When Hidden Objects Aren’t All That Hidden…
Hidden Legends is a hidden objects game. That statement has ‘hidden’ in it twice, which strongly implies a bit of hiding. The objects will be tucked away in hard to find places, right? We’ve played enough of these games to expect flutes masquerading as bannisters, and tomatoes hanging in apple trees.
Hidden Legends has a different plan. Almost all of its items are hidden in plain sight.
Stroll into a funfair and a penguin will be jiggling about in the middle of the concourse. A giant golden spear will be hanging in a tree. Nearby, there might be a seal and a bag of gold coins. None of them are hidden, some of them are hopping about, and all of them are easy to spot.
It’s an odd introduction for anyone who is used to the genre. What’s the point if 99% of the items are easy to spot? Well, you have to do a bit of calibration. Hidden Legends, I’d suggest, is less a hidden object game, and more a spot-the-difference. You are scanning an environment for anachronisms, things that shouldn’t be there. Where are the mistakes? Once you have that realignment in place, the rest of Hidden Legends begins to make sense.
A Spot-The-Difference-Hidden-Object-Game
It’s a brand of hidden object game that’s been doing well on mobile. Games like Found It! acknowledge that people don’t have a whole lot of time, and probably don’t want to be squinting at their screens for a last spanner. So, everything is easy to find. The items are often a different art style to the backgrounds, or pop in a way that the backdrop doesn’t. The intention is that you’re tapping away at speed.
Hidden Legends doesn’t quite go that far. The items are the same art style, and – while the odd item feels brighter and more defined than the backgrounds – the images are overall consistent. So there is some challenge. A dog bone might camouflage against the tanned bricks of a house. A dog might look like it could feasibly exist in the scene. I wouldn’t say that the items are artfully placed – in fact, I’d have taken a bit more cheekiness in hiding those tomatoes in apple trees – but there is some logic to how they’re strewn about.
A level would often go like this. I’m a systematic person, so I will sweep up and down the game screen with the camera. I’d click on everything that looks remotely out of place. I could largely ignore people and houses, as well as repeated fixtures like benches. Everything else is fair game. Soon, I’d get a mental library of everything that’s clickable: most flowers aren’t ‘hidden’, but a lotus flower is special enough to be.
Once I’ve exhausted a corner of the screen, a pop-up will tell me that a new area has unlocked. There’s a kind of fog-of-war, where sixths of the screen are covered until I’ve shown enough skill to uncover them. Then I’m off to hunt in that new segment. Once all the segments are done, I invariably have one or two items still left to find – wait, that bunch of flowers was actually hidden? – and I’m zooming out with LT to do a broader sweep.
Who Is Scattering All This Stuff About?
In a cozy, brainless way it’s enjoyable. After four or five of Hidden Legends’ massive 18 levels, you start to get an eye for things. Clickable items are repeated, and you learn what never contains hidden objects (inexplicably, vehicles like cars and boats are always item-free. We wondered if it was something to do with how they’re animated). It all speeds up.
But you have to learn to enjoy it, because so much is counter-intuitive. Take the ticker across the bottom of the screen where the items are. There are so, so many items here that it is useless to scan. It effectively removes a method of playing: you can’t cross-reference the ticker with the environment when you spot a particularly odd-looking octopus. Hidden Legends is
Some quirks could be intentional or bugs. We encountered a few items that didn’t look like their icon on the ticker. Clipart of a lock and some downward arrows are meant to indicate padlocks and arrows in the bow-and-arrow sense. Either they are intended as riddles (“what does the downward arrow mean?”) or they’re placeholder icons that haven’t been updated. But for riddles to work they would have benefitted from a different background, or for more items to take that route. 99.9% of items aren’t treated this way.
Bugs Among The Junk
Then there are aspects that are very definitely bugs. None of the achievements work in Hidden Legends. Presumably the developers are working on this, as 0.46% of the community has completed Level 1, which we would guess is untrue. There’s also one level that is impossible to complete (or even progress past the opening sixth). We know because we have methodically tapped on every millimetre of the screen.
It leaves Hidden Legends feeling half-baked. It’s such an odd caveat because in other aspects it’s clearly received a lot of attention. There are 2500 items to find across 18 levels, and we’re notching about thirty minutes per level. For the price and genre, that’s a significant amount. Hidden Legends is bloated with stuff.
The scenes are a varied bunch, too. It would have been easy to do something procedural or wade into the mires of AI, which would produce something boring and repeated as a result. But there is some hand-drawn care here. It’s not as artful and detailed as the Hidden Cats in… series, say, but there’s enough diversity to create Arctic stations, fae woodland scenes, and pirate-infested waters. We’re fans of the characters too, with their occasional rams horns and fairy wings.
A Glaringly Obvious Mixed Bag
Hidden Legends, perhaps appropriately for a hidden object game, is a mixed bag. There’s a ridiculous amount of stuff for your money, but enjoying that stuff requires a shift in expectations. This is less a hidden object game, and more a glaringly-obvious object game.
Once you’ve taken that on board and switched the brain off, there’s a cozy ten hours to be had. Just be ready for bugs to drag you out of that reverie.
Important Links
Buy from the Xbox Store – https://www.xbox.com/en-gb/games/store/hidden-legends/9phc7zs39ctr
