There’s a game coming to a device near you. It’s called Hidden Folks. You’re going to want the biggest monitor you have. Not that you can’t play it on, say, your tablet. Just that you’re going to want to see it large. And, yes, it’s that kind of fun – funny enough, challenging enough, different enough that you might even consider it a good enough reason, if you don’t already have a big screen, to get one.
Let me show you what I mean:
I know, I know, but please don’t think Where’s Waldo. Everybody thinks Where’s Waldo. It’s not Where’s Waldo. In fact, there’s no Waldo – there’s critters and thingies and stuff to find, each accompanied by a clever clue. Lands to explore – each land different, with different thingies to look for. There’s pointing and clicking and things to open and close and grow and cut down. You don’t have to find everything to get to the next land, which is both a relief and an invitation to come back and try to find the rest of the stuff. A lot of the strategy is figuring out when to zoom in and when to zoom out. Overview. Then close-up detail. Then overview again. It’s more like what Where’s Waldo would be like if it were designed, from the beginning, to be played on a device, by playfully creative people with a deep appreciation for whimsy.
In sum: Hidden Folks is Major Fun
The designers note:
“Hidden Folks is draw by hand, scanned in, placed, layered manually, animated, and scripted. All sounds you’ll hear originate from the developers’ mouths. There are no time limits, no points, just areas with a bunch of folks and objects to be found.”
Such a gentle invitation to point and click your way to significant hours of light, but deep fun. Funny fun. The funny sounds. The funny drawings. Fun so gentle that you can play it with kids. In fact, the kids could even play it by themselves if you’d let them. So inviting that even passing kibitzers will find themselves gleefully included. Playful fun.
Currently, the game has around 15 areas with themes like the camping, the desert, a factory, the suburbs, and many more. “You can expect,” adds the designer, “more areas later.” For sure.
The lead designer of Hidden Folk also happens to be a much-admired friend of mine: Adriaan de Jongh, designer of Bounden (a game I was so fascinated with and by that I wrote three posts about) and Fingle (four posts). Hidden Folk is a big, big game, and required the full engagement of Adriaan, his colleague, Sylvain Tegroeg (and a host of creative others).
Hidden Folks was just made available on this very day! You, lucky folk that you are, can find it on Steam (PC, Mac, Linux) at your local App Store, for iOS, tvOS, and, a bit later (patience playful one) Android.