Should hidden object games be its own genre?
That's kind of a strange question; Because some people find them enjoyable, obviously. The same question could be asked for anything else that one does not like - because you dislike something doesn't mean others don't.
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maybe you missed the poll, but im just wondering in general
i was expecting it to be an experience similar to TellTale games but the story was bland and and lacking in presentation
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Well the one you tried it's one of the worst af far as i have heard(haven't played it myself). I'm not a very warm fan of HOGS but until now the ones i played were decent enough and i enjoyed them which made me put a couple more in my wl. You just have to be into the HO puzzles and be able to enjoy the more casual gameplay they offer i guess.
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Maybe HoG is not for you, but you still can try some games.
http://store.steampowered.com/app/483420/Adam_Wolfe/
There is a group about HoG in steam:
http://steamcommunity.com/groups/hoggroup
or you can see some games review in curator
bump btw
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Hidden object games filled the vacuum that was left when the ye olde point and click adventure game genre died in the very late 90's. The genre brought puzzles-sans-moon logic to underrepresented groups - the casual female crowd, appropriate from children to the elderly - and continue to flourish today.
Seeing them next to the new wave of point and click adventure games (like out of Wadjet Eye and Daedalus) is like looking at two animals that share a common ancestor but have evolved in differing ways.
Artifex Mundi is the big name in hidden object games today, and is a prolific publisher. There are rises and falls in quality across their timeline, but still hold a special place in my heart. My favorite series of theirs is the Enigmatis trilogy. If you want a standalone with a different kind of story, try Mind Snares: Alice's Journey.
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thank you!!
would there be uplifting stories in there? or is all about the thrill?
they seem to live and die by the quality of the story
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I think Nearwood is the happiest one i played, hidden object games generally use some form of conflict and troubles as main elements, "feelgood" type is really rare. Though they very rarely use any violence - having murders like in Crimson Lily is pretty rare overall. The Brink of Consciousness games on the other hand are like crime stories, and pretty dark. Great if you want your dose of thriller.
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I think they're all pretty uplifting, in the sense that like you're a determined woman out to save someone from some kind of supernatural threat and uncover a mystery, and at the end, you do. There's dark stuff in the middle, but it's child-appropriate (so, dark like a carnival funhouse BOO! ghosts).
The most obviously uplifting one is actually Mind Snares, because 'Alice's Journey' in the title is a journey through her psyche to heal her emotional trauma (and it's workplace PTSD from an awful job/boss, not anything darker) so she can regain her confidence, hope, and joy. That was cool.
Beyond that, though, I keep my standards for story quality a little low. There's not going to be a story like Primordia or Technobabylon, some of my favorite point n click titles. Think pulp novels instead of New York Bestseller material.
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For me HOGs are chill games. They have stupid solutions (make sleeping potion for spider from sugar, herbs and water instead of just smash the spider with the bucket, or pour water on it), the stories are 80% "female protagonist's love interest or child/ren disappears or gets caught" and not many of them have great production values (few-frame animations and such) but I love cheesy things. Including games, movies and foods :3 Hidden Object Games are perfect for me when I feel tired, I don't really want to think much, but I still want to play something. Some friends of mine play them for active relaxation, like how I read book - feeling nice, want to do some while chilling. They are easy to play, no fail state, and the story, and especially the settings are quite inspiring in a way that it's way more interesting to play then a standard match 3 game with nothing to it.
Crime Secrets: Crimson Lily was super cheesy, I'm not surprised you had weird thoughts about it. The art is nice though.
My favourites were Enigmatis 1-2, Grim Legends 1-(~2)-3, Nightmares from the Deep 1-3, Brink of Consciousness games (The Dorian Gray Syndrome and The Lonely Hearts Murders, and Nearwood
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^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
so this! I like HOGs because they're nice, I can follow the story if it's cute enough (Nightmares from the Deep) or just skip it if I really can't be bothered (Midnight Mysteries), I know how long they last (around three hours + one hour of bonus chapter, usually), and I know they don't need me to be super-attentive to what's happening.
Right now I'm starting to use HOGs to help myself learning a little bit of German - it's not foolproof (I've played in Italian, and I know the translation can sometimes be a little bit too random) but it helps with words you usually wouldn't find in other contexts.
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the art style is the only thing that kept me going
if only the story was half as interesting or the voice acting didnt feel out of a school play
wouldn't you feel chill as well playing a walking sim or an episodic game?
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I play them as well (though the better walking sims are above my system specs) but hidden object games have one thing that they don't have - almost constant player input. Click on items, move between locations. I think the variety is the best, that I can play either the clickity-nobrainer HOG or find a proper text speed and just watch a visual novel, depending that I prefer. Maybe other people, even you have a more dinstinct taste, but for me it's a great help that there's a wide palette of games with different level of attention / player inclusion / skill required. I'm the crazy person who likes hogs, point and clicks, visual novels, RPGs and precision platformers alike ^^
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Sometimes, I play HOG when I'm just looking for a pretty game that doesn't require reflexes or too much intellect between two more demanding games.
It's like a light Adventure game. Just follow the stream and enjoy the show (well, some of them are really bad, but some others are actually enjoyable).
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Pure Hidden. It isn't on Steam unfortunately. I recommend it as it has a beautiful, unique art style that is far more vibrant and modern than the usual painterly style found in the genre.
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I see that's available on BigFish.I'll have to check the demo.
Thanks for the mention!
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i play them when im sick, very tired etc... when my brain don't want to work but still needs some input to do something...
It's a game for me when im braindead... :3
I can't play these when im full active and awake, because its all the same easy riddles and puzzles... stories are copied from existing lores and nothing new, 08/15 and in realy rare cases good... most HoGs are like CoD, just copy/pasted with new settings/theme...
I love the genre but even Artifx Mundi games have a low standart and don't evolve...
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i binge watch TV shows when im brain dead, mostly cheesy stuff i wouldnt watch fully awake
was hoping HOG would do the same but the puzzle kept me looking at the screen for too long
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I'm fine, thank you.
It's a bit chilly, but the sky is clear and it's not windy.
What about you, Sam?
BTW, thank you for the train
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I hate the weather atm
im hot and cold every damn day
thanks for asking ^^
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HOGs were originally a new and interestingly challenging concept in the casual game market, and it came at the time people were getting a bit tired of the match-3 games.
Later, in roughly 3-4 years, they evolved into a first-person lightweight point 'n' click format. This new format catered to many people, since there were plenty of story, but also enough gameplay. It became the most popular genre among female gamers, especially housewives, and it is still probably the most popular among adult female gamers next to visual novels.
I like that they are easy adventure games, even if sometimes I run into one that is actually challenging.
Among the cheap ones that had plenty of bundles, you could try Abyss: The Wraiths of Eden, or Enigmatis 2: The Mists of Ravenwood. Or, if you want to go for something outside that, you could try the Cadenza games or Adam Wolfe, both are quite unique in setting or gameplay. Or, if you don't like the whole fantasy aspect of HOGs, there is a sub-genre that deals with thrillers and mild horrors, games like the first Brink of Consciousness or the Agency of Anomalies series.
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i cant help but compare them to telltale games (what do we call this genre?), but the story and the puzzles kept me engaged and interested
also the audio needs improvements
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TellTale games are called many names: cinematic adventure, choose-your-adventure, but I like to call them interactive film series. They are very different in many terms, the only common aspect is that HOGs are also story-oriented, but not in that amount.
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It's become pretty universal now to refer to the style of Dontnod and Telltale games as Cinematic Adventure, and the Life is Strange games certainly emphasize the fact that they're adventure game based. Many of Telltale's games, on the other hand, and much like many FMV games in earlier generations, definitely push into the Interactive Movie genre (which in turn could be considered Live-Action Interactive Fiction or Live-Action Visual Novels :P). Telltale games still include certain elements of inventory management and puzzling and exploration, however, so they're still managing to avoid a full push into a film-like experience.
It'd be interesting seeing a true interactive film- for example, a fun example of that would be a VR game where you're a ghost trying to interact with things to interact with characters, and you float around trying to figure out what you can interact with while the story plays out despite you- but I'd be perfectly content just getting more Life is Strange games. :)
(It's my understanding that Choose-Your-Adventure, meanwhile, doesn't care about genre, and is just a tag to indicate that narrative-branching is in place. In fact, I've mostly seen the tag applied to text-based narrative games, 3D action-adventure games, and as a way of separating out non-Kinetic visual novels from their Kinetic counterparts.)
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To me, they are relaxing. I play them when I don't want to think. I just look at a pretty picture and click stuff. XD
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thats what i was hoping for, but the puzzle asked too many clicks :D
i felt i should be binge watching something instead
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I think it's its own genre, definitely. Do I like these games, though?
Not really. I feel like they're usually just mobile games with cheap-looking graphics, and all pretty forgettable. Am I probably 100% biased because I can never even find my keys in my house for the life of me?
(Probably, yeah.)
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I'm a "casual" gamer with a lot of anxiety. So point and click games like the Freddi fish series, or Blackwell series help to relieve my stress a bit.
Plus problem solving is kinda fun. Also I might be biased because Freddi fish was my childhood :')
It was designed for younger kids in mind, but is still somewhat entertaining.
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I like artifex mundi games. It's silly but still enjoyable for me.
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It's a game genre. Not a type. Like adventure/puzzle games. Point and click is a genre. Puzzle is a type that has multiple genres in it. Point and click for example is one of puzzle genres. And so is hidden object.
But, certain developers love to experiment multiple game genres/types into one big/small game...And depending on how it's done, it can be a good/bad experience.
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isnt that like a genre/sub-genre
i think in games the main playing mechanics dictate the type/genre. otherwise you can call all games RPG
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The overall genre is Graphic Adventure, though it's more commonly referred to as Point'n'Click.
It has a ton of subgenres, including Point'n'Click Adventure Games, Cinematic Adventure Games (which I believe currently exclusively includes Telltale's modern games and Dontnod's Life is Strange series), Myst-Likes, Point'n'Click Puzzle Games, Parser-Based Adventure Games, HOGs, and FMV Adventure Games.
Cinematic Adventure Games and FMV Adventure Games emphasize narrative as a rule, while Point'n'Click Adventure games tend to evenly combine story and puzzling. The other genres tend to be puzzle-dominated.
Note that an adventure game is defined as "a narrative-based game where progression is driven by exploration and puzzle-solving". Some FMVs and Cinematic Adventure game elements lean into the Interactive Movie genre, while some point'n'clicks include RPG or visual novel elements. More than anything, point'n'clicks, which (as with any adventure game genre) have always been based in puzzling, tend to trend toward the puzzle genre. Certain Point'n'Click puzzle games, like Room Escape games, tend to throw out all but a shallow bit of narrative; however, as they still utilize a narrative atmosphere and "point and click" mechanics, they're difficult to completely shift over to the puzzle genre.
In short, some Graphic Adventure genres (or individual games) emphasize narrative elements, some exploration elements, and some puzzle elements. You're comparing a subgenre that by its nature is narrative-emphasized and which tends to stray heavily from puzzle and exploration elements, against a subgenre where narrative is typically secondary to heavily emphasized puzzling.
While more recent HOGs have pushed into more atypical design concepts and narrative emphasis, and while there have been plenty of Point'n'Click Adventure Game/HOG hybrids, users going into HOG games are presumably mostly looking for a relaxing puzzle experience in a visually appealing setting, with just enough narrative to provide immersion.
Similarly, users going into PnC Puzzle Games want a consistent puzzle experience with nearly no narrative, and users going into Myst-Likes want an abstract environment with mind-bending logic-based puzzles, and tantalizing hints at a background narrative.
Subgenres exist because they're both distinct enough and popular enough to distinguish themselves from other subgenres. An example of this is in how Diablo (and thus Diablo-Likes) separated itself out from Roguelikes. Some gamers may prefer the active, actiony feel of Diablo games, while others may prefer the traditional turn-based, steady exploration of other roguelikes.
The fact that you indicated you don't like HOGs, emphasizes how different they are from the subgenre you're relating them to. The fact that it doesn't seem appealing to you is something personal to your tastes, or due to the fact that you're trying to directly compare it to a subgenre it's not a part of.
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Don't remember what the summary of this video was, but Extra Credits once talked about it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KV8AM1ciS4I
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he was impressed by varying themes of the game and how they mainly have a female protagonist
still, i dont see how they differ from Telltale Games, maybe they also should be called HOG
cool find though
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The was some I played as a kid, I think they were called "I spy" insert whatever the the theme was after that were quite fun when I was 5 but I dont get the appeal beyond that. I feel as if they lack a certain substance and id go for another sort of puzzle game if I was after a casual experience.
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I haven't played Crimson Lily yet, but it looks like the average good and solid HOG. Maybe you need a more gimmicky one?
Like for example, there's Time Mysteries where you have to go back and forth in time to solve mysteries and discover things.
Personally, I love HOGs! I'm a big puzzle fan who loves a good story and pretty things and those types of games combine them all.
Like, I love most types of games, but HOGs have a special place in my heart because they don't have to try to be something different.
With a 70% Artifex Mundi game you probably got the most average experience you could. The genre won't reinvent itself with the next title or be something different to want to get a new audience, but if you yourself want to give it another shot, the series Grim Legends, Enigmatis and Nightmares from the Deep seem to have the highest ratings. My personal favorites are the Grim Legends too, but I'm just a sucker for anything fairytale related and I don't think I have played the best HOGs for myself yet.
But yeah, not every game is for every gamer. Gaming is one of the biggest entertainment industry and it reaches so many different kinds of people.
That doesn't mean that hidden object games aren't their own genre. It's not just a gameplay element, no other genre would have a hidden object puzzle.
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i get that there are game genres i wont like, but normally i understand why others like it
not this one, there is far better games out there that offer similar experience
i think telltale are kind of a hidden game type, you always walk around looking for something
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for me it seems the Artifex Mundi ones are pretty much all the same
I mean they are really short so you can have quick fun with them, the puzzles are fine most of the time
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Well, I dont really enjoy HOG but I sure think is a genre of their own. almost VN, but not the same.
Anyway, if you enjoy them, play them :)
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HOGs are a distinct subgenre of Adventure.
I've played Crime Secrets and found it quite meh. Not a great way to get introduced to the genre.
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I play them to relax so that's one reason for them to exist :)
Anyway, you could try something more unconventional. For example, Pickers, where you have to dig through people's junk to find antiques, which you then sell in your antique shop, or Farmington Tales, which is a fun casual farm sim / HOG combination with funny dialogues.
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edit: maybe train was well hidden, had 0 entries on some GAs
maybe i played the only bad game, maybe its just not for me.
but if you have a recommendation for a must have game do let me know, and why do you like it so much?
to me it felt like some old educational games i played back in school
unfortunately for now im not interested in this hype train
or maybe its fortunate, who knows!
Almost forgot,,
How is your day? ^_^
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