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# To play Joy's Hands, you have to visit a Chinatown gallery
- URL: https://www.killscreen.com/to-play-joys-hands-you-have-to-visit-a-chinatown-gallery/
- Published: 2026-10-12T18:42:05.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-12T18:42:05.000Z
- Description: Isabelle Frances McGuire and Will Lee launch their studio Recurseware with a 20-minute Salem witch game
- Author: Kill Screen Staff
- Tags: News, Isabelle Frances McGuire, Recurseware, Bel Ami, sculpture, exhibition, witches, Whitney Biennial, Chicago, United States, #radar-item, #events, los angeles

Event details

When

Oct. 3 to Nov. 28, 2026, Wednesday to Saturday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Where

Bel Ami, 709 N. Hill St., Suites 103 and 105 (upstairs in Asian Center), Los Angeles

A bowl, a knife, some snails, and a writhing ferret: that is everything Joy has to work with in *Joy's Hands*, and the only way to pick any of it up is to go to Chinatown. The 20-minute game runs on a wall-mounted flatscreen inside [Isabelle Frances McGuire's *Joy is a Puppet*](https://belami.info/exhibitions/joy-is-a-puppet/?ref=killscreen.com) at Bel Ami in Los Angeles through Nov. 28\. McGuire [calls the gallery](https://www.instagram.com/p/DeUXRrqFpMx/?ref=killscreen.com) "the only place you can play" it.

It is also a debut. *Joy's Hands* is the first game from Recurseware, the studio McGuire formed with Will Lee. Lee designed it and McGuire made the sound and music, per [the artist's announcement](https://www.instagram.com/p/DeCojljGoNA/?ref=killscreen.com). Joy is locked in a shed in a fictionalized colonial Salem and has to puzzle through spells to summon the devil, who answers with a game of cat's cradle. [Bel Ami's post](https://www.instagram.com/p/DeICnfjksbL/?ref=killscreen.com) frames the exhibition as an invitation "into the making of a full-length video game."

The room is what a studio would call a vertical slice, with the concept art cast in bronze: Joy in a cloth bonnet, three gaping bullfrogs each titled *Sister*, a display of supposedly hexed baskets. McGuire has spent years dragging game assets into sculpture. The 2023 show *LOOP* [put *Call of Duty* night-vision goggles on an Elvis bust](https://artreview.com/isabelle-frances-mcguire-the-flattening-of-visual-culture/?ref=killscreen.com) and named another after an *Assassin's Creed* NPC. Here the pipe runs the other way: the game is the source, and the objects are what it shed.

Ten years ago [we argued](https://www.killscreen.com/the-witch-isnt-an-empowerment-narrative-and-thats-why-its-great/) that *The Witch* was great because it took the Puritan nightmare at face value and refused to be an empowerment story. McGuire, whose installation was in this year's Whitney Biennial ([the one that left a game online](https://www.killscreen.com/whitney-biennial-camoflux-recall-grotto/)), hands you the same bargain with a controller: Joy is the accused, and [by Frieze's account](https://www.frieze.com/article/isabelle-frances-mcguire-joy-is-a-puppet-2026-review?ref=killscreen.com) the fun is in leaning into the charge. Most studios announce a first game with a trailer. Recurseware built a room around 20 minutes of it and left the rest unfinished in public.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/25/84/2584b75d-4bd6-4cce-8259-f1d1c65abbb5/content/images/2026/10/joys-hands-screenshot-2.jpg)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/25/84/2584b75d-4bd6-4cce-8259-f1d1c65abbb5/content/images/2026/10/joys-hands-screenshot-3.jpg)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/25/84/2584b75d-4bd6-4cce-8259-f1d1c65abbb5/content/images/2026/10/joys-hands-screen-install.jpg)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/25/84/2584b75d-4bd6-4cce-8259-f1d1c65abbb5/content/images/2026/10/joy-is-a-puppet-install-overview.jpg)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/25/84/2584b75d-4bd6-4cce-8259-f1d1c65abbb5/content/images/2026/10/joy-is-a-puppet-joy-bronze.jpg)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/25/84/2584b75d-4bd6-4cce-8259-f1d1c65abbb5/content/images/2026/10/joy-is-a-puppet-tableau-baskets.jpg)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/25/84/2584b75d-4bd6-4cce-8259-f1d1c65abbb5/content/images/2026/10/joy-is-a-puppet-piles.jpg)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/25/84/2584b75d-4bd6-4cce-8259-f1d1c65abbb5/content/images/2026/10/joy-is-a-puppet-idiot-woman.jpg)

**Joy's Hands* in play and on the wall at Bel Ami, with the bronze **Joy is a Puppet*, the baskets of **Tableau*, **Piles* and **Idiot Woman* (all 2026). Screenshots via Isabelle Frances McGuire; installation photos courtesy of the artist and Bel Ami, Los Angeles.

A first game you can only play in one room in Chinatown will never show up on a storefront chart. Radar finds the work at the edges of games and sends it free, three times a week.

[Get Radar free ](https://www.killscreen.com/start/?ref=radar-cta)