Hidden Through Time

Developer: Crazy Monkey Studios | Publisher: Crazy Monkey Studios | Release Date: 2020 | Genre: Casual / Hidden Object | Website: Official Website | Purchase: Steam

Ever since the Where’s Wally? (called Where’s Waldo in some countries) books appeared on the scene, people of all ages have had fun trying to spot the iconic character amidst detailed illustrations. Surprisingly, few games attempted to recreate this formula before the arrival of Hidden Through Time. There were a few officially licensed titles and some standouts, like Hidden Folks in 2017, but nothing like what is currently available.

Hidden Through Time challenges players to locate a series of small objects amongst the clutter of large levels full of hand-drawn people and objects. As the name suggests, the game is split into four different time periods, so levels start out with a stone-age theme before moving on to ancient Egypt, the medieval ages, and finally, the Western era. In total, there are 26 different levels for players to work through, and while they start very easy, it’s not long before they are not just bigger but also have more items that need to be found. Unless explicitly choosing this setting in the options menu, players do not have to find every item on a level to progress to the next one. Instead, new levels unlock once specific milestones are reached, which means if you do well on early levels, you could unlock two or even three new ones to try out when you eventually become stuck.

Within the four themes based on the periods that we mentioned earlier, the levels also have their own unique settings. For example, the Stone Age levels have a T-Rex Attack and Rock Expo, while there’s a Jousting Tournament amongst the medieval levels and a Gold Rush level for the Western era. This ensures the game has plenty of variety and interesting levels for players to search with a fine tooth-comb. The levels themselves are bright and colorful, and the art style looks like something straight out of a children’s book. The little characters with stick-figure arms and legs look charming, and the levels have just enough animations to keep things lively. Levels are viewed from an overhead isometric perspective, and you can move around the screen for larger maps as well as zoom in to find those tiny items like knives, bananas, or snails.

All of the items you must find on the level are displayed at the bottom of the screen, and if you are stumped, you can hover your mouse over their images for a cryptic clue of their whereabouts. Most of the items are pretty easy to find, but some smaller ones are hidden quite well. The game doesn’t feature a ton of interaction when it comes to clicking on things, but you can peek inside buildings to see what they are hiding. It’s a pity that as neat as the visuals are, they are not really hiding that many funny secrets or scenes like the Waldo books that had seemingly endless easter eggs to discover. Regarding visual options, Hidden Through Time allows players to select the game’s resolution, set it to full-screen mode, run in the background, and turn Vsync on or off.

It doesn’t take long to complete all 26 levels on offer, but you can reset your progress for either the selected map or all maps if you feel like playing the game again. However, what really sets the game apart from the competition is the inclusion of a level editor. This allows you to create your own levels and connect online to play levels created by other players. Theoretically, this means unlimited new levels, but as with all games that allow user-generated content, you will find plenty of bad with the good. Thankfully, Hidden Through Time lets you sort through the online maps by like percentage, most played, most cleared, clear percentage, most recent, and oldest. It also keeps track of levels you have already played, and you can rate levels and mark your favorites. We found some really nice levels created by other players, but there were also a few that simply consisted of a blank screen with the items that needed to be found plonked down in plain sight. Seeing as some of the Steam achievements require players to complete a certain amount of online maps, it was inevitable that such low-effort attempts would pop up to ease the grind.

After this review was initially published, the game received a slew of DLC packs featuring new levels and themed objects. These include ones themed around Vikings, Japan and Rome, Aztec rituals, and pirate treasures. The DLCs are not only very affordably priced, but even players who don’t own them can still enjoy all the user-created maps that use objects from them.

Creating your own levels is as easy as clicking and dragging, as all the objects at your disposal are arranged into categories. All the objects in your selected category are displayed at the bottom of the screen and can be dragged to where you want them. You can also access basic tools like flipping and duplicating objects and an undo and redo feature. Overall, it’s a straightforward editor, but very easy to use, and with a bit of time and effort, you can come up with some nice maps. Of course, you are still limited to the four time periods and their objects, but at least you can mix and match them for some unique levels.

The audio in Hidden Through Time is pretty mellow, and while the number of music tracks feels a little on the low side, they never become annoying. You can, however, enable or disable the sound, ambient sound, and music or adjust the sound levels for each independently. We have no problems with the user interface either, and everything can quickly and easily be accessed with just a few mouse clicks.

Overall, we had fun with Hidden Through Time, and although it didn’t take very long to discover everything on every level, there’s still plenty of user content to work through. The fact that the game has no timers or click limits makes it a very relaxing experience, and it is also a family-friendly title that players of all ages can enjoy. Experienced players may find it a little easy, but once again, there are plenty of challenging user-created levels to take on. If you are looking for something that will help you unwind without requiring a significant investment in time or brainpower, then Hidden Through Time comes highly recommended.