Hidden Through Time

Genre: Puzzle

Players: 1, Online Content Sharing

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Review:

Hidden Through Time is a Puzzle game in the “hidden objects” vein of games. More specifically, this game plays much like one of those “Where’s Waldo” books, except instead of looking for Waldo, you’re looking for a select series of objects or people hidden among the crowd. This game was released for multiple platforms in 2020, including Nintendo Switch.

In terms of presentation, this game uses simple, hand-drawn visuals (characters are little more than lightly-animated stick figures), which may seem underwhelming but it actually works pretty well for this style of game, since it helps to ensure that everything has a unified look, and keeps individual objects from sticking out. This is paired with appropriate sounds when you click on things (including incomprehensible muttering when you click on a person) and a really pleasant, relaxing soundtrack that does a good job of making this feel like the sort of game you can just sit and chill out with.

In terms of gameplay, this game does a few interesting things beyond the simple “search and click” gameplay, as some objects can be interacted with. Tents and buildings can be clicked on to snoop inside, and some objects can be broken to see behind them. It’s not quite as extensive as I’d like – it would have been great if they had really run with the concept. However, it’s a nice touch regardless. Also nice are the “hints” the game gives you so you’re not just searching blind, but rather searching while trying to decipher these hints, which makes the game seem a bit less randomized.

Another nice inclusion here is that the game allows you to create and share your own custom “map” online with others, choosing a time period (or mixing and matching), placing objects, buildings, and people, even opening up buildings to place things inside, choosing which objects need to be searched for, and creating the hints others should follow, until you’re ready to drop it online for others to enjoy… or you can simply skip all of that to play the levels other players have made.

What’s more, the Nintendo Switch has a real advantage over other platforms here, in that not only is this a game that is ideally suited to portable play, but players can choose to use either traditional controls or the touchscreen, with the touchscreen really being the preferred way to play – it’s just so much more natural to pinch to zoom out or do the… er… reverse-pinch… thingy? … to zoom in, plus of course tapping directly on objects you want to interact with. However, the game works perfectly fine on a TV as well.

As for complaints, I have a few. Firstly, while you can zoom out to quite a distance, the game limits how far you can zoom in, and I really wish it let you do more. Also, I really wish the game came with more than just four historical eras (five if you get the DLC), and I wish there was more variety to them. When pretty much all of the time periods you can choose have characters wielding bladed weapons, it feels a bit limiting, and I would have loved to have been able to mix in characters and buildings set in Victorian England, or from a futuristic time period.

Still, if you’re craving a Nintendo Switch game to give you a good “Where’s Waldo” experience, Hidden Through Time does a fantastic job of delivering that, even giving players potentially limitless content through a custom creator tool and content sharing. There are a lot of areas here where this game could have been made even better, but for what it is, it’s more than sufficient.

tl;dr – Hidden Through Time is a hidden objects-style Puzzle game that’s reminiscent of Where’s Waldo, with a few clever additions to the formula, including the ability to create and share your own puzzles. There are definitely areas where even more could have been done to make this game even better, but overall this game succeeds very well at what it’s aiming to do.

Grade: B

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