Family Feud meets the internet in the newest Jackbox Games release. The developer of ridiculous party games announced The Jackbox Survey Scramble, a spinoff of just survey games coming this October.
The standalone title will have four game modes. All are about guessing survey answers, although it’s not always about figuring out which is the most popular. The Hilo mode lets you figure out the least and most popular answers, while speed mode is, as you can imagine, about guessing as fast as possible. You can rank answers in Squares mode, and, finally, get more competitive in the team-based Bounce mode, which has less to do with finding the best answers than finding the correct answers to block your enemies. Jackbox says in a press release that more modes will be added by the end of 2024 for free. There is also a family-friendly option in the settings to make it a little less… Jackbox for kids.
You can check it out ahead of release with a free demo available during Steam Next Fest, which starts on October 14. Survey Scramble will launch in the weeks after this demo event ends on PC via Steam, Nintendo Switch, Xbox, and PlayStation. It’s also available to wishlist on Steam.
Survey Scramble compiles its answers by constantly updating with survey answers from other players, so no play sessions will be similar.
This is just the latest game from Jackbox Games, which skipped a standard Party Pack launch this year. It decided instead to release Jackbox Naughty Pack on September 12, which featured M-rated versions of three Jackbox titles. It also delivered The Jackbox Megapicker, a free Steam launcher that corrals all your owned Party Packs into one place, making party nights where you have to choose a game much smoother.
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Gaming laptops and I have a complicated relationship. One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it. I was a broke college kid, and that was the best I could afford. So trying out high-end gaming laptops is always fun. But ASUS' ROG Zephyrus G14 is a lot more than a laptop that can run AAA games. It is portable, so you're not lugging around a 2.5kg machine everywhere you go. It is built well, none of that plastic chassis, and can even function as a normal laptop outside of just gaming.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.