Hidden Objects

What is a hidden object game?

A hidden object game is a picture puzzle: a busy, cluttered scene and a list of things tucked away in it, and you have to spot every one. The idea is older than computers, from the crowded picture books children pore over to the "can you find" pages of puzzle magazines, and on screen it became a genre of its own, often called HOG for short.

Here every scene is an original painting made for this game: twenty-four of them, from a cluttered attic, a market stall and an old library to a captain's cabin, a toy shop, a village bakery and a clockmaker's workshop. Each one has small objects painted into it, a few of them a little out of place, like a rubber duck among the loaves or a teddy bear in the greenhouse.

How to play

Find every object in the strip before the clock runs out.

• The strip shows what to find, each object pictured exactly as it looks in the painting, with its name under it.
• Tap an object in the painting. It gets a gold frame, and a tick in the strip.
• Wrong taps cost 5 seconds. A second tap on an object you have already found costs nothing.
• Zoom. Pinch with two fingers, or use the mouse wheel, to zoom in; drag with one finger to look around. The Zoom button zooms in on the middle and back out.
• Hint makes the area around one object you still have to find shimmer, for 10 seconds off the clock. You still tap the object yourself. There are three hints a scene.
• Keyboard. The arrow keys move an aim over the painting (Shift for big steps) and Enter taps there.
• Score. 100 points for every object found. When you find the last one you also get 4 points for each second left and up to 50 points an object for accuracy, a little less with every wrong tap. Higher is better. If time runs out you keep the points for what you found, and the objects you missed are shown.

The levels are easy (6 of the bigger objects, 3 minutes, a generous aim), medium (8 objects, 4 minutes) and hard (10 objects, always including the smallest ones, 5 minutes, a tight aim: tap right on the object).

Strategy tips

1. Look at the strip first. A second spent on the shapes and colours you are after makes them jump out of the clutter.
2. Hunt by colour. A bright red boot or a yellow duck stands out once you scan for that one colour.
3. Zoom on busy corners. Shelves, baskets and the rims of the painting hide the small objects; at double size they are easy to see.
4. Tap with care on hard. The aim is tight and each miss costs time and accuracy points, so zoom in rather than guess.
5. Keep a hint for the last object. Ten seconds is cheap when one object refuses to show itself.

FAQ

Is Hidden Objects free to play?

Yes. Like every game on Play, it runs free in your browser, with no download and no account needed.

Where do the paintings come from?

They are original paintings made for this game, twenty-four in all, with no text, logos or real people. Each object was painted into its own small spot of the scene, and the rest of the painting is untouched.

Is every object really in the picture?

Yes. The game paints exactly the objects in the strip into the scene, each one once, and checks every tap against where that object is.

What is the daily scene?

Every day everyone gets the same medium scene with the same eight objects, so scores compare directly on the daily leaderboard.