Synopsis:
What The Dub?! is a multiplayer party game where each player overdubs missing dialogue from hilariously awful B-movies, outdated PSAs, and bizarre industrial films, with their own witty (or just plain stupid) dubs!
Reviewed on: PC & PS4
Also available for: Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, macOS
Developer: Wide Right Interactive
Publisher: Wide Right Interactive
What The Dub?! is a party game made to be played with friends in the same room, online with friends, in a Discord chat, or for viewers watching on while streaming on Youtube or Twitch. For anyone who loves the Jackbox Party Games, this will scratch the same kind of itch.
Up to six players can play What The Dub?! while an audience of up to twelve can vote to help determine the winner. The latter feature is beneficial for getting a Twitch audience invested and engaged in the content. The six players playing the game will watch a short clip taken from very old B-movies, commercials or tv shows. I presume all of these are royalty-free or close to, making them great picks for this game for a smaller developer. Part of the dialogue in the clip you watch is bleeped out, and then it’s up to the players to write dialogue, which can include inserting special effect noises, including things as low brow as fart noises. Afterwards, everyone watches the customer clips in succession as an automated AI voice reads the dialogue everyone wrote and inserts it into the scene. The players and audience vote on which one they thought was the best, and at the end of several rounds, a winner is crowned.
Much like playing Jackbox games with similar systems, the success of What The Dub?! can relier on your player group and having a sense of humour. That said, if you want to avoid potentially offensive humour while streaming the game or playing with kids, there is, thankfully, an option to censor anything that may be above PG, which the game does an excellent job at picking up.
With over 400 clips in the game, most players wouldn’t see all the clips on offer, even with hours of playtime. But what’s missing here is a variety of modes. The most obvious would be a mode about building a continuous narrative between rounds. The game would also see a bigger boom in success if there were more commercial movies and shows here, but that would require more money for licensing. I’d love for a sequel or update to add different voices for the AI to use depending on if it knows the clips speaking character is male, female, young or old — because some robotic voice eventually does lose its charm.
What The Dub?! is on everything at this stage and super simple to set up and play with friends and family or online with your audience. It doesn’t have the variety of a Jackbox, but it doesn’t have the same price tag either, and I’d love to see this concept expanded.
