Hidden Dogs

Genre: Puzzle

Players: 1

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Review:

(Note: Review code provided by the kind folks at Silesia Games)

Hidden Dogs is a family-friendly “hidden object”-style Puzzle Game released in 2025 on PC, then ported in 2026 to Xbox One and Nintendo Switch. As the title indicates, this game has you searching for dogs hidden in 15 scenes. In addition, you’ll also be looking for specific objects in each stage.

Hidden Dogs has a bit of a story, and it’s a bit of tongue-in-cheek meta-commentary about the fact that there are an absolute ton of “Hidden Cat” games, but not much in the way of hidden dog games. I would suggest that this may be because hiding is a trait that’s fairly common in cats but not so much in dogs, but I suppose that’s neither here nor there.

When it comes to the presentation, this game uses a cartoony 2D art style that’s largely monochrome, coloring in objects as you find them with another flat color. This is common for this genre, but I actually have a pretty major complaint about the visuals in Hidden Dogs – because the art style used here is sloppy even for something cartoony, and the lines are particularly thick, it can make it unfairly difficult to locate dogs that are often mostly-hidden. How was I meant to know that random squiggle was meant to be a dog’s ear poking out from behind that piece of furniture? It could have been anything!

These visuals are backed by a relaxed jazzy soundtrack that works well enough for this style of game, but is otherwise not very noteworthy or memorable. What is memorable are all the little dog sounds you hear as you play, as they seem to have been provided by random folks that seem to have been asked, without using stereotypical “bark” or “woof” sounds, to make their closest approximation to something sounding like a dog, and often failing at doing so. Sometimes they just seem to be making confused noises or random verbal utterances. It’s so adorably amateurish it’s hard for me to dislike it.

The core gameplay here has some typical elements of the genre, with players controlling the game with an on-screen cursor, or using the touchscreen in handheld mode. There’s a hint system with a cooldown timer, and a zoom function that disappointingly only has two levels. In addition to the dogs, players will be searching for specific objects in the scene, as well as dogs that are completely hidden within something that’s vaguely the same shape as them. I actually hated this last feature – not only is there nothing in the environment to indicate a dog is hidden in this place, but the shape often only vaguely resembles the shape you’re instructed to look for.

At $5, Hidden Dogs doesn’t compare well to multiple other (mostly cat-centric) games in the genre, which often offer more hidden objects in a wider variety of larger scenes, at a lower price. Plus those other games don’t have the same problems this one does with its’ ill-fitting art style and objects hidden inside things with little indication they’re there. I’m sorry to say that if you enjoy hidden object games and prefer dogs over cats, you’re still probably better off with a hidden cat game.

tl;dr – Hidden Dogs is a family-friendly hidden object-style Puzzle game where players try to uncover the 500+ hidden dogs and other objects in various locations. While this game does have some enjoyable gameplay, it compares poorly to other games in the genre, with less content than similar titles, a sloppy art style that actually makes it harder to see what you’re searching for, and some dogs hidden inside items with little indication you can interact with the object in question. In short, even if you like dogs more than cats, you’re still better off with one of numerous hidden cat games.

Grade: D+

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