Joan Jade and the Gates of Xibalba

The Good
Joan Jade and the Gates of Xibalba is the earliest casual game developed by Polish studio Artifex Mundi, who in this segment have a reputation for titles of a somewhat above average quality, at least in terms of production values. Therefore, the collected works of Artifex Mundi seemed a good entry point for my most recent excursion into the world of casual games, and the Mayan-themed Joan Jade marks its start.

Right from the opening sequence, the game makes a slightly better impression than many of its kind. Layered animations add a nice feeling of depth to the very beautifully hand-drawn backgrounds. Also, the original soundtrack – a rarity in itself, seeing as most casual games opt for fairly bland library music – is very fitting and enjoyable, indeed. My compliments to musicians Tomasz Wroński and Jarosław Mamczarski, who did an admirable job of scoring this little game. Their work is easily one of the strongest points of the entire production.

Still in the audio department, the leading character occasionally breathes out an audible sigh. This might seem like a weirdly minute thing to point out, and on paper sounds like it could get annoying very quickly. However, I found that it actually helps the character feel a bit more present and real, something a lot of casual adventure games have trouble with. It made me feel like Joan is actually battling on for the sake of what she cares about. It's a bit disappointing, then, that the plot the game tells cancels out that little slice of immersion.

The Mayan scenario serves as little more than a style backdrop, although the screens are riddled with ornaments, paintings and statues that seem, at least to the unschooled eye, somewhat authentic to the period and culture. Numerous references are made to Mayan deities, rituals and beliefs. I can't vouch for their consistency, for instance whether they all relate to the same time period; but they at least hold up to a cursory check in an encyclopedia.

The Bad
The positive first impression of the graphics starts fading over the course of the game. The story cutscenes are not nearly as impressively animated as the few in-game animations would lead one to expect, and they get progressively sloppier throughout the game.

The story told through those cutscenes is nothing to get invested in either. It doesn't start out particularly original. Joan Jade must be as close an Indiana Jones clone as is legal to publish, using the same approach to plausible deniability as Tomb Raider, by changing the gender of the lead character – although unlike “Lara Croft”, “Joan Jade” even starts sounding like “Indiana Jones” when you say it three times in a row very quickly. The plot about her two kids, who went missing while volunteering at an archaeological excavation in Yucatán, is forgettable from the beginning, and makes less and less sense as it moves along. At times, the game tries to explain away inconsistencies in the plot, to mixed results. The ending is sudden, but neither surprising nor rewarding, including a half-hearted attempt at a cliffhanger for a sequel which, of course, never came to be. None of the characters ever feel real or worth caring about, and the dialogue writing is abysmal. Overall, the game might have fared better as a loose collection of Mayan-themed puzzles, rather than trying to tell a story at all. The archaeological aspects are cliché and implausible. Everything is framed around ridiculous puzzles and traps the way Hollywood imagines them to exist in ancient ruins, Joan is strangely clairvoyant about what she needs to do to progress where, and the game is stuffed with rocky mechanisms and machineries with a grotesquely overused sound effect, reminding of the metal chains of a drawbridge, whenever anything moves.

While the puzzles are designed very nicely and are relatively diverse – there's memory challenges, tile-based puzzles, mazes, visual puzzles, and more – they don't hold interest long enough for the number of times they get repeated. They are also less and less well integrated into the scenario as the game progresses. At some point, the designers grew so tired of adapting puzzles to the locations they're found in, that they're just mysteriously glued onto some wall. The pattern is almost the same for every puzzle: among the three or four spots at which it has to be solved in the game, there is one which it was clearly originally designed for, while the others are just poor excuses of having players solve additional stages.

The puzzles are not challenging, the overall difficulty being exceptionally low, with a few, only slightly trickier exceptions. All the puzzles, except hidden-object scenes, can be skipped altogether after a short timer has run out. It's hard to imagine even younger players having a lot of difficulty solving any of the stages, but the timer means that everybody has a chance of completing the storyline – which, as mentioned, is not worth seeing to completion in the first place. Very positive in theory is the hint function, which works in all screens and game stages and recharges after each use within 60 seconds. It points out the next object to pick up or use in the adventure stages, reveals objects in picture searches, and gives visual clues in all other puzzle types. It's very helpful and well implemented, and in fact makes the skipping timer even more superfluous. In a more challenging game, this would be a good example of how a hint function should be designed.

Seeing as the game is most often classified as a hidden object game, the number of such scenes throughout the game is very low (around 10, I would estimate). Like the rest of the game, they are visually very nice. The backgrounds and objects are hand-drawn in the same style, which makes them fuse nicely – something many other games of the genre do an exceptionally poor job of. Like the rest of the puzzles, they are very easy to solve, with objects being on the large side and always in the same spots for every playthrough. However, there are some nuisances of imprecise wording in the list of objects to look for, as well as, on occasion, there being more objects in the scene than need to be found, with the player having to use trial and error on which ones the game wants them to click. Also, some items are very hard to identify.

Like the puzzles and hidden object scenes, the adventure elements are pretty simple, limited to picking up objects and using them in the right spots. The nice background art and animations make it fun to search the scenes, although it can at times again be difficult to figure out what the game actually wants the player to do, without resorting to the hints function. Particularly annoying are actions that need to be performed several times in a row, without any visual indication that any progress is being made. The adventure elements still serve their purpose as segues between the more classical puzzle screens.

Ultimately, the game isn't even rewarding when played to completion. Apart from the stale storyline, there is no prize for the victorious player. Puzzles can't be replayed directly, and since there is no element of randomness to the game, there is no replay value either. All the game offers is a trophy case. However, as trophies have no effect on the game whatsoever (why are there even scores associated with each trophy?), and some of them are actually broken and can't be earned, they don't serve as additional motivation either.

The Bottom Line
Gates of Xibalba stands out as a game that is a lot nicer to look at and listen to than many of its peers in the casual adventure and hidden object game genre. Unfortunately, that's about all it has to offer. With unchallenging puzzles, a forgettable and contradictory plot, an uninspired setting, increasing repetitiveness and no sense of achievement, it's simply not much fun to play. Apparently conceived as the start of a series, it's understandable why nothing ever came of its sequels. The short bursts in which casual games are designed to be played, can be filled with much more interesting content than this.

Estimated playing time: 5 hours
Mental challenge: Very low
Dexterity challenge: None
Recommended: No