OK so something quite interesting was revealed this morning and that’s the final line-up for the sequel to Bother’s Bar party favourite The Jackbox Party Pack The Jackbox Party Pack 2. The line-up includes Fibbage 2 and Quiplash XL and new game Bomb Corp (puzzle game where you work as a team to diffuse bombs and shout at each other), Earwax (impress the judge by selecting the sound effects that best fit a given theme), but the one I want to talk about is a new game called Bidiot, the sequel to Drawful.

And the reason you will want to know about it is that it would fit into Bother’s Bar favourite The Genius nigh-on perfectly.

You’re each given the titles of some pictures you have to draw and are then handed $3,000. Before each lot you sent secret information as to what each picture is worth selling it to art buyers after the auction, just by the titles. The lots come up and everyone bids. When a lot goes the money is removed from your account and the person who drew it gets half the money and you find out what it will go for later at the end. You can bid up your own pieces to try and force someone else to pay over the odds and getting you more money, risking that you’re top bidder and doing yourself out of half your bid money. If you know a piece is worthless you can try bidding up to try and make other people believe there’s massive profit to be made. Halfway through you’re each given a screw to FORCE other people to make a bid. Finally if you’re low on cash you can get credit from a loan shark, although you have to pay it back by the end.

I love it. But I also have reservations – I think you have to draw in good faith, mainly because that’s the funny bit but also because with 12 blank canvasses it’d be a complete crapshoot (they have already inbuilt a certain element of this with several titles that are different but on the same theme, you’ll only get the titles on your phone). The bigger caveat is that Drawful was a complete everyman sort of game – everyone gets it pretty much immediately (draw the thing then try and guess what everyone else was drawing). I’m a bit scared of trying to explain this game to my non-gamey chums who enjoyed Drawful. Although I suppose we could always just play Drawful.

But we will see. The Jackbox Party Pack 2 is out on October 13th on all sorts of different devices and that’s worldwide for $24.99, so probably £15-20 here in the UK.

OK don’t answer that here, this is an fact a pointing post to point you towards things you might have missed.

Right now in the The Genius Series 4 comments we’re having a discussion on what the official ranking of The Genius series are. We were here right at the start of The Genius and now it’s really popular we have to stop liking it like the hipster rulebook states, not a rule I like but I don’t get to make them. This is where we start, I would ask you to direct all comments there.

As a sort of fun sidenote, here are the places where we’ve discussed each series: Series 1, Series 2, Series 3, Series 4.

Tonight a big embargo on Eternal Glory lifts, don’t click on this freely viewable link until then and view the press pack otherwise you will go to prison (h/t David).

Finally thanks to Daniel H who points out that the premiere of Season 2 of Release the Hounds is currently viewable on ITV Player. I would politely ask you all *not* to talk about it until the Show Discussion post goes up so everything in the discussion is in the same place, but I’m going to bring that forward to tomorrow evening. If you can’t be bothered to watch online it goes out on Wednesday.

This week we have TWO new shows to look forward to, the return of Release the Hounds on Wednesday and The Almost Impossible Gameshow on Thursday. Show Discussion posts have been set up for them to go up automatically on the days.

Edit: This is too funny, Buzzerblog reports on Twitter that China has bought the genre-redefining Million Second Quiz and RTL in Germany has bought the next big worldwide sensation 500 Questions. We laughed at both of them, but look who’s laughing now!

We’ve been sort of advertising it all week but TV Cream spin-off WhyDontYoutube has been doing a gameshow week on Twitter all week and today I’ve been curating it (from all the things he’s not used all week, natch). I just wanted to remark once again how much I love, LOVE Fred Dinenage hosted Gambit, and you have to wonder if the tapes existed if they’d be any merit in Challenge repeating it, advertised in a sort of Fred as real-life Alan Partridge guise. Or sod it! Remake it with Steve Coogan as Alan Partridge hosting. Also those titles with the amazing theme tune (although clearly they have misunderstood the rules to roulette) AND Peter Fenn’s keyboard playing. The package is just incredible.

Don’t be alarmed, that clip has a false start about 50 seconds in. Fred is still reading the news in the South (I lived in Worthing during the Fred and Fern Britton era of Coast to Coast, great days).

In other news just a few short things, I’ve declared the official ranking of The Genius seasons. This is objective fact and there’s no point arguing, but you can if you want here.