So I just read this great article today about the Hidden Object genre and it really got me thinking. I've not played many games within the genre, but I can recall playing one of the old I-Spy games on PC decades ago. I am also very interested in these indie games pushing the genre like Hidden Folks and TOEM.
The article also talks a little about the majority of the audience for a lot of these games being older women which is pretty interesting. It's definitely an underappreciated genre.
So what about y'all? Has anyone here played any Hidden Object games? Do you have any favorites or memorable experiences?
Just a recent while back, I actually had a day with some of my friends where we were trying to find any good hidden object games online because we suddenly got very competitive about I-Spy…… Disappointed to report we didn‘t find very many good ones!! Unfortunately it seems like a lot of the genre is locked in with licensed properties or are otherwise someone’s first attempt at something in Game Maker. The only promising “authentic” hidden object game I found in that search was called Howdy, Jacob! which is interesting for a few reasons beyond its gameplay which you‘ll notice if you go to the storepage. I have not played it myself yet, but it seems like a pretty unique experience. I’ve also found several games kind of adjacent to hidden object games (interacting with otherwise mundane objects in mundane settings that exist solely for the purpose of interacting with the objects) but for the sake of keeping the thread on track I'll hold off on posting them for now. Might come back with them later if we start getting things a little more broad!
I’ve seen I Am Dead described as a hidden object game which makes it the only one I’ve played. The devs/publisher avoid the label, maybe because of the other more novel slicing mechanic involved. One of my favorite games of last year.
A couple years back I was applying to a company that makes these and played them for an hour or so to lie my way through the pre-screen interview with the recruiter…… this somehow worked but then I forgot about the real interview that was a couple days later and missed the phone call, which I for some reason tried to explain away by saying I had been on the toilet. I think this grossed out the interviewer and I did not get the job…not my finest hour
I used to play a ton of I-Spy on PC as a child, though sometimes me and my brother would get stuck and just start clicking random things because we didn't speak a lot of English back then, sometimes we would ask our dad what the clue was saying, but we had to wait until he came back from work. I guess it never occurred to us to use an English to Spanish dictionary.
A thing that isn't talked about often enough is that outside English speaking places, RPG's were something that was gatekeeped and "for older kids" because you had to know how to read English in order to enjoy them.
I had a couple of pokemon games and Zelda Ocarina of Time as a small child but I almost never played them because I would always get lost not knowing what I had to do. There's a lot of stories of kids learning to read and speak English just because of RPG's.
I grew up in the transitional time when everything started to also be in Spanish and other languages, in fact Super Mario Galaxy is the first game that I remember in which I could understand the story because it was the first game that was in Spanish that I ever played.
The other day I was kind of stressing out because I bought Dragon Quest Builders 2 for my 9 year old cousin and I was wondering if his English was good enough to enjoy it, but then I realized every game is also in Spanish now, and I had one of those "kids these days have it so easy" moments.
For this reason I didn't properly played any rpg until I was 12 years old, at that time I had just started to read books and comic books in English without getting too lost (the first book that was in English that I remember having enjoyed was Slaughter-House Five) and I realized that I could also play some of those rpg's.
Oops I drifted right through that tangent, sorry!
I-Spy did teach me a couple English words though.
Even today, it is still a big issue for RPGs and adventure games (ex. Ace Attorney, otome games) and the main reason such titles typically underperform in non-English territories. This is also what caused Atlus games to struggle in Europe; Persona is probably the only Japanese RPG IP to have been historically stronger in the UK than in France. I remember friends at Square-Enix Europe receiving death threats (fun times!) when one Kingdom Hearts episode was revealed not to be translated into Spanish…
Back on topic, I agree that hidden object games are an excellent way to practice your vocabulary when learning a new language. I would definitely recommend anyone to try playing them in a different language. I remember having a good time in 2008 with a Japanese-only DS game called **Riku to Johan**.
