Hidden Folks 4+

The things that make this game special are the crisp black and white inkpen illustrations that stave off eye fatigue while endlessly searching through the details, the clever little riddles that accompany the key and serve as helpful hints to finding the objects, the charming lo-fi sounds programmed to respond to the touch of every detail of the illustration (I love the stupid “beep” of car horns or the silly “help” of the shipwrecked), the inventive little mechanisms that evolve with each new level to make the scenes interactive and slightly more challenging, and the overall humorous tone of this world of village idiots. I love that little jokes like the mushroom and the blueberry carry over multiple levels and that one factory employee requires hanging out by a tire fire to get her nicotine fix. I finished the game over a boring three day weekend and now I am in mourning because I know it’s over and they aren’t making more levels. Perhaps this world doesn’t deserve more levels of this incredible game!

I’m disappointed that many of the hidden objects/people are hidden out of view until its location is interacted with by touching the screen. For example, a hidden person or object is often completely obscured behind a door, bush, rock, plant or one of many other possible objects that require you to touch in order to “move it out of the way” in order to find the hidden object behind it. I want to be able to find the hidden objects by closely looking around the image, not by randomly touching dozens and dozens of moveable objects in the hopes that a hidden object is behind one of them or by needing to constantly rely on hints. It’s not a fun challenge; it’s just tedious and boring. I generally like the art style and I feel that it has good potential for being a game about finding hidden objects. Unfortunately, I primarily played with the audio muted because the amateurish style was annoying to listen to after a few minutes. Overall, I’m just disappointed that so many of the hidden objects cannot be found by simply looking at the image. For this reason, I do not recommend this game.