#hidden object games

@bffanatic234

Oh.. wow, I was not expecting this! Always wonderful to see and talk to another DP Fan in the wilds, I normally don't write headcannons nor requests but ya know what, I might as well give it a shot, who knows, I'd may be up for doing more of these in the future! So Please feel free to ask! :)

Note: These are just my take with the Fairytale Detective from my POV while playing the games. Right off the bat, The games establishes the the Detective is female via canon, so that's what I'll be working with as well as Including SPOILERS for some of the games, I'll also be adding in bits of my own personal writing headcannons for the series as well so I hope you don't mind that. (And I'm Terribly sorry that this has been so, so long in the making.)

The Fairytale Detective is Autistic hands down, No- I will not fight anyone on this, you can pry this idea from my cold dead hands before I say that is this girlie isn't Autistic.

With being Autistic, her main hyperfixations included but not limited to: Fairy tales, Magic and spooky themed items, Classic lit and Gothic Lit, Puzzles, Constellations and the Moon's phases among many other things but these are the ones that she can list off from the top of her head when asked.

She has extremely long hair but she doesn't like having her hair down around her neck- so she constantly puts it up. Mainly within a ponytail to keep it out of her face. (She can wear it down for a good while but I'd say after at least 2 hours, her hair would need to go back up before it starts bugging her.)

She Has a Black Cat chain necklace with a little golden gem acting as the connector between the charm and the chain, She calls this her lucky charm and doesn't leave anywhere without it.

She loves the very little tiny details within most objects she picks up during her cases, If she could, she would keep almost every overly ornate thing that catches her eyes. Mainly the tiaras from the Exiled Prince case and the Moon Stone and the Moon Essence's Bottle-yes, just the bottle itself- from The Red Riding Hood Sisters Case.

Surprisingly, She is NOT a polyglot. AKA: Someone who knows several languages. Despite people thinking she is one due to her cases, the most she knows is a few phrases and words in both Spanish and French-but she isn't an expert with these unlike her native language, English.

Because of the language barrier, Somehow, The Veil of the fairytale world is able to translate everything for her into english even if it's written in another language.

Due to some of the events from her cases, She will suddenly bolt awake within the middle of the night for almost no reason from time to time. On the good days she's just mildly stunned as she looks around her room wondering where she is before checking the time on her phone and tries to fall back asleep. (Unsuccessfully most nights.)

On the bad nights however- She wakes up crying and shaking in place, out of breath- as her mind begins to replay the events that haunted her dreams for the remainder of the night. (ie: Killing James, Not being able to save The Wolf Queen and Raphael, Watching Snow's grief being used to hurt people Etc.) She doesn't sleep at all when those happen...

Because of this habit of suddenly waking during the night, she has developed a horrendous case of insomnia as a way to avoid the bad nights and this issue isn't helped by the fact that majority of her cases take place during the night. Which causes her to burn more energy due to how active her cases require her to be and in turn, forces her to stay awake for much longer than normal.

Long story short, It's a vicious cycle of her being awake until she's gets a chance to just passes out at home for a long time in a dreamless sleep due to exhaustion. But at least this way... She at least gets some semblance of sleep, however little it may be.

(The first photo is from “Haunted Halls: Nightmare Dwellers”, and the other two are from “Forgotten Places: Lost Circus”.)

This past weekend I finally got around to playing True Fear Part 1. Shout out to @wereah for being my body double for that game, I don’t think I would have finished it otherwise. Though she did make watching me play it as our together time activity, probably because I told her there was a non-zero chance I would scream.

I don’t normally like horror games, but I tend to find hidden object games more doable because running for your life is not an aspect of that genre. Hidden object games and creepy-borderline-horror themes tend to go hand in hand. You can blame the creators of Mystery Case Files, the first breakout hidden object game for that trend, but it’s also just visually easier to do. There’s a reason why hidden object games tend towards mystery, fantasy, supernatural or horror (or all of them). It is much easier to make visually interesting scenes and backgrounds. 

The horror aspect is also really great, because the player is often focused on observing the scene, and that focus can allow you to do some creepy or heartstopping things. Especially if the transition between the scene and the cutscene is seamless, Mystery Trackers was actually really good at that.

The reason why I bought the first True Fear game was because the hidden object side of Tumblr was really excited about the release of True Fear 3. And if a lot of people are excited about a hidden object game, it generally means the series is pretty good. Unfortunately in the past several years this genre has been hit hardest by sloppy development, developers taking shortcuts and (horrifyingly enough) AI art. It is hard to find out if you’re going to get a good game because it is a very niche genre so it’s never going to get a lot of reviews on Steam.

Since it was on sale, I thought why not? I already played and did not finish the Abyss: The Wraiths of Eden because of the stupid amount of jumpscares that came at me without warning. I figured it could not be worse when it comes to jumpscares.

The good news is, the game followed audio horror conventions which meant I had a pretty good guess of when I was going to see something that would make me jump out of my skin. The bad (yet good) news is that it really leaned into the horror of it all. It felt like you were in a horror movie, complete with dumb white woman trope (because the main character was so dumb). And gameplay was not the traditional find the object scene, instead making a seamless mini-puzzle where you use objects in the scene to solve the scene.

Taking into account this was released in 2016, this was an amazing game for the time it was published. I understand why those who like this genre, really were excited for this game. This is not a series I would personally continue playing because my heart can’t take it, but it is a very well done game.

Glitches and narrative issues aside. The in-game journal was trying to be ambitious by only releasing narrative information once the player came across an object or piece of information. At some point in the second half of the game the journal began to release information too early. Information about the mysterious Dahlia was put into the journal when it shouldn’t have been, which would lead to confusion in some players. I think part of it was that it was conflicting with the collectable figures. I do wonder if there is missing narrative text as flavour text from the collectable figures were put into the journal on top of whatever system allowed you to see what figures you collected.

There is also a second glitch involving the quick travel system. Normally in hidden object games you didn’t gain access to an area until you stepped through the threshold, and then the area would be added to your map. However, the game opened up that area when you completed a puzzle to ‘unlock’ the area, rather than step into it yourself. This was a problem when you’re using that map to figure out what puzzles you still had to solve. Allowing the player to get into a room that they’re not sure how they got into, in the first place.

The final issue is the narrative. The narrative was very tight in the first act but by the third act it was falling apart. I don’t know how stories are written for hidden object games, if they are written as the game is being developed or beforehand, but there were a lot of narrative holes. Now, I do have a suspicion that the story had been changed at the last minute, but I am not going to talk about that here, because that requires content warnings.

Otherworld - Embrace

HAPPY LUNAR NEW YEAR and it's my BDay~~~~~XDDDDD ((DAME i'M SOOO dRUNK!!!!! xdddddDDDDD 農曆新年快樂而且初一是我生日喔～～～～~ＸＤＤＤＤＤ （（媽ˇ的欸我現在超醉！！！！！ｘｄｄｄｄｄＤＤＤＤＤ

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I love, really really love, hidden object games, as a kind of kinetic meditation or no stress enrichment when I'm sick.

I played just about every Artifex Mundi game ever when they were still publishing hidden object adventures. I love having a complete game vs. an open-ended micro transaction game.

All of my old hidden object games that I bought through Steam no longer work on my new non-Intel Mac running Sequoia and I'm so bummed. I can play the storyline but the trackpad doesn't work in any of the hidden object mini games, ugh. When I try to search for hidden object adventures on the Mac App Store, there's a million "free" ones with infinite microtransactions and that's not for me.

Is this just not a thing anymore? Or just not a thing for non-Intel Macs? CRY. I've spent the last hour searching Big Fish and other developers trying to find something that I could download and play offline with a finite story line. I am woe, I has the woe, halp.