October 11, 2022 | Michelle Leatherby

Behind The Scenes of Roomerang: Dev Diary #4

The Jackbox Party Pack 9 is coming to major platforms on October 20! With the release date looming, we gathered some final thoughts on the game development process from Roomerang team members, Brooke Breit and Alex Weick.

We’re getting ready for Party Pack 9 to be released into the wild! What is the Roomerang team working on in these final stages?

In these final days, it is mostly about bug fixes and polish! We are so grateful to our fantastic QA and engineering team who work up until the end of things, making sure it’s all functioning the way we want it to be functioning! (Brooke Breit - Director)

Our teams are also working on localization for the Party Pack, with support for French, Italian, German, and Spanish coming at a later date. I’m really excited that with this update, even more people will be able to play Roomerang! (Alex Weick - Designer and Producer)

Looking back at the process of making this game (from conception to where you are now), what are some of your favorite moments?

Some real highlights for me have been playing the game with our team on a regular basis. Recently, my 9 year old jumped into a playtest with the team. He immediately grasped the drama aspect and went all in on trying to get rid of Brian (our Audio Lead) every chance he got. I was in tears laughing because I love how much fun it is to get lost in the dramatic dynamics of the game. I’ve always said that this is a game based on “fabricated nonsense” and that’s why I love it.

Additionally, getting the voice of our fantastic host (Dezi Bing) into the game elevated the whole darn thing. She just nails the tone, and the game wouldn’t be the same without her. Also, recording sessions were a blast.

Another favorite moment in development was realizing how much fun the elimination can be, specifically the goodbye speech and the entrance of the new player. We typically try to keep things moving in our games, but we realized that moment in particular was always hitting so well that we could live there for as long as the players wanted to. And the live typing during the goodbye speech was magic the moment it entered into the game. Little things like that add so much value to the experience. (Brooke Breit - Director)

A huge win was pulling our final round together. The first time we played an entire game front to back, with final designs and aesthetics, was magical! (Alex Weick - Designer and Producer)

What were some of the biggest challenges you faced making this game?

This game was a fairly unique experience for us. And the game itself is not overly complicated, but there are a lot of moments involved (challenges, voting, advantages, eliminations). So the entire team had the huge task of crafting this full experience, and knowing that we believed it would all come together. But it sometimes felt like dominoes, and if a moment wasn’t feeling right during development, we would have to step back and consider the whole thing to try and see why. Everything we made is very purposeful in creating what we felt was the most intuitive yet exciting experience. Also we were creating a Reality TV inspired party game! And those kinds of shows can be brutal, so we wanted to make something that would still feel fun and inclusive, even if everyone is voting you out. (Brooke Breit - Director)

Rob Has a Podcast played this game in an early look livestream with former Survivor contestants. What was that experience like for you?

A DAMN DREAM (can I swear? Can we bleep this out in the blog??). Some of the team are HUGE FANS of RHAP, and not only did we have that incredible Survivor stream, but early in development, we playtested the game with a group of RHAP podcasters. And these are incredibly smart, funny, and engaging folks that know everything there is to know about Reality TV, so their opinion was gold for us. After we played with them, we focused on some of the spots they had given us feedback on, and it made the game so much better. So then, to have alum from Survivor play Roomerang on stream…I almost passed out. They played it so well and exactly how I would’ve hoped they would! The game is built to be played as strategically or as casually as you want, and the Survivor group was so incredible to watch. I would love for there to be more things that RHAP and Jackbox work together on in the future because it was such a wonderful experience. (Brooke Breit - Director)

It was an early goal of ours to try and get some reality tv personalities playing the game (on a stream or even casually). The game was magical and like Brooke said, this was a dream come true. (Alex Weick - Designer and Producer)

Watch the Rob Has a Podcast Roomerang livestream:

Are you ready for people to start playing Roomerang? What are you most excited about seeing from fans when this game gets released to the public?

I was BORN READY. This game has been a labor of love from an exceptional team. We really built it together, with every department weighing in on how to make it better and better with each step along the way. And I’ve been watching some early access streams of people already diving in headfirst (having no idea what they are getting into), and they’ve been an absolute pleasure and joy to watch. Specifically watching a group realize what’s happening for the first time they go through an elimination is the absolute best. Roomerang is very, very silly. We made a silly game. And I hope everyone has as much fun with this silly game as we do. We made it for people that love Reality TV and for people that have never watched it. And if you don’t love it, maybe you should leave, and come back with one vowel in your name changed (and maybe wearing a hat). LOVE YOU, BYEEEE. (Brooke Breit - Director)

BUY PARTY PACK 9

Can’t get enough Roomerang content? Don’t miss release day marathon livestream Twitch and YouTube on October 20 featuring members from the Roomerang game team and all other game teams from Party Pack 9.