I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with hidden object games. On one hand, I really enjoy being able to explore the landscape in front of me in detail, trying to notice those hidden touches that can really make a game shine; I find that I am often so focused on progressing when gaming that it can be really easy to miss small things. At the same time, it is incredibly frustrating to spend ages looking for one item, even more so when you never actually manage to find it.
Developed and published by Rogueside, Hidden Through Time 2: Myths & Magic is a very charming hidden objects game with absolutely adorable hand-drawn graphics. Each level has fun little things to look out for that are not related to the items you are hunting down but are very cute nonetheless. I was particularly fond of the dogs, which have very cute sprites and can often be found causing mischief in various ways on each of the different maps.
There are four paths to go down in the story mode: 1001 Nights, The Magical 80s, The Middle Ages, and Greek Mythology. I honestly wasn’t particularly impressed with most of the stories. They felt like they were added in as a way to force some purpose into finding the objects. However, most of the time there isn’t any real correlation between the items you are looking for and the story being told anyway. For example, The Magical 80s storyline follows a witch as she goes her school life and finds a date to the prom. It doesn’t have a whole lot to do with the 80s, and the secret item isn’t anything to do with witchcraft, instead having players look for gas canisters around the map. Most of the items, save the occasional broomstick, aren’t especially magical either. This ultimately leads to the story feeling forced.
The exception for me was the storyline in The Middle Ages which followed a group of adventurers who were sent on a quest to banish a necromancer. The story was actually interesting, the map design was fun and felt relevant both to the Middle Ages time period and the story being told, and a lot of the time the items actually felt relevant. The hidden object was also the easiest to find in The Middle Ages storyline, which was a nice change of pace from some of the other levels.
If you manage to find all of the secret items in each level of story mode, you can unlock the final area. These final levels range from an island filled with dragons to the Cave of the 40 Thieves. They are fun areas that round off the story, acting as a reward for the character you have followed through that story. The big new feature that makes the levels more complex and unique is the reality shift option which exists within each of the maps. This allows the player to swap between different times or weather patterns, revealing objects which only exist in one of the possible states. The reality shift feature is really fun. It shows two different sides of a map, which is great, particularly if you love the design. Reality shift also allows the story to progress without having to move forward in the set of levels you are playing through where the night may show a vicious war with the undead, the daytime shows peace after the fact.
Despite the small maps, I did notice that load times between levels were exceptionally long, sometimes taking almost a minute to actually let me into the game. There are a lot of moving parts involved in each level, houses open up, characters wave their arms around, cars roll around the streets and almost every chest has something hidden inside it. I can only assume that getting all of the assets loaded in is responsible for the length of the loading screens, and Hidden Through Time 2 did run beautifully once it was ready to go, but it felt a bit jarring.
The second main element of Hidden Through Time 2 is the Architect mode, which allows you to create your own custom levels using the assets in the game. You can even publish the levels online for other players to enjoy. This is great for two reasons: you can really get creative and make custom levels that tell pretty much any story you want them to, and you will never really run out of content. I will admit I probably didn’t use this feature to its full extent. I am very much a writer and not an artist and my ability to design interesting levels is limited, however knowing the option is there was nice and the amount I did play around with it made it clear that it works really well. I can’t wait to be able to see what custom maps people create.
Overall, Hidden Through Time 2: Myths & Magic is everything that I wanted it to be. It captures the adorable joy of the first game really well, and while some of the maps aren’t the most cohesive in my opinion, they are still cute and well worth exploring. In fact, I only rage quite a level once after spending an entire hour looking for a doll in a park.
Megan played Hidden Through Time 2: Myths & Magic on PC with a review key.
