We’ve Found our new Favourite Hidden Object Game
There’s an asterisk at the end of ‘Find My Frogs’. You’re not just being asked to find frogs. Uncle Froger not only wants you to gather together his 300-or-so children for a photo: he wants you to find a camera, tripod and film too. Plus he wants several dozen gnomes, toads, bugs, strawberry slices and seedlings. This is very much ‘Find My Frogs, Plus Some Other Stuff I’m Too Lazy To Find Myself’.
But I’m not resentful. Because Find My Frogs is an utter joy. Across the board, from its artwork to its overflowing charm, all the way to its hint systems and navigation, it’s a delight for hidden object fans. If you have a cozy bone in your body, you may want to pick up Find My Frogs.
The Hidden Cats in… series finally has some serious competition…
Toads in Various Holes
Find My Frogs is, unsurprisingly, a hidden object game. But unlike most other hidden object games, it’s entirely a hidden object game. There are no minigames, no puzzles, no cutscenes with badly animated 3D models. You’re not context-switching at any point, and I found that refreshing.
It’s also surprisingly expansive. There is one mega scene to find the frogs* in, and several smaller scenes. But the smaller scenes are connected to the larger ones. You can find a door of a living space and enter it, encountering frogs inside as well as out. There’s a lovely joined-up sense of space in the world of Find My Frogs. The scenes are connected: you can actually see how tunnels and rooms interlace to create a larger structure – in this case a treehouse in a swamp.
The art is also nestled in the topmost of drawers. The black-and-white line-art is clear and easy to read, which leaves enough room for the frogs, gnomes and others to be fiendishly hidden. There was never a point where I felt like a character was unfairly obscured. Plus I really like how the findable creatures had unique shapes: the gnomes will often have a single, triangular hat poking out of their hiding spots, while the frogs are almost symmetrical with their bumpy bums and bumpy heads.
Leaps and Bounds Ahead of the Competition
I could wax lyrical about the presentation for some time, but there is one facet that deserves the plaudits. The characters truly inhabit the space. In similar games, it can feel like they have been copy-pasted without too much thought. Here, the characters interact with each other and the surroundings, and it makes the whole scene come alive.
Find a frog and it will reveal itself, as well as get coloured in. It’s a lovely touch. Most other hidden object games just daub on some colour and leave it at that. But giving you two versions of each character is an avenue for lots of humour, as you can see what was snorkelling under the water, what was attached to the bum behind the tree.
The hint system is in that sweet-spot of helping a little, but not too much. Through a map on the pause screen, it itemises where your remaining frogs – and other amphibians – are located, but only in a vague sense. It breaks down which smaller rooms are complete or incomplete, and informs you whether you have all gnomes, strawberry pieces, etc. A more explicit hint system is available on a cooldown, and it prompts you to its choice of hidden item. But you can’t force it to only look for toads, for example.
If there’s a negative it’s that some of the generic ‘hidden items’ are overly vague. Find My Frogs has a habit of telling you that there are fifteen ‘interactibles’ in a given space, but knowing what can or can’t be clicked is a bit arbitrary. More than once, we were left with one or two interactables and had to click every pixel in the hope that a cloth would twitch and a bug or other collectible would reveal itself.
Treat Yourself to a Cozy bit of Spot-The-Frog
As with most hidden object games, it’s also lacking in what you might call high-stakes gameplay, and it has almost zero replay value. But that’s baked into the genre, in my view, and if you are a hidden object fan, then they will barely count as downsides. Find My Frogs certainly isn’t insubstantial: while it’s not as big as a Hidden Cats In… game, for example, it still took us two hours to complete.
If you’d asked me what the ideal hidden object game would contain, it would sound a lot like Find My Frogs. I want enjoyable art where you can see little stories happening. I want no minigame distractions, plenty of easter eggs, a cracking sense of humour, and a hint system that I can turn to if I want it. Find My Frogs delivers all those things with aplomb. It feels like someone has made me the hidden object game I always wanted.
I’ve put the Hidden Cats in… games on a bit of a pedestal. They’re the ones to beat: the hidden object games par excellence. But Find My Frogs has complicated matters. Suddenly there is a challenger, and I can’t pick between them.
Why does anyone need to pick? Treat yourself and buy both.
Important Links
Find My Frogs Hops Onto Xbox – A New Cozy Hidden Object Adventure Full Of Charm? – https://www.thexboxhub.com/find-my-frogs-hops-onto-xbox/
Buy from the Xbox Store – https://www.xbox.com/en-gb/games/store/Find-My-Frogs/9N0FQ8QJ20LJ
