A Hidden Object Game That Omits any of the Oz Charm
Crisp App Studio have a plan. They’re going to trawl through all of the literature that has entered the public domain, and sort it for hidden object topics. This time around, they have chosen L. Frank Baum’s Wizard of Oz, and they’re poised and ready to pour a wheelbarrow of hidden items into it.
What makes Wizard of Oz: Hidden Object Games slightly different from Crisp App’s adaptations of Peter Pan, Aladdin and Sleeping Beauty is the presentation. Where those other games opted for a kind of photo-realism, Wizard of Oz: Hidden Object Games has chosen the path of picture book illustrations. It’s a departure from the hidden object norm, and it’s a genre that could well do with a spot of departing from norms.
Nowhere to Hide for the Hidden Objects
In Wizard of Oz: Hidden Object Games’ case, though, it’s not entirely successful – at least to my subjective eyes. Rather than being unclear, I can’t help thinking that the images are almost too clear. The illustration approach doesn’t give much room for texture and shade, the things that hidden object games tend to use to hide objects. Instead, you’ve got large blocks of colour and glaring items within them. I do think a stylised, children’s book version of a hidden object game can work, but here the finding of things is made to be a little trivial.
That would be fine if the art was appealing, but – and, again, this is massively subjective – I find it a little characterless and lacking in the vibrancy we’ve come to expect from Oz. The screen doesn’t glow with the yellows and greens that you’d expect, and there’s a determination to hang about in gloomy caves, swamps and huts. I do like that it doesn’t default to the popular interpretations of Oz (there are no Judy Garlands or Ariana Grandes here), but it doesn’t quite find its own voice. Still, it’s refreshing to play a hidden object game that doesn’t import the usual photo-realistic landscapes.
Wizard of Oz: Hidden Object Games also attempts to tell a coherent story, which is more than you could say about the other Crisp App Studio fairy-tale reimaginings. Dorothy goes from Kansas to Oz via tornado, and builds her entourage from Scarecrow to Tin Man to Lion. It was enjoyable to anticipate the next step in the story, wondering how it might interpret the Munchkins or the Good Witch. If you’re a fan of the story, it runs parallel with it, adding some extra sequences that bolster matters.
What is the Wizard of Oz Without the Wizard of Oz?
Here comes the BUT. While it’s coherent, it does stop suddenly at the doors to Oz. Yep, you get to gather the fellowship, but you don’t actually get to meet the Wizard of Oz that’s in the title. Our guess is that there’s a second part planned – it’s too convenient that the game stops halfway through the book/film – but that does mean that the story is unsatisfying. It doesn’t even give you a warning of the emergency stop: there’s no ending text or ‘to be continued!’. It just…ends.
Fitting a story to the hidden object stuff has always been difficult for this kind of game, and so it proves here. Dorothy comes across a new friend or location, and a thought bubble materialises next to her. She daydreams of things in the scene, like dolls, seagulls and spanners, which is not the average reaction. It’s hard not to find it all a bit funny and farcical.
Unlike the Wicked Witch, the Game Modes Haven’t Been Watered Down
Most people are here for the hidden object stuff, and it’s a reduced version of the usual Crisp App Studio template. You get to play most of the scenes in four different ways: as ‘silhouettes’ (oddly, this is a lie: they are never silhouettes and are instead the full-colour version of the item – somebody must have copy and pasted the mode incorrectly), spot-the-difference, puzzles or jigsaws.
Spot-the-difference is simple enough, giving you two reduced versions of a landscape and three items that are missing. That number increases the more you play, until almost everything is different. Puzzle has you swapping and rotating squares to make an image, while jigsaw opts for a conventional jigsaw puzzle format. In my efforts to get five-stars in a level or onto the level’s highscore tables, I tended to keep to the Silhouettes and Spot-the-Difference. I’ve never liked how clumsy jigsaw puzzles are with a controller in the hand, and that’s largely true here.
We’ve already mentioned that the hidden object-puzzling is trivialised by how basic the art is, and I get the feeling that the developers know this. It’s the explanation for why ‘hidden caches’ are in the images. You can click on tree canopies or bushes to remove them and find items behind. It’s a welcome spin on things, and some much needed complexity.
Here comes that BUT again. They’re not employed consistently. You can click on treasure chests and suitcases, expecting them to open, but they don’t. Conversely, an item might be hidden behind something incredibly small, like a spiderweb or in a bottle. There are no rules to what is hiding something and what is not: the canopies don’t rustle like they do in the Hidden Cats in… series, and the hidden items in your shopping list aren’t marked like they are in First Time in Rome, for example. All you can do is click everything in the hope that it opens, and that breaks one of our gentleman’s rules of hidden object games. You shouldn’t be expected to click on everything, because that feels like cheating.
There’s no Place Like Home, There’s no Place Like Home
All of these half-compliments and ‘BUT’s add up to a game that comes across as half-finished (and, in the case of the story, precisely half of a game). The art is sketchy, and requires you to click on everything to progress, rather than find it yourself. One of the most colourful and inventive worlds in fiction is dunked in a vat of brown paint. It’s all a bit ramshackle, a bit ‘will this do?’.
Wizard of Oz: Hidden Object Games is not one of Crisp App Studio’s best. It feels like a development studio who just want to go home with a couple of clicks of their ruby slippers. There’s a lack of commitment to a complete story and polished images. To stretch a Wizard of Oz analogy, this could have done with a little more heart, brains and bravery.
Important Links
There’s No Place Like Xbox With Wizard Of Oz: Hidden Object Games – https://www.thexboxhub.com/theres-no-place-like-xbox-with-wizard-of-oz-hidden-object-games/
Buy from the Xbox Store – https://www.xbox.com/en-gb/games/store/wizard-of-oz-hidden-object-games/9pppdhm9ktp4
