Hidden Through Time Review

Hidden Through Time is a charming hidden object game that takes you through humanity's history — starting off all the way back in the Stone Age — as you look for different items.

Although I really love a good hidden object title, I haven’t played too many throughout the years. This mostly stems from the fact that many of them rely on tactics I find unfun — such as basically flooding the screen with clutter and showing only the tip of the item you’re looking for — or because they don’t have anything that catches my attention. Meanwhile, Hidden Through Time posed a very interesting prospect: I’d get to visit different eras of our history while looking for random objects. 

Whilst gameplay-wise, the game isn't particularly innovative, as all you do is look for predetermined objects through a cutesy area, it's definitely one of the titles I've liked most of the genre so far. However, despite its simplicity, what few features it does have — such as being able to interact with certain items by clicking — don't become overly frustrating, especially if you don't get too competitive about how many times you allow yourself to click.

That being said, it's obvious that its developer — Rogueside — really just wants you to relax and have fun, as the game doesn't punish you for misclicking and offers clues freely. And although it's lenient in its difficulty by not hiding items inside other items, it still isn't a brainless challenge: there were plenty of stages that kept me stumped for minutes on end.

I also appreciated that each time you enter a new era, the stages revert back to easy and slowly increase in difficulty as the levels go on. This helps you get used to the items and colour pallets, so it's not too overwhelming once you get to the areas with a lot of items on the screen. I think it was a phenomenal way to avoid the difficulty scaling into a ridiculous amount of clutter!

Hidden Through Time isn't a long title, especially if you're really good at finding objects or use the hint system freely. This is where one of my favourite features of the game comes into play: the map editor. Not only can you make your own and share it, but you can also play all kinds of levels made by the community, and there are some incredibly gorgeous ones. Of course, if you want to support the developer more — or perhaps want new props — there's always the DLC available, which includes areas from Rome to Japan!

With how much liberty and relaxation Hidden Through Time exudes, it's very easy to recommend it. If you like hidden object games, there's no reason to not pick this adorable title up! Whilst a bit on the simple side, I've had an enormous amount of fun booting it up to wind down from work.