Game: Jixo: The Season of Joy Collector’s Edition
Genre: Puzzle
System: Steam (Windows and macOS)
Developers | Publishers: MixoGames Ltd.
Controller Support: None
Price: US $9.99 | UK £8.50 | EU € 9,75
Release Date: November 22nd, 2024
A review code was used, and many thanks to MixoGames Ltd.
Jixo is a variety puzzle game with a Christmas theme. In it, you can play hidden object games, jigsaw puzzles, matching games, and more.
What is Jixo: The Season of Joy Collector’s Edition Like To Play?
As you click into the game, you will find a menu that allows you to either pick a type of level to play or choose a random level to play instead. You have the option of jigsaw puzzles, hidden object puzzles, slider puzzles, matching objects, locked boxes with sliders on them, tile matching, dice merge, or Solitaire.
All of the pictures you are searching through or fixing are Christmas-themed, like a kitten playing with a Christmas ball, Santa’s workshop, or snowy landscapes. There are several difficulty levels, so you can turn things like hints off or keep them on. The easy mode actually makes the puzzles themselves easier as well. As you play, you get coins, and you can use those coins to unlock additional types of puzzles, like the slider puzzles, which are not unlocked in the beginning.
Unlike a lot of other hidden object puzzle games, Jixo doesn’t give you just a flat list of things to find, but some of the items are listed as “Small Cheese Thief” instead of Mouse or “Large Tusked Animal” instead of Elephant. It adds a little extra layer of challenge to the puzzles.
The Puzzles Are Okay
Overall, there’s not a whole lot of variety or challenge in Jixo: The Season of Joy Collector’s Edition‘s puzzles. There are several different puzzles that kind of play the same way, like the torn paper puzzles and the jigsaws. All of the puzzles you find in this game are identical to puzzles types you might find in any other game, this one just has a Christmas skin on it. It’s not super exciting, and the puzzles are a bit of a letdown for $10 USD. I think I would be pretty disappointed with Jixo if I had purchased it myself.
My Thoughts on AI-Generated Art
If anyone has been around here for a while and read a lot of my articles, they’ll know I have a pretty dim view of AI-generative art. Basically, it works by taking pieces of other people’s artwork and combining them in new ways, a lot like cutting a bunch of pictures out of a magazine and pasting them together. It’s not an inherently bad thing, and it is cheaper than hiring an artist, which usually isn’t in the budget for small indie games.
However, there is the problem of whether the owners of the AI had permission to teach their programs on certain copywritten works. As someone who makes a living off of her writing, the thought of a bunch of AI companies taking my work to train their AI models before charging a bunch of other people to use it with a monthly fee is pretty infuriating.
While I try not to let my opinions on AI art influence how I feel about games, Jixo: The Season of Joy Collector’s Edition‘s use of AI was so prevalent throughout that I couldn’t help myself. Some of the art was ugly and fuzzy in a way unique to AI-generated “artwork,” and it really took away from my overall enjoyment of the game.
Conclusion
I don’t like games that use AI; I don’t think that there are many use cases for AI in a space where you are charging people for the final product. Coupled with the fact that I was a little bored by Jixo overall, I think that I just don’t like it. It’s not original in any way, and the artwork, which is the main point of the game, is both AI and kind of lacklustre. Not ugly per se, but it that kind of fuzzy weirdness that comes with AI generation.
Jixo: The Season of Joy Collector’s Edition has many different puzzles, but I wasn’t super impressed by the combination of art I don’t like, a $10 price tag, and generic games inside. If you don’t mind the AI art, you might find Jixo a lot more fun than I did, however, which is why I rated this title with an “I’m not sure.”
Final Verdict: I’m Not Sure.
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