Nothing is ever quite as comfortable as finding things that you don’t need. That’s why object-finders make for great games—all you need is a clue and patience as you sift through cluttered rooms, worlds, dungeons, or what have you. So instead of having to find your real world belongings, like misplaced car keys for the tenth time this week, developer Rogueside’s ‘Hidden Through Time 2: Myths & Magic’ will instead ask you to venture through ages of great stories in the Middle East, the Middle Ages, and the 80s with a wizarding touch.
Let’s do a bit of spotting ourselves.
Mythic(al) Objects
You’ve played ‘Where’s Waldo’ before. Or any old object finding puzzle on the back of a cereal box. Hidden Through Time is as simple as clicking on objects that are presented to you on the bottom side of the screen. Each map is introduced with a narrator narrating the way of who is doing what: whether Sinbad is daring to find treasures or a group of unlikely adventurers seeking to save their kingdom; it’s a cute way to adapt stories of yore and the accompanying visuals are adorable. You’ll find dancing skellies, battles of the ages, and little stick people just trying to get by as you viciously click on them and through each and every building to find stuff, including each level’s secret objective. Mouse and keyboard works as expected but the controller support surprised me by being a lot more intuitive than I would’ve expected.
Hidden Through Time’s biggest boon is how satisfying it can be to find an object that had you stumped for ages. Each object has a clue attached to it that gives you an idea of where something might be. Some might be right in your face, others might need some probing based on environmental clues, and some are outright just annoying to find. The occasional pixel hunt isn’t the end of the world but I can’t say I was enthused falling into one when I’m so close to finishing a level. And like the game’s visuals, the music is nice to listen to until it isn’t: each era has a short, two minute song that loops and eventually begins to grate on the ears as you hunt that blended-in key. Variations or gradual increase in scale would’ve likely worked well here but considering the project I understand why it likely wasn’t possible.
One of this game’s core mechanics is the ability to change a level’s time of day to reveal new objects to be found. Some stuff can only be found in one season, others in the opposite, and a few objects might be found in both. I like how the map essentially adapts and continues the story of the other side—it makes for good visual story telling. But this feature is also fairly uninteresting in the grand scheme of things as all it ends up being is a level within a level and ends up being an extra step in your searches as the overall level design doesn’t change much. The UI doesn’t order these objects in your objective list either and you’ll find items jumbled between daylight or snowy seasons across all the levels.
I did eventually run into a bug in one of the campaigns that prevented me from completing the last level. As you find items, the next level opens up so long as you hit the criteria for objects found, which I appreciate as you won’t be able to find everything as a first glance. But the level lockout was a bit annoying and, although the game offers a reset progress button, it would wipe out my progress across all the eras and I wasn’t really in the mood for that. I also ran into a few layering issues and a bug with the online maps system that prevented me from rating them.
Still, it didn’t prevent me from enjoying my time with Hidden Through Time. The afformentioned online mode consists of maps people have created with the game’s built-in Architect map editor mode. When you’ve had your fill of the main campaign, you can jump into player-made maps and continue your searches there. I didn’t mess around with the editor myself as I have no creative bone in my body, but making things within it appeared to be intuitive enough.
From cute visuals to the occasional brow-furrowing object hunt, Hidden Through Time 2 is a mostly relaxing object hunting game. Lots of levels to take on that’ll keep you busy for some hours. Though the time mechanism isn’t all that and the single-looping songs might get a bit unpleasant, it shouldn’t stop you from getting a warm feeling of finding a well-hidden book. ∎
Hidden Through Time 2: Myths & Magic will launch on PlayStation, Nintendo Switch, and Xbox consoles on the 28th of January.
Hidden Through Time 2: Myths & Magic
Played on
Windows 11/Linux Mint PC
PROS
- Lovely visuals.
- Finding objects is fun and comforting.
- Cool little editor to make your own maps.
CONS
- One song with no variation between campaigns becomes grating very quickly.
- Some hunts become more pixel matching than clue-based.
- The time of day mechanic doesn't add much to the game.
- Bugs.
