Hidden Through Time from Publisher and Developer Crazy Monkey Studios
A modern animated Where’s Waldo enjoyable for all ages. Wonderful relaxing music and animations that are both cute and entertaining.
A point and click where’s Waldo-esk animated hidden items game.
The game presents you with maps full of interactive objects and a list of items to find that are hidden on the screen. Each item on the list has a hint to help you locate it. Once you click the item it will put a temporary circle around it marking it as found and check it off of your list by changing the background color of the item from white to a nice bright green.
While playing the story mode you will travel through time from the Stone Age, to Ancient Egypt, through the Middle ages, and onto the American Old West. Each of the maps has its own look and feel and pretty much everything on the map interacts when you click on it. You’ll start out looking for just a few items on a smallish map. As you progress from stage to stage it starts to get a little more challenging as they add more items, hide them a little better, and make the maps larger. Depending on how you handle the challenge or frustration of searching for small well hidden items on a large map, this will either be tons of fun or irritating.
The graphics are delightfully stick figure cartoonish. It fits the game nicely and really nails the nostalgic feel of the Where’s Waldo books. They also have really gentle, relaxing, and peaceful music. We felt like we could happily spend hours exploring the maps and interacting with the different pieces presented while listening to the sound track and hunting down every last elusive little item.
There are a total of 26 maps in the story mode. They’ve also added a Map Editor mode where users can make their own maps and share them with everyone else. In this mode you have tons of options and can choose from everything in the game to populate your maps; structures, props, characters, animals, and the environmental elements (plants, trees, and rocks). Once you’re happy with your map you can play it locally or upload it for others to play online.
That leads right to the Online mode which lets you play maps created by other users and give them feedback in the form of Thumbs Up or Down. Some of the user made maps are very easy with only a few items placed and others are more elaborate where you can tell the creator spent some time to make a really enjoyable map or tell a little story.
We was surprised by the amount of options you have for searching the online maps. You can search based on like percentage, most played, most cleared, clear percentage, most recent and oldest. You can also favorite maps to find them again quickly if you want to come back to them.
The thing we loved the most about Where’s Waldo wasn’t finding Waldo. It was discovering all of the other little stories and activities that were happening on the page. This game captures that spirit perfectly. Every map had such interesting things happening and captured a little slice of the world with so many things to discover.
Hidden Through Time is available on Xbox One, PS4, Nintendo Switch, Steam, iOS and Android. A digital copy of this game was provided to SimpleGameReviews for the purposes of reviewing the game.
The story is set in Neo San Francisco during the year 2064; just in case you couldn’t guess by the title. You are met by a Relationship Organizational Manager (ROM) named Turing. Your friend Hayden, who is Turing’s creator, has disappeared and Turing is requesting your aide to find him.
While playing you will meet up with a massively diverse cast that you will need to interact with. These supporting characters have their own personalities that you can discover during the conversations you have with them. Some are one time characters, others are recurring.
During your conversations with the NPCs you will have several different dialogue options to choose from. The choices you make during these conversations will affect the outcome of the conversations and determine the nature of your characters relationship with them. If you successfully befriend the NPC’s they will be more willing to help you and will provide you with additional dialogue that reveals more about their back story. Some of the back stories and pretty messed up and will pull at your emotions. You cannot choose every possible conversation option. Some of them will end the conversation immediately or lock out other paths of dialogue.
The pacing is a little slow during the first few chapters but starts to speed up towards the later chapters. You will spend a lot of time reading and or listening to the conversations in game. While they do give you the option to mash a button and skip through the dialogue we recommend taking the time to listen to or read the conversations as that is how the story is told to you and the voice over work is very well done. The game also has a good soundtrack that fits nicely.
We noticed a few issues with the dialogue selection. If the dialogue choice you wanted to make was already selected and highlighted it wasn’t always clickable. Another choice needed to be selected before the choice you wanted to make would become clickable.
True to the cyberpunk genre, science and technology are a big part of the story. From Turing being an AI who develops a personality to genetic modifications using animal DNA to find cures for diseases you see the emphasis on futuristic sciences throughout. Sadly the genetic manipulation has repercussions causing the people who undergo it to manifest animal characteristics. The resulting chimera are called “hybrids” and treated badly. Some are even sterilized. There are also “pure humans” which are humans that have not been modified in any way.
And you guessed it, there is a divide between the “hybrids” and “pure humans”. While playing through the story you will need to interact with NPC’s from both sides to get more information to help with your investigation.
There are several locations to visit some are based on real San Francisco landmarks and locations. This was an interesting choice and great to see.
The pixel art style is nicely done but sadly it doesn’t come close to filling the screen. There is a lot of unused space above as well as on the left and right side. The lower area is used for the dialogue choices so we understand having that space available but it feels there is a lot of wasted space that could’ve been used for .
The game is more of a visual novel then a point and click as you will spend most of your time reading/listening to the game than playing it. Although, like some point and click games it does have some puzzles/mini games which are simple and pretty easy to figure. A few towards the end start to become more challenging.
This game does not have auto save at all so make sure you remember to save. This is something we forgot to do the first time playing and it necessitated replaying several hours of the game…
The game has multiple endings depending on the choices you make during the conversations with the NPC’s and Turing. Which is another reason to save often and make a secondary save.
A futuristic cyberpunk graphic novella. Great cast of voice actors. Arcade art style and soundtrack.
2064: Read Only Memories on Xbox One, PS4, Nintendo Switch, PSVita, Steam, iOS and Android. A digital copy of this game was provided to SimpleGameReviews for the purposes of reviewing the game.
The game starts out with a few pretty simple puzzles that are easy to figure out but becomes more complicated and difficult with each proceeding level as expected. After a few levels the puzzles start to require you to complete a puzzle to get an item that you will need to complete another puzzle.
You will need to locate ingredients while searching around the levels for a Potion. Each of the levels requires a different potion to solve one of the puzzles before being able to complete the level.
The controls are simple as you move your cursor around the screen clicking on items to interact with them. You can zoom in on items, interact with an item by using or moving it, or pick up an item to add it to your inventory. Even though the controls are simple, they are a little finicky as they don’t always respond in the way you intended.
Most of the puzzles are pretty easy to figure out and you can get hints by pressing the appropriate button on your controller. When you do, a “?” pops up on screen next to the items that have hints available. When you click on the “?” it will give you a hint with how you should interact with it. As you progress through the puzzle new hints become available. All that said some of the puzzles just seem to be a lucky guess. We ran into issues with one puzzle in particular that once entered could not be exited without successfully solving it but no clue was ever given for what the solution was.
Like most point and click games you are able to solve some of the puzzles simply by trying every item in your inventory on another item until it is solved.
There doesn’t really seem to be much of a story. You go into a tower to recover a book and becoming trapped, then solve puzzles to make your way back out of the tower.
The art style and audio are both simple and clean. It’s reminiscent of the old flash games with objects on a background that move in specific, limited ways.
The game is a little short as there are only 6 rooms. Depending on how quickly you are able to figure out the puzzles you could complete the game in under 4 hours.
A short Single Screen point and click puzzle game with simple controls and weird puzzles.
The Tower Of Beatrice is available on Xbox, PS4, PS Vita and Nintendo Switch. A digital copy of this game was provided to SimpleGameReviews for the purposes of reviewing the game.
Adventures of Bertram Fiddle Episode 1 – A Dreadly Business From Chorus Worldwide
A point and click murder mystery adventure game set in Victorian London.
You play as Bertram Fiddle, a Detective, explorer, and adventurer with your trusty man-servant Gavin. While trying to look for an adventure you stumble across a Murderer and the adventure begins.
The game starts out holding your hand for the first chapter and after that you are on your own to figure things out other than a few hints here or there by repeating an audio clip. The Gameplay is pretty simple as everything is done by moving the cursor back and forth and using a single button. Most of the items you pick up are used within a few minutes if not less, which makes the puzzles pretty easy to solve.
It has an art style reminiscent of Ren and Stimpy, Cat Dog, or SpongeBob and a very tongue-in-cheek sense of humor. It does not take itself seriously at all with numerous puns and meeting characters with “interesting” names to say the least.
The audio is good with a very fitting soundtrack and good voice over work.
Gameplay is pretty simple as everything is done by moving the cursor back and forth and using a single button. Most of the items you pick up are used within a few minutes if not less.
The game is pretty short and can be completed in 2 hours or less. Keep in mind that this is an episodic game and this is just the first episode. We hope the next episode is longer.
A simple point and click murder mystery, with a interesting look and tongue-in-cheek sense of humor.
Adventures of Bertram Fiddle Episode 1 – A Dreadly Business is available on Xbox, Windows and Nintendo Switch. A digital copy of this game was provided to SimpleGameReviews for the purposes of reviewing the game.
A point and click game with an fun art style, a crazy sense of humor and an interesting story. You get “hints” from eating cookies that you find in random places and sometimes places you would hope never to find a cookie. It has mini games that you will enjoy and drive you crazy at the same time as well as some crazy Game Over screens that will make you laugh and wonder what just happened.
