Finding Things...Without Knowing Exactly What You're Looking For (Variation #2)

Hidden puzzle mechanics in most games work by giving the player some kind of list. Whether it be a list with all of the names of the objects hidden or a list with all the pictures, the list tends to be clear in what object the player needs to find (with the exception of words that can be taken multiple ways such as arrow and mouse).

What if the list wasn't as clear?

Hidden puzzle mechanics by nature challenge the player's perceptual skills more than anything else. By giving the player's the list in another way, the mechanics can challenge the player's skills at using context clues in deducing the correct answer.

For example, there could be a game about a disorganized merchant who goes to another land to sell their goods. The people really want to buy the goods, but they have a hard time finding the right words in the merchant's language so they resort to describing the items. In an instance of gameplay, a person would come up to the player, describing one or multiple objects they want ("I'm looking for an item that tells me what time it is"). The player can then take some time to figure out what the person is looking for (a clock). Then the player would turn to a scene of the shop and find the items they think the person is describing.

Here are two illustrations of two alternative ways of giving clues (click to enlarge):

Having the extra challenge in hidden puzzle mechanics allows for more kinds of gameplay the mechanics can work with as well as become a tool in developing the player's thinking skills.

Finding Things...Competitively (Variation #1)

So far, the hidden puzzle mechanic has been seen as a mechanic mainly for casual games and tends to only involve one player (one can argue that multiple people could be working together to find objects, but the games are generally designed so one person is able to solve the puzzle). So how can this mechanic be made more interesting for people uninterested in the casual game genre?

Why not make it a competitive mechanic? I can envision this going two ways:

The first way has two players set up at separate computers (or even mobile devices) linked to the same game. Both players are given the same scene with the same list of objects to find. If played on a computer, the player would not be able to track where the other player's mouse is located and vice versa. As soon as one player finds an object, it is crossed out on both players' list. The goal for the player would be to have found the most objects on the list after the entire list has been crossed out. Games that run too long would be prevented by a timer, in which the player that found the most objects by the end would win. Games that end in a stalemate would be broken by having the players find a special object hidden in the same scene or a new scene (the special object would be an item that is able to be hidden in all the scenes, similar to the Pegasus in I Spy scenes).

Here is a sketch of how the gameplay might work:

While the main action is still finding items off a list, the mechanic is now responding to the actions of multiple players rather than one, adding the competitive element. This way, the hidden puzzle mechanic is still easy for new players to learn, but by having another player it can take a much more active role in a game and be used as a core mechanic in games outside of the casual genre.

The second way involves changing up how the penalties associated with hidden puzzle mechanics are involved. There would still be two players set up at separate devices. The players would be looking at the same scene, but the scenes would act independently of each other (one player cannot clear objects on the other player's screen). The players would also have a different list from each other. The goal for the player would be to clear their list before the other player does. While already a different way in itself, the mechanic is interesting due to its possible use of abilities. These abilities, either found as additional hidden items in the scene or somehow unlocked during gameplay, would allow a player to send a penalty commonly found in hidden puzzle focused games to the other player. This would include temporarily freezing a player's mouse so they can't click or move, temporarily blurring the screen so the player can't look for a short time, or even adding an object to the player's list and setting them back an object.

Here is a sketch of how the penalty abilities might be used:

Adding the competitive element to the hidden puzzle mechanic allows for innovative use of the hidden puzzle penalty mechanics and could allow the hidden puzzle mechanic to branch into social games. This allows more interactivity between players rather than just having players competing for a high score or passively helping each other out.

Thoughts on Finding Stuff for Fun

Patrick Wylie is the VP of Big Fish Game Studios and one of the creators of the Mystery Case Files series. He goes into the history and development of the first game, its effect on casual games, and where the future of hidden puzzle games might be going. 

 Interview with Patrick Wylie Part 1
Interview with Patrick Wylie Part 2

A Gamasutra article about the upcoming hidden puzzle game, Dead Reckoning, and why developers and consumers alike should be looking into hidden puzzle games.

Gamasutra article: Innovation in the Hidden Picture Genre

Adrian Chmielarz is the game designer for The Vanishing of Ethan Carter. He explains how casual games (though he specifically talks about hidden puzzle games) can hold their own and how hardcore games can learn a thing or two from casual games.

 Adrian Chmielarz on the Mistake of Hating Casual Games

Finding Stuff can be Fun for Everyone

Hidden puzzle mechanics make games engaging to all kinds of audiences.

As mentioned before, games and printed media that use hidden puzzle mechanics mainly appealed to children. As developers found new ways to use hidden puzzle mechanics, the audience for hidden puzzles significantly grew.

This can be seen when the Where's Waldo? series was created. When the Walker Books company was developing what would become the first Where's Waldo? book with the creator, Martin Handford, somebody asked, "Wouldn't it be good if you were looking for an individual within that crowd scene, rather than just looking at a crowd?" Shortly after two scenes were displayed at the Bologna Book Fair, "...there was a huge crowd of people standing round looking for [Waldo]." Simply by adding a distinct figure to the illustrations, the pictures were given a purpose and became a game for everyone of all ages to play. The books appealed to new audiences with their wordless picture books with one goal. As children's editor Caroline Horn puts it, "...the books' strengths are with boys and boys who don't particularly like reading. There's nothing else like it and it's a brilliant travel book...they're very quirky, very colourful, and you can get hooked."

This can also be seen when Big Fish Studios released Mystery Case Files: Huntsville and hidden puzzle mechanics became a huge hit with casual gamers. With the portal already popular for its marble popper, match-3, and mahjong games, their audience instantly clicked with the new kind of gameplay hidden puzzle mechanics offered. Even when other developers jumped into the genre, many of their first games paid homage to the first Mystery Case Files games.

Finding Stuff for Fun is Educational

Hidden puzzle mechanics are an educational and developing tool.

The founders of Highlights magazine, Gary and Caroline Myers, developed the magazine around the motto, "Fun with a Purpose." Specifically, they believe, " children develop positive self-worth by using their creativity and imagination, developing their reading, thinking and reasoning skills, and learning to treat others with respect, kindness and sensitivity" According to the official Highlights website, "children are best taught values by seeing positive examples in stories and articles," and many of the magazine's features, including the Hidden Objects page, were created around this idea.

The creators of I Spy, author Jean Marzollo and photographer Walter Wick, saw hidden puzzles as a way to combine fun and education. Marzollo's rhythmic and rhyming riddles combined with Wick's unique photographs help develop children's language, problem-solving, and creativity skills. As Marzollo puts it, "[The I SPY books] pull you in and hold you in a visual spell until you have found everything. [They] also make you think, and they can help you learn to read."

Finding Stuff for Fun is Still Evolving

Developers are still finding new ways to innovate hidden puzzle mechanics and games.

Like any other mechanic, hidden puzzle mechanics can get old and stale and will lose the appeal they once had. This is why developers continue to find and try new ways to innovate hidden puzzle mechanics:

-Through new narratives:

While it is possible for the mechanics to hold their own in a non-narrative game, a majority of hidden puzzle focused games rely on a rich and compelling storyline to compel the player to continue. For example, while the early Mystery Case Files games stand on their own, the later games were developed with more story in mind such as the Ravenhearst story arc. The hidden puzzles serve as an obstacle to the next part of the story and the players must complete them in order receive items that will allow them to continue. Other games such as the Dark Parables series use hidden puzzle mechanics outside of designated scenes to hide objects that award additional narratives when they are all found.

Several trailers for hidden puzzle games focus on selling the story:

Phantasmat

Mystery Case Files: 13th Skull

Dark Parables: Queen of Sands

-Through secondary puzzle mechanics:

Secondary puzzle mechanics allow hidden puzzle mechanics to still be the focus of hidden puzzle games, but help break up how often the hidden puzzles are used so they do not get stale. A majority of games simply use a different puzzle mechanic in certain situations, such as sequence or swapping puzzles. But the game, Phantasmat, adds a small twist on this by allowing the player the option to switch between completing a match-3 game and completing a hidden object scene. For every eye that makes it to the bottom of the match-3 game, an object the player needs to find from the scene is eliminated.

Phantasmat Match-3 Gameplay

PuppetShow: Destiny Undone Swapping Gameplay

Dark Dimensions: City of Fog Swap and Match Gameplay

-Through twists on hidden puzzle mechanics themselves:

Similar to how Phantasmat gave another option to complete hidden puzzles aside from using hints, games continue to find more ways to make hidden puzzle mechanics unique from the standard scene with hints. This includes morphing objects, scenes within scenes, and helpers.

Mystery Case Files: Madame Fate Morphing Objects 

Mystery Case Files: Madame Fate Scenes within Scenes 

-Through mixing other genres:

A majority of hidden puzzle games are a mix of puzzle and point-and-click adventure already. Though some games in other genres use hidden puzzle mechanics in a smaller capacity. For example, in the beat-em-up action game, Dragon's Crown, several sparkles are hidden throughout the levels that the player can mouse over for extra loot. Runes are also hidden in the background and can be clicked on to perform spells.

Dragon's Crown Hidden Caches

Dragon's Crown Runes

Hiding Stuff in Video Games for Fun

The transition from paper to digital was quite slow for the hidden puzzle mechanic. The 'I Spy' creators made the first venture into the video game world with their line of 'I Spy' CD-ROM games, with one of them being 'I Spy Spooky Mansion' released in 1999. While the games retained the charm their book counterparts had, hidden puzzle games as a whole had yet to break through to a wider gaming audience beyond children.

 A sample of gameplay  can be found here.

This changed with the release of 'Mystery Case Files: Huntsville' by Big Fish Studios in November 2005. Hailed as the first true hidden object video game, $1 million worth of digitally distributed copies were sold in under three months, breaking all previous casual game sales records by over 100%. Hidden puzzle games were not just for children anymore.

Today, games that primarily use hidden puzzle mechanics dominate a large part of the casual games market. Several casual games studios have at least one hidden puzzle game or series. The genre continues to transform as designers find more ways to include secondary puzzle mechanics and compelling narratives to keep the hidden puzzle mechanic interesting.

Some notable puzzle games or series that focus on hidden puzzle mechanics:

- Mystery Case Files

Sample Gameplay of Dire Grove

- Phantasmat

  Sample Gameplay of Phantasmat

-Dark Parables

 Sample Gameplay of the Exiled Prince

-Awakening

 Sample Gameplay of the Dreamless Castle

-Nightfall Mysteries

Sample Gameplay of Curse of the Opera

-Hidden Expedition

 Sample Gameplay of the Uncharted Islands

As video games continue to make their way into the mobile gaming market, hidden object games will reach out to a new audience on a new platform.

- CSI: Hidden Crimes

 Sample Gameplay of Hidden Crimes 

-Hidden Objects: Mystery Crimes

Sample Gameplay of Mystery Crimes

Hiding Stuff For Fun...Before Video Games

The hidden puzzle mechanic was around long before video games. Several children's books and magazines contained hidden object scenes as an activity.

For example, the Highlights Magazine, which was first published in June of 1946, has had a Hidden Pictures page in every issue since it began. Each Hidden Pictures page consists of a black-and-white drawn scene and a list of names of the objects hidden or pictures of the objects themselves. The objects would be placed throughout the scene based on where their shape blends in the scene the best.

Example of a Hidden Picture page. An interactive one can be found here.

Another example would be the I Spy books, which were first published in 1992. These books contain several scenes that are elaborate photographs ranging from a variety of objects floating in white space to a sand castle with a large battle being fought by medieval soldiers in and around it. Taking a step up from the clues Highlights gives, the clues in I Spy books are written as riddles that fit a rhyming pattern. This makes the clues themselves much more interesting to read.

Example of an I Spy page.

One of the most popular children's series for both children and adults is the Where's Waldo? series or the Where's Wally? series outside of the United States and Canada. First published in 1987, illustrator Martin Handford draws the character Waldo somewhere in a giant scene depicting a crowd of people doing various activities. The only goal for the reader is to find Waldo in each scene with bonus hidden characters and objects listed at the end of the book. The Where's Waldo? books introduce a small twist on the hidden object game mechanic with their use of misleading objects and characters that are similarly colored or dressed as Waldo. The series also created a phenomena which took finding hidden objects out of the pages and into reality with people dressing up as the characters and hiding in actual crowds.

 Example of a Where's Waldo page.