Ever since I was a kid I loved the Where’s Waldo books and Hidden Through Time is here to try to scratch that particular itch.
Who hasn’t “read” a Where’s Waldo book? They were huge in the 80’s and 90’s and even my own kids have seen them. If they haven’t then they have seen books like them. Hidden Through Time is essentially a moving, interactive version of one of those books. Crazy Monkey Studios are the brains behind this game and their passion for the genre shows. Players load maps in “single play mode” or essentially an offline mode where they begin to hunt for hidden images in the map. Some are quite obvious, while others can be maddeningly difficult to find. When this gets old or if you are simply looking for something new you can always load an online map.
The online maps are maps created by other players, these range from overly simplistic to insanely difficult. I even found one dedicated to the Indiana Jones movies and it did an amazing job at it! The creator of this map took time to recreate a dozen or so scenes from the film series including the iconic bag of sand switching with the idol from Raiders and the leap of faith from Last Crusade. There are easily hundreds of maps to choose from and for you achievement hunters if you type “Easy” into your search terms you can find over 40 (at least at the time of writing) maps that are a couple obvious clicks and then you are finished.
We found the game to be fun in small doses but more than ten maps and it feels quite repetitive, to the point of boring. Personally I would recommend waiting until this game was for sale for $10 or less to get a better value out of it.