Welcome to your new hell of a bungalow!
Housework, jobs, and school
This daily torture's cruel
Still, each week, they jump into the fray
The Devils and the Details every day!
This daily torture's cruel
Still, each week, they jump into the fray
The Devils and the Details every day!
— Excerpt from the Expository Theme Tune
The Devils and the Details is a competitive teamwork game made by Jackbox Games. It is featured in The Jackbox Party Pack 7.
The Devils and the Details contains examples of:
- Alien Among Us: The game's framing device involves a sitcom about a family of devils trying to live like humans.
- April Fools' Day: This game has an older version, titled Everybody Help Grandma, which was an April Fools' Day prank. Watch the trailer here
! - Ascended Meme: The game is based on an April Fools' Day game entitled Everybody Help Grandma, which has the same base gameplay, but with less mechanics and a more mundane aesthetic. The game was so well-received by fans every year it came back, that many wished it would become an actual game in the series. Jackbox Games listened, took the concept of Everybody Help Grandma, and reworked it into The Devils and the Details.
- Batter Up!: One of the challenges is titled "Step up to Bat" (however, no knocking out bats with bats happens in this episode).
- Beach Episode: One of the challenges that can pop up is having an at-home beach day. The challenge in question is called "Beach Blanket Beelzebub".
- The Cameo:
- Billy O'Brien appears in the game intro buried beneath the ground. He also appears as a flashing image on TV in one game.
- Captain Chuck Hull from Joke Boat appears as the ghost in "The Case of the Haunted Suburb".
- One of the Fakin' It men appears in the "Greet Your Neighbor" task.
- Cats Are Mean: Somewhat-implied, because audience members play as the cat, and they can cause mischief for the family.
- Character Customization: You have a few options to customize your devil when you first start.
- Colony Drop: "The Bigger Bang" involves the family discovering an enormous meteor is about to hit the Earth.
- Creepy Uncle: Uncle Gorbo, who is known to be annoying, visits the other devils above ground in one episode, titled "Cry Uncle".
- Dinner with the Boss: "Stress to Impress" has the family inviting one parent's boss over for dinner.
- Disapproving Look: Teen players can interrupt other player's Selfish actions by rolling their eyes disapprovingly.
- Expressive Hair: The little devil girl counts. Her "stressed" and "Selfish task" sprites both show her pigtails flip up, which looks like Devilish Hair Horns in the latter case. Conversely, when she's stopped from completing a Selfish task or fails to stop someone else from completing a Selfish task, her pigtails droop in sadness.
- Foolish Husband, Responsible Wife: The Devil Dad is a Bumbling Dad who has a lot of Cloudcuckoolander tendencies, while the Devil Mom is a no-nonsense parent who's shown taking most of the initiative.
- Heartbreak and Ice Cream: In one of the challenges, ice cream is declared illegal.
- Man-Eating Plant: In "The Nicest Yard", one of the final challenge tasks involves the family fighting off an exotic flower they planted that mutates into a man-eating plant.
- Mundane Made Awesome: Players who take on selfish tasks have their avatar's appearance change to reflect to how they're giving into their devilish nature. However, some of these tasks are rather mundane. So you might look at the main screen and see that one of your fellow players is sporting Blank White Eyes, a Slasher Smile, and an Infernal Background... and then you see that it's because they're using their phone on the toilet, stealing extra candy, or some other minor form of mischief or slacking off.
- Mythology Gag: The numbers in the phone book include references to businesses from You Don't Know Jack, such as Vance VanVan's Van Lot and Tim Simian, Chimp Mechanic.
- No Ending: Unlike most Jackbox games with established plots, this one has no conclusion to speak of, and instead cuts to the end credits after tallying which family member is in the lead on the final round.
- Number of the Beast: Referenced numerous times. 666 is the house number of the home of the devils, the age that Grandma Pazuzu turns in one of the challenges and is the point total given out for "selfish tasks".
- "Scooby-Doo" Hoax: "The Case of the Haunted Suburb" involves the family investigating sightings of a ghost that turns out to be a shady old man in disguise.
- Shout-Out: The phone book contains nods to several popular members of the Jackbox Streamers team on Twitch, such as TipsyTune ("Tipsy Tune's Unsteady Autos").
- Sliding Scale of Cooperation vs. Competition: The game features Emergent Competition; players must work together over three in-game days to complete chores (including highly-important "challenge tasks") and reach their "family score" quota by the end of each round. Players can boost their personal scores by slacking off and completing "selfish" tasks, though this runs the risk of causing a "family emergency" that will take points away from your family score until it's dealt with. If the family fails to make the quota by the end of the round, they're forced to move back to Hell (though they get a limited number of do-overs on all but the last day); if they make it through each day, they get to stay in the mortal world and the highest-scoring player is declared "World's Bestest Devil".
- Space Episode: One of the challenges is named "Devils in Space" and it's exactly what it sounds like.
- Team Pet: The Audience in this game plays the role of the family cat, who gets to cause mischief for the other players and generate tasks to distract them.
- Team Spirit: Some of the tasks require teamwork to complete.
- The Talk: One of the Selfish tasks a child can do is to ask where babies come from.
- Theme Tune: Features a theme song at the beginning and end of the game.
- Time Capsule: "Time Makes Ghouls of Us All" involves the Devils having to put together a time capsule. They end up finding an older time capsule from The '90s in the process.
- Ugly Guy, Hot Wife: The Devil Dad is a more cartoonish depiction of a devil that's slightly animalistic, while the Devil Mom looks like a standard attractive mother, but with devilish features.
