Joan Jade and the Gates of Xibalba

My honest first reaction to this one was nostalgia for early-2010s casual gaming, which is both the nicest thing I can say about it and a fair warning about what you're getting into. This is Artifex Mundi's origin point, a historical footnote for fans of the studio who later refined the HOPA formula into something genuinely good, and it carries all the rough edges you'd expect from a first attempt. The structure is a point-and-click hidden object adventure set across roughly 30 Mayan temple locations, where you collect inventory items, apply them to hotspots, and occasionally zoom into seek-and-find scenes to hunt down listed objects. Where the game genuinely leans in is on the puzzle side: mini-games and logic challenges outnumber pure hidden object scenes by a wide margin, running through pipe connections, sliding block locks, symbol-matching memory games, directional maze puzzles where you plot Joan's path by placing arrows, and Mayan riddle sequences. On paper, that variety sounds promising. In practice, the same puzzle types repeat so often across the game's short runtime that you'll find yourself hitting the skip button more than you'd like, especially once the fish-matching and slider variants cycle back for a third or fourth pass. The hand-drawn backgrounds carry real warmth: layered animations give each scene a sense of depth, and the Mayan ornaments and pre-Columbian iconography decorating every room show a genuine design effort. The original soundtrack is a quiet standout, legitimately atmospheric in a way that most games in this genre skip entirely, opting instead for generic library loops. Audio-wise, the game punches above its weight class. Visually, it holds up well enough for a game of its vintage. It's the writing and structure where things fall apart. The story involves Joan's two children going missing at a Yucatan archaeological site, with the player guiding her deeper into a temple while she sends letters back to her husband Bruce, who is waiting at a police station and apparently goes nowhere. The plot accumulates logical contradictions throughout and ends on a cliffhanger for a sequel that was never made, which is a uniquely unsatisfying way to close a casual game. The replayability picture is bleak. Puzzles are fixed, there's no randomness in the hidden object scenes, and the trophy system is partially broken with some achievements impossible to earn. Playtime lands somewhere between one and three hours depending on how often you reach for hints or skips, and there's no meaningful reason to return once the credits roll. For the HOPA curious, Artifex Mundi's later catalog built meaningfully on this foundation. Those games are the better recommendation. Joan Jade is for completists who want to trace the studio's roots, or for very low-pressure casual players who just want something gentle and atmospheric to click through on a quiet afternoon.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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