Hidden Folks

Genre: Puzzle

Players: 1

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Review:

Hidden Folks is a family-friendly “hidden object”-style Puzzle Game released on PC in 2017 and ported to Nintendo Switch in 2018. While this game’s title indicates you’ll be searching for “folks”, you’ll actually be looking for a variety of over 300 objects hidden throughout 32 different scenes.

The presentation here is mostly extremely underwhelming. All of the game’s visuals are depicted with simple hand-drawn 2D visuals in a very amateurish, squiggly style that isn’t much to look at. There are a few simple animations throughout each scene, but mostly this looks pretty unimpressive, and it’s a problem for the gameplay too because the indistinct art style and lack of color can make it harder to spot objects. There’s no background music here either, though the game does at least do one thing that’s amusing, with everything in the game giving off sound effects that nearly all seem to be voiced by someone making simple noises, which is kinda’ endearing.

When it comes to the gameplay, Hidden Folks ticks a lot of boxes of the stuff I associate with the worst games of this kind. Objects you need to find can be hidden behind other objects, with no indication what is and is not clickable. What’s more, even after you click on interactive objects to move them out of the way, some return to their original position after the fact, meaning you may well find yourself searching the same spot multiple times. Also, the hint system here is nearly worthless, with only a short sentence vaguely describing an object’s location, or sometimes only describing the object itself and giving no indication where it is.

The game also has levels that have the player trying to accomplish a task rather than searching for specific objects, such as helping a man cross a long pathway with obstructions… but the game doesn’t give an indication what you should do to help him or where to look.

I should note that this game does have support for both standard gamepad play as well as touchscreen play in portable mode, so that’s nice. But it doesn’t really change my overall opinion of the game.

In the end, as adorable as the sound design in this game is, I’ve gotta’ say I found Hidden Folks to be one of the worst hidden object-style Puzzle games I’ve ever played, and that a game this visually-ugly and with frustrating gameplay mechanics can be priced at $12 feels like an insult. If you’re looking for a hidden object game on Nintendo Switch, you have countless better options than this.

tl;dr – Hidden Folks is a family-friendly hidden object-style Puzzle game where players try to uncover 300+ hidden objects within 32 different scenes. While the sound design here is adorable and the game has decent gamepad and touchscreen controls, just about everything else here is terrible. Ugly and unhelpful graphics, frustrating aimless game design, and a frequently useless hint system all add up to a gameplay experience that just is not fun and can’t compare to numerous other games in this style on Nintendo Switch.

Grade: D

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