Hidden Folks

Being a fan of the MicroMacro tabletop game and Where's Waldo series, I was really, really looking forward to playing this game after seeing the art style recently. Bought it for around $15. Very sorry to say that what I found after 10 minutes of play is something entirely different than I expected. A masterclass in bad game design. No neat introduction into the game, you're just dumped into the first scene right away. Then the sounds: daft, borderline obnoxious and distracting, and lacking -useful- ambient "world" sounds. The characters are mostly copy pasted variations, with the same repetitive animations. Clicking is inconsistent and moves the map around unintentionally, no cursor hints as to what is clickable what isn't. Zooming is odd, with scenes being cropped to infinite white, breaking immersion. Overall, it just feels lazy, especially for its price. Of course I'm just going by the first few scenes, as there seem to be no hints at all, so its a matter of grinding to get through the game. No thanks. I guess I was looking forward to an immersive small world of lovable, sketched characters having their own tiny stories. What I got was an unfinished flash game that one would play for free on the 00s interwebs.

This game has lots of content, a good mix of small and huge maps, and a great level of detail. The Folks are hidden with lots of variety, including interactions with the map to uncover them. The hints are very creative, but always helpful. The sounds are all voiced by people which is amazing. Great game!

Very charming little game that truly embodies the Hidden Object genre, it looks and plays as if a picture book came to life. The cute minimalist style is pleasant to look at and the sound effects, while not for everybody, are undoubtedly unique and I found them quite charming myself. I also found the humor to be pretty nice too. Maybe the biggest draw besides the sound design would be the raw spectacle of some of the areas, the larger ones will cover multiple screens worth of space and all of the areas are filled with detail. The areas start off fairly small and simple but quickly grow to an astonishing scale, being filled with small details, jokes, moving parts, doodads to click, and a plethora of people and objects to find. Each object comes with a small and usually vague hint attached to them and many objects will also be found by various context clues around the map. There are enough of these that every player should probably expect to have a few pretty challenging ones in each area. The game is not afraid to be a little brutal in some areas and there are some fairly devious objects out there. Also mixed in between main levels are several smaller areas or linear set pieces that tell a short story or explore some novel gameplay mechanic that isn't just searching for people. These are nice as a short break and fortunately the main areas are still the focus of the game so these little intermissions don't overstay their welcome. This game is great if you just want to slowly pick away at something, and one thing I particularly liked was that in almost all maps there are certain objects that you are able to destroy by clicking on them. It doesn't really affect much in the grand scheme of things but it is very satisfying to see the map slowly be picked apart over time as you search for everything. I also appreciated the moving parts in certain maps, even if they were relatively superficial it was still very cool to see them in a hidden object game. Its not the longest game in the world so its up to you on if you want to pay 15 bucks for it or not. Mileage may vary depending on how good you are at finding things and I found that it felt particularly good to pick it up on sale as something to play inbetween other games.

I really enjoy the smaller levels where you dont really have to scroll. Anything with too much zoom and scrolling becomes a chore and either takes you hours to find a single bottle of beer in a huge city or you use a guide and go against the spirit of the game. The worst thing that can happen is stuff being hidden behind interactable objects. I do not enjoy that in hidden object games. All achievements are just "find all the things in level pack" achievements so not really much to say about those.

100% - 4.7 hrs Achievements - 8 Review - 7/10 - Interesting take on Where's Wally? Definitely harder than Where's Wally as everything is black & white and unique hand drawn levels. Really cool sound design. Difficulty - 3/10 Hardest Achievement - On Tour Areas Complete

Fun I SPY game to play with your kids.

It's so creative and cute <3 one of my favorite

nice

hated every part of it

Where's Waldo but harder

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