A Look into Classic Hidden Object Games

by Andrea Emmes

Ah, the classic Hidden Object games, loved by so many. The scenes are cluttered with a wide variety of objects that really don’t make sense in a given scene but are always super fun to spend countless hours looking for. It’s like those who love to play word searches.  At first the HOG games, as they are called (Hidden Object Games) were just a simple list of objects that the player needed to find and then move on to the next scene. Now, it seems the HOG’s are being morphed into a whole new style of gameplay. No longer are HOGs just a hunt and peck game, now they are filled with mystery and adventure as they are coupled with exciting and often time scary storylines and filled with new gameplay mechanics allowing the player to become even more immersed into finding tons and tons of objects.

If you were to look at the app store, you will find a ton of HO games from masters such as G5 Games, Big Fish Studios, Magmic, PlayFirst and more. I have been playing so many of these games lately that it feels like my eyes might be going cross. But in a good way. I love a good adventure HOG game and have been playing the following titles on my iPad3:

G5 Games:

Lost Souls-Enchanted Paintings

A mysterious painting is dropped off at your doorstep and you decide to hang it up in your son’s room. To your dismay, the painting kidnaps your son and he is lost within the painting. It is your (the player’s) goal to do everything you can to find your son. Unfortunately, the evil kidnapper has destroyed the painting into several different fragments and the player must find all of them to restore the painting and find their son.

The interaction of this game with other characters and many different environments or rooms is intriguing and helps pull the player into the mystery more so then just a normal HOG. I love the idea of traveling through paintings as portals into new realms. Each realm has a dilemma that the player must figure out and solve before they receive a fragment of their son’s painting.

The art style is cute and has a cartoony feel to it that is fun, especially as the player goes through different fantasy areas.

Features:

• To enter the paintings, player must clean off the dust by swiping their finger across the screen.
• Collect various items between several areas and in completing HO scenes that interact with each other to unlock new HO scenes and further the story.

Nightmares from the Deep: The Cursed Heart HD

An immortal pirate, Captain Remington, escapes from a museum only to kidnap the player’s daughter so that he can bring his beloved, Mary, back from the grave and into this new vessel.  Remington makes his way on his ghost ship to Skull Island in order retrieve Mary’s body for the ritual.

Much like Lost Souls, Nightmares has you going back and forth between several areas to find various items to unlock doors, open chests or other HOG scenes to move the story and game forward. There are a ton of mini games within this HOG game, which I am finding is a trend and a nice addition to break up the monotony and bring some puzzle aspect for the gamers to enjoy. There are a ton of mini games to choose from, so this is a nice and easy way to beef up any HOG adventure game.

As much as I enjoyed Lost Souls, I enjoyed the art style of Nightmares a little more with it’s darker, gritty-er feel. The characters were fun as well; especially the creepy seer guarding the doubloon chest. Every time you find a doubloon, you must turn it in to him to reveal more of the story. He shows the player some simple animation cut scenes that add a nice touch to this game.

Big Fish Studios:

Drawn: The Painted Tower

Creative little Iris is missing within the paintings that she has created and the player must find her to restore the world back to its proper state.

This is probably one of the more beautiful and clever HOG games I’ve seen in awhile. While the art style is breath taking and creative as it immerses the player into the story, which is a big thing for me. I feel like a little kid again as I am brought back into those nights when my mom would read me to sleep and entertain me with pop books and teach me to draw my own stories.  The Drawn series really picks up on this and within the mini games that the players must solve in order to get special items or unlock the next HOG scene, much of it is about drawing or completing an unfinished drawing.

Drawn uses it’s compelling story, cute characters and clever game mechanics and puzzles to present HOG/Adventure lovers exactly what they want. Solid entertainment.

Magmic x eepmon:

Hidden Galaxies—The Voyage Home

You are an alien that is trying to get home and you must find…things?  The story is really weak, but not all HOG players care about story, they just want to find hidden objects, dangit!!

This is an interesting take in the HOG world that I haven’t really made a solid opinion on yet. I kind of like the idea of parallaxing layers, which basically means the scene is split up into foreground, mid-ground and background layers that move around at the touch of the player’s finger (or mouse) bringing in a 3 dimensional feel and allowing the developer to hide objects deeper into the scene.

It’s immersive; the player must really move the scene around to see if there are hidden objects hiding behind each layer that seems to bump up the challenge aspect of the HOG scene. It’s also a little disorienting and gives me a slight sense of vertigo.

I’m not sure the world is ready for this or that it keeps players from hurling their Mountain Dew and Dorito diets, but it’s a fascinating exploration of bringing new technology to gamers.

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There are soooo many HOG games to play, which is nice for variety and the game developers are constantly looking for new ways to entice the players and entertain them for hours!