Hidden Folks Review: Here's Waldo After All These Years (PC, iOS, Android, Mac) (Played on PC)

    As a kid, I was a big fan of the Where's Waldo (or whatever your country calls him) books. To those of you who weren't lucky enough to have those as a kid, they were a series of large picture books where you had to find the titular bobble-capped man in each scene, along with other people or points of interest depending on the book or scene. They were widely popular due to their entertaining nature and their whimsical art style, which sadly didn't translate well to the NES Waldo game made by Bethesda. There are video games like Where's Waldo today in the 'hidden object' genre, but I never got into them. I think it was because I couldn't really see any way you could spice up what was basically a glorified Where's Waldo, and they always seemed to have a story that triee to offer a weak justification for why I was looking for completely random trash:

    "Okay, we've finally found the suspect's hideout. If our sources are correct, he should be in there along with the kidnapped pilot. Time to move in."

"Now, hang on, rookie! Before we can move in, we have to follow proper procedure. Let me check my phone...okay. We need to find two pine cones, a metal water bottle, a Webster dictionary..."

"Sir, we received a call from the suspect. He's threatening to kill the hostage!"

"Dammit! Has anyone found that pool cue? We cannot move in until we found that pool cue!"

(Yeah, someone made a hidden object game about a real-life killer who's still alive and in prison. Probably not the most respectful thing you can do for the deceased, their family, or the killer)

    But back to what we're talking about, it's Adriaan de Jongh and Sylvain Tegroeg's casual hidden object game Hidden Folks!

This is actually a late-game puzzle, but it featured the title, so I figured it'd work for a title screen

    If you've read any Where's Waldo book, then it should take no time to figure out the basics, and if you haven't, then it still shouldn't take much to learn how to play. The game has multiple maps separated into (so far) five different themes. Those themes are the forest/jungle, the dry lands, a town/city, a snowy mountain, and a factory/lab. Each map, which ranges in size from a single screen to dozens of screens, gives you a list of people, animals, and other objects that you have to find in order to complete the map. Each object has a clue that hints at where the object is hidden or what you have to do to find them. An example I can recall is for a man in a suburbs area who is "halfway to hearing his fortune." That one puzzled me for a good while due to the ambiguous wording, until I noticed a fortune teller's trailer with a small line of people standing outside.

If I ever found myself camping and I survive the bugs, that Pikachu would me be. I hate being disconnected from the grid. I would be a terrible survivalist.

    Hidden Folks takes a step further than most hidden object games by making use of the interactivity of video games that book do not have. There are quite a few objects that require interacting with the environment or solving a simple puzzle in order to access them. In the picture above, Pika the copyright-friendly electric rodent is hidden inside a tent, but clicking on the side a few times will roll it up and let you find what Nintendo missed. There are also times when you have to click and drag something or turn a valve as part of a puzzle. As a word of advice, if you click something innocuous and hear a grunt noise, you can probably drag it around. There are also a couple of stages that completely revolve around solving a puzzle.

Such as this one, where you help a man complete his walk by moving bridges into his walking path.

    To me, there are two things that really stand out about this game. The first would be it's presentation. The games uses a simple monochrome style with a hand-drawn art style that makes the objects in-game easily recognizable and charming. The most notable part of the presentation, however, is the sound design. Every singe sound effect in the game is done by mouth as opposed to computer software. Whether it be a monkey's chattering, a truck's "meep meep", or the unexpected sound of  kissing when you click on a sign with two skiers smacking face-first into each other, all 1400+ sound effects are done by mouth. It's the sort of design choice that could be annoying to some people, but it's done so well here that it becomes just so cute and charming.

The desert: A place where you can find artists, Aladdin, and adorable yet hungry vultures

    Personally, what I feel is the best thing about this game is that this game is a high-quality computer game that manages to be pretty kid-friendly. It's basically Where's Waldo for the 21st century and it seems like a good choice for a kid to have on an iPad for those long car rides. It's not 100% G-rated (I recall a reference to nicotine and a clue for a potted plant fallen near a conveyor belt that goes "When this plant saw the end was near it decided to end the ride itself."), but it otherwise pretty tame as far as kid's media goes. Besides, it's probably better than blindly roaming the Internet and finding disturbing copyright-infringing cartoons or bootleg Flash games that might have viruses and are only really enjoyable when a grown man or two are watching/playing and riffing on them. Even if you aren't a kid, the charm of Hidden Folks makes this game a very good choice that stands out among the many samey games in the hidden object genre.