Game review: Hidden Folks – a searching game with surreal animation, stunning sound design and compulsive interactivity
Hidden Folks is a brilliant little game, one that breathes creative new life into the age-old idea of finding objects in busy landscapes
de Jongh/Tegroeg
4/5 stars
There’s something strangely addictive about Where’s Wally books (or Waldo, if you’re American), even for us supposed adults. There’s that initial confusion and disarray followed by a thrilling sense of discovery as you find that weirdo in a striped-shirt in the busy scenes.
That concept can be traced back to the 17th-century wimmelbilder children’s books, but it takes a heightened level of creativity to translate the idea to a virtual setting. Hidden Folks (for iOS, Mac, Linux and Windows; Android coming soon) is impressive for a number of reasons.
It’s impressive in its contrasting sense of scale, where the simple task of finding hidden people is coupled with massive monochromatic canvases that are incredibly rich in detail. It’s impressive in that it takes a simple, successful and (one would think) mostly overdone concept, and builds on it through surreal animation, stunning sound design and compulsive interactivity.