Hidden Fun
More casual game madness. The latest trend is “Hidden Object Games.” I confess, I don’t quite get it. I’ve played a couple hours of Hidden Expedition Titanic, and I’m having trouble finding the appeal. Of course, everything is sequels and branding in the casual space now, so the latest game is Hidden Expedition Everest. It will be interesting to see what modifications they’ve made to improve the game, but the base level appeal is still eluding me. I’ve enjoyed other casual games – Bejeweled 2, for example, or Grimm’s Hatchery – but I’m having a really hard time seeing the underlying appeal of hidden object games. I understand why it should be fun, I guess. There’s some basic neural circuitry devoted to discerning shapes and patterns, especially picking out specific objects from amongst a jumble of objects, but in my mind the granularity feels off for a successful casual game. Especially at the start, it takes a long time to find each object. It makes me feel quite inept and, especially when I’m looking for the wrong thing, as though I’m being tricked. In my mind, a casual game (and just about any game, really) should have very compelling moment to moment game play, a strong presence at the finest granule. In Bejeweled, you sort gems constantly, a constant stream of stimulus. Your opportunity to sort gems never diminishes; you can always sort more gems. With hidden objects, there are always fewer and fewer objects to look for. It’s weird. I don’t get why millions of people are buying these games. I guess I’ll play the new Hidden Expedition: Everest game when it launches and try to figure it out.
4 Comments
Funny thing is I’m not a huge fan of Bejeweled 2 and I think Grimm’s Hatchery, outside of the theme and artwork, is pretty mediocre, but I can see the appeal of hidden item games.
Hidden object games are finding specific patterns (objects) in noise. Its the same exact appeal that I Spy or Where’s Waldo books have, people like finding stuff… You have a good point in that as you progress you have less objects to find. Maybe an interesting twist on the theme would be giving it a more match 3 like structure. Find patterns in noise, but those patterns “refill” as you find or clear them.
The trick is introducing new objects without making it immediately apparent where they are. Maybe you could not have matches with new objects until 7-8 appeared afterward. It might also be possible to slowly fade in objects (or even fade them out) so its not so apparent they are popping in.
The same reason people bought that “Big Game Hunter” crap.
I think a large part of the appeal is exploration…people like to discover things, wander around.
I’d say Myst falls into a *similar* category, a huge part of certain puzzles revolves around discovering what interactions you can do. Think how different the game would be if at each screen you were presented with a list of possible actions. You’d quickly read the list, ignore the artwork, and flip over to puzzle solving mode.
Another cool idea for the game, would be something like…finding homonyms. E.g: Find “bill”…and there would be a dollar bill…a duck’s bill…stuff like that. Also, I think the fun of this game might come while playing with other people…you can play it with anyone, they don’t need to be computer literate or play any other types of games. Imagine playing it with a little kid and you’re racing to see who can find the most or find a certain one first.