A Fairly Standard Puzzle Version of a Fairy-Tale Standard
There tend to be two camps of hidden object games. The first camp likes to dollop on a bit of story, and when they do, it’s more pantomime than serious drama. The second camp treats hidden objecting as a sport or puzzle. No story, just unadulterated finding, with star rankings and timers ticking up.
The hidden object games from Crisp App Studio, of which Sleeping Beauty: Hidden Object Game is one, are very much the latter. You can almost imagine the Full Metal Jacket drill instructor next to you, shouting “find more objects”, “faster!”, and “no hints, you loser!”. The hidden object puzzles are there to be cleared quickly, and per-puzzle trophies reward your speed, precision and willingness to play the same scene multiple times.
Aurora’s Adventures in Wonderland
While Sleeping Beauty: Hidden Object Game is a Crisp App Studio game, it takes a couple of steps towards that first, story camp. And it’s for that reason that I’ve enjoyed it more than most of the studio’s other games.
There is a story in Sleeping Beauty: Hidden Object Game, and it’s the one you’d expect. Sleeping Beauty has been thoroughly spindled and she’s asleep, waiting in her kingdom of thorns. But the game focuses on an undertold part of that story: what is happening in her dreams?
While we would have loved some Dali-esque surrealism, Sleeping Beauty mostly dreams of her past. That’s slightly less exciting than we hoped, but there are of course plenty of messes to rifle through in those dreams. Sleeping Beauty was clearly a hoarder, as every memory has harps, toads, candlesticks and daggers littered about.
You can skip the story, but I’m happy that Sleeping Beauty: Hidden Object Game at least tried. It softens the edges of the constant puzzling, and takes an askew look at Charles Perrault’s work. I dearly hoped that the ending had the courage to continue a running theme – that Sleeping Beauty could escape without anyone else’s help – but it muffs it at the last moment.
Back to the Main Event
Otherwise, of course, it’s puzzling all the way down. The majority is simple old hidden objecting. Crisp App Studio can sometimes have slightly unclear art, but that is absolutely not the case here. Every raven and inkwell pops out nicely from the backdrop, and the general quality of the drawings is very good. It’s free of AI art too, which is a creeping issue in the genre.
Sleeping Beauty: Hidden Object Game dips into some panoramic scenes, which is a neat flourish. And there’s just enough variety in the items and scenes: while items repeat, they’re not overused.
There are a few minigames punctuating the hidden object scenes, and it’s here that our hackles started to rise. It’s marketed as a hidden object game after all, so any dilution of that was always going to garner some suspicion. But they range from neat to okay, and they don’t obstruct the good stuff.
Our favourite is some spot the difference. It’s a close cousin to hidden object games, so you can see why it works. Two near-identical scenes fill each half of the screen, and you can scan left and right across both at the same time. They borrow the dioramas from the hidden object puzzles, but that’s all good. And the differences are in that sweet spot of not being too obvious, but not invisible either.
Smuggling in Some Jigsaws
I inwardly sighed when I saw that jigsaw puzzles were included. At least they are par for the genre, with the only frustration being all of the puzzle pieces starting on the puzzle rather than around it. Honestly, the jigsaw puzzle etiquette is terrible. Less good is a jigsaw-a-like where squares need to be swapped and rotated on a grid to make a picture. Often, the pictures are too zoomed in and blurred to make it satisfying or cozy.
One of my biggest frustrations with Crisp App Studio is that the jigsaws and other minigames can gate the hidden object puzzles. I just want to get on with the standout puzzles, not be held back by awkward digital ports of jigsaws.
Sleeping Beauty: Hidden Object Game has a good answer to this. To progress with the story, you can just press a big Play button on the bottom-right of the screen. This bypasses any nonsense and lets you play the core Sleeping Beauty story. If you want to deviate and play minigames, then that’s possible too: you just pick a painting from an attractive art gallery. It’s a more engaging menu system than the list of scenes than we’re used to.
As a bit of an achievement hound, I’m appreciative that this philosophy stretches to its Gamerscore. You don’t have to play the jigsaws at all. 100% is on offer for just the hidden object scenes, as the game’s title implies.
Not Really a Sleeping Beauty
There is nothing that stands out about Sleeping Beauty: Hidden Object Game. The story is welcome but not a patch on the B-movie stylings of the Artifex Mundi games. The hidden object scenes are homely and medieval but nothing we haven’t seen elsewhere. And the minigames are fine: the best you can say is that they’re unobstructive.
But it’s that last point that is worth celebrating. Sleeping Beauty: Hidden Object Game knows that the majority of players are here to find stuff, and pushes everything else into the background. If you just want to find needles in haystacks, then Sleeping Beauty: Hidden Object Game smiles winsomely and lets you do exactly that.
Important Links
Step Into Aurora’s Dreams In Sleeping Beauty: Hidden Object Game On Xbox – https://www.thexboxhub.com/step-into-auroras-dreams-in-sleeping-beauty-hidden-object-game-on-xbox/
Buy from the Xbox Store – https://www.xbox.com/en-GB/games/store/sleeping-beauty-hidden-object-game/9NRS4VWNZJGZ/0010
