Ophelia Payne

I absolutely love Hidden object games. When I played the demo for Ogre Pixel’s ‘Hidden Around the World’ during Steam Next Fest, I was hooked and couldn’t wait for more. Full disclosure, I’ve had this game for a little while, but couldn’t stop myself from playing long enough to write this review. Yes, spoiler alert, I really liked this game.

Just like Hidden in my Paradise, also from the same devs, you are tasked with finding hidden objects and recreating scenes for photographs.  Recreating the photos requires you to locate and move a variety of items, and sometimes searching for these can take a little time. You don’t need to be perfect with the pictures, thankfully. If all the items are in the picture and anything stacked or overlapped is replicated, like making sure a flag is on top of a bus, or a teacup is on a table, etc., you’re fine. Once you find all the required items and correctly replicate and snap each picture, you are rewarded with a paw print stamp.

You will need a certain number of stamps to unlock the additional levels. You will also get a stamp for finding all the items in the scene and another for finding all the hidden fairies. Fairies are located by finding the sparkly items in each scene and moving them to find the hidden fairy.  Each map has a different number of items that need to be located, but generally falls in the mid-teens. Sometimes, there will be a requirement to find multiples of the same item as well. The items you are searching for might be in the open, they might be inside buildings (that you can see into by hovering over them or even hidden behind bushes or trees.

If you get stuck, there is a help feature that works very well if you are looking for a single item. If you are looking for multiples of the same thing, it will sometimes locate the one you already found before you hit it again, asking for another hint.

There is a total of 12 cities to explore. You will start off in Paris, but one of my favourite levels was London. I have a soft spot for this city for a variety of reasons, but mostly because of my love for Doctor Who and seeing the mini T.A.R.D.I.S police boxes spread around the map. Each map is very busy, but you will see all of the traditional and expected landmarks located in each. Your maps can be set to daylight, dusk or evening, and you can even apply a filter to help lift some of the muted colours. The maps are all beautifully hand-drawn as well.

Finding objects and clicking on the animals in each map awards you with coins. You can use these coins to buy items in the shop, including tickets to use in the capsule machine. Each of these capsules unlocks more items for you to use when creating your own levels in the game. If you are a creative person, you’ll love this. Once created, you can upload your levels for others to play and rate.

I played this via Steam on PC, but it’s also available on the Switch, and I think it’s a perfect game for that handheld platform and would be great for entertaining yourself or younger family members when bored or travelling. Currently, it’s less than $8 and has a 15% launch week discount as well.

Until next time…be good to yourself and be good to each other.

**Special Thanks to Nerder She Wrote for the review code**