not want to draw their own cards.

Champ'd Up: Slam Down custom bags will be available at the end of May or early June, and the price of a single bag is less than $15, including shipping. Jackbox plans to announce giveaways through free packaging. Encourage champion players who want to ensure that past champions are available for purchase to save the link at the end of the game.

Champ'd Up: Slam Down was initially only available in the United States, and plans to expand to other countries in the future.