Do you want a game that uses every "Crazy Person" cliche ever created? This is for you! We have your "crazy people are murderous", "clearly sane people being locked up for flimsy reasons", "crazy people are just giant children", "crazy people are stupid", "hypnotisim is magic" and many more!

The protagonists make one dumb decision after another. Sometimes they change it up with a horrifically unethical decision that's portrayed as not being all that bad because at least they had good intentions.

*MAJOR SPOILERS* Keeping a tiny, completely sane orphan in the asylum with the criminally insane was bad enough. After all, if you think of the ORPHAN as your daughter then surely there is no way to keep the ORPHAN with you unless you keep her commited. It's not like she's an ORPHAN from an ORPHANAGE that would like to maybe give her up for adoption. No, makes much more sense to keep her in the building with the murderer, right.

*SPOILERS CONTINUE* But then it gets even stupider when you meet the person murdering everyone and then reveal that they've been manipulated. Somehow the fact that they were lied to trumps the fact that they just violently murdered four people and assaulted others. Oh boo hoo, your revenge was ruined beacuse you killed the wrong people, no you're not free to go! Player character, stop sympathizing! Also, what part of "there's a bomb, we need to leave" was so hard to understand? Have the emotional connection with the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ violent murderer after you leave!

SPOILERS ENDED

Ignoring the unspeakably awful plot for a moment: the mechanics work well, there's three kinds of hidden object to discover, and minimal glitches (the wheelchair disappearing was a big one though). It's a fairly good HOG, mechanically speaking.

In case you couldn't tell, this game pissed me the hell off. I know HOGs aren't known for their writing, but this was so bad it inspired me to write my second ever review. At least I got all the achievements and don't ever have to think about this Thing again.

I'm going to go eat some chocolate and pet an animal. Christ.

9 Clues 2: The Ward is Artifex Mundi jumping the proverbial shark.

Though their library isn’t quite the flawless lineup their “premium” branding would have you believe, by and large Artifex Mundi’s hidden-object adventure games (referred to henceforth as HOGs) hit far more than they miss, especially given the fact that they seem to release half a dozen of them in any given month. They consistently manage to strike that perfect balance between above average production values, simple but enjoyable puzzle designs, and storylines just earnest enough to be entertaining. The first 9 Clues game, Secret of Serpent Creek (credited to Tap It Games, but so indistinguishable from Artifex Mundi’s own games that the distinction between them as developer or publisher seems a moot point), continues to rank as my favorite HOG to date, taking all the tenants of Artifex Mundi’s trademark design and wrapping them up into a lighthearted but endearing mystery thriller.

Though it shares the same series, The Ward is not only a dramatic departure from the previous 9 Clues but from Artifex Mundi’s HOGs in general. The Ward can best be summed up as Artifex Mundi going through a phase of overwhelming teen angst. Cue the inexplicable violence. Cue the barely intelligible plotlines designed for MAXIMUM DRAMA. Cue the misunderstood sociopath who was only murdering people because another sociopath told them to (it’s OK though, they’re actually good, I swear, so let’s just forget all that murder business).

If Secret of Serpent Creek was trying to be Scooby-doo, The Ward wants to be Shutter Island. It’s aggressively grim and (for a HOG) shockingly grotesque in both its story beats and how little it hesitates to delve headfirst into the most disturbing of subject matter. And this is where The Ward lost me. Even before its narrative turned into a convoluted mush of character reversals, deus ex machinas, and astoundingly convenient circumstances (again, even for HOG standards), The Ward alienated me with how little it cared. Where past Artifex Mundi games verged upon the repugnantly earnest, The Ward is a melting pot of “mature” themes and purposeless cruelty handled with even less care than you’d expect from this style of game. I’m not sure if The Ward came from a place unsatisfied with the casual branding of HOGs or if Artifex Mundi just ran out of ideas and started scrubbing through horror films for inspiration, but the second 9 Clues has managed to eject every ounce of the first game’s charm and replaced it with a nauseatingly poor attempt at tackling “adult” themes.

It’s all downhill from there, as the narrative flounders around attempting to find itself, puzzles become more obscure and tedious, and a veritable cornucopia of bad accents meander through lines as if the voice actors are simultaneously bored and learning to read for the first time. I even ran into some graphical bugs, which apart from being the most amusing part of the game cement how thrown together The Ward feels. I suppose it was bound to happen eventually that Artifex Mundi would release a colossal dud given the speed of their production process, but with how much I loved the first 9 Clues I’m sad that The Ward had to be the one to break the formula. The Ward exists then as a reminder of why we can’t have nice things. Only exploitative representations of mental illness and thoughtless depictions of suicide. Try not to cut yourself on all this edge.

You can read more of my writing on Kritiqal[kritiqal.com].

9 Clues 2: The Ward is an underwhelming hidden object adventure published by Artifex Mundi, set in an insane asylum where a murder case took place. I did not enjoy it.

There are some great and gorgeous Artifex Mundi hidden object games out there, particularly some of those not just published but also developed by them. This is not one of those games. Art and animations look incredibly dated, and would've already done so back in 2015 when the game was released.

Voice acting and writing are also bad. Most damningly, the protagonist is such a lousy detective that she gets incapacitated several times by antagonists. Not every game needs to be a power fantasy, but in this game the protagonist is handed the Idiot Ball any time a cutscene appears. I didn't like the finale, either.

The gameplay itself doesn't work, either. You get the typical hidden object slop where you're tasked to find generic reused assets that are low contrast and don't fit the game theme. Also, the hidden object puzzles here ask you to find items by name (e.g. "bow"), rather than by shape, and this just doesn't work, like when it turns out that the requested item is a knotted ribbon, rather than the weapon you use to shoot arrows. Due to such poor design, my playtime was mostly spent spam-clicking everywhere. Yuck.

Finally, the Steam achievements are implemented in a really lousy way: a whole bunch of them are missable, and the game doesn't support backtracking at all, so 100%ing this thoroughly underwhelming game would require multiple playthroughs.

Not recommended. Play a good hidden object game instead. I'm partial to Artifex Mundi's Grim Legends: The Forsaken Bride, for example.

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3/10
- puzzles short and easy
- hidden object elements just has you clicking on everything cause some things are moved or removed to get to the things under

What an awful portrayal of people with mental illnesses. Really horrifying. I guess if you have a mental illness you're either the joker or an adult baby. Cool. Great stuff.

The ending was also a bizarre ethical about-face. Character's decisions didn't make sense. Apparently no one knows how to call the cops and anyone can get locked up (without due process) for having 'delusions' if they say 'huh? what's happening?' enough.

On a lesser note, I hated how the cursor pulsed any time it was pointed at something to examine - super distracting.

Honestly, why did I bother finishing this. I should have just asked for a refund.

This is a thoroughly mediocre game, with no particularly clever features or bonuses to recommend it, very little variety in the game play, way too many cut scenes, bad animation, terrible voice acting, a story that would insult the intelligence of a 5 year old (let alone a detective, and don't get me started on the depictions of mental illness), forcing you to respond in a TSTL manner, and so overall it's a let down, especially from this publisher.
The hidden object games are plentiful but very basic, and you can switch to mahjong if you want. The puzzles are fine.
For me, that's just not enough to recommend the game.

"Where am I?"

Story-wise this game isnt so bad, but the character drawings are pretty bad, and you'll probably want to turn off the voice overs pretty quickly.

Sadly not one of my favorites but still a beautiful game with great artists behind it.

It's OK, but I did not enjoy it as much as 9 Clues 1. There are only a handful of hidden-object scenes, and they are rather trivial, as are the puzzles. The plot tries too hard to be mysterious. The voice acting is terrible.

I would like to thank the developer for supporting Linux.

Much like the first 9 Clues game, this is pretty average for a hidden object game. This one's set in an ayslum, which unfortunately leads to the standard characterizations of people with mental illnesses. It also has a mahjong minigame which you can avoid completely, though there are some achievements tied to it.