History of Hidden Object Games – From Picture Books to PC Casual, Mobile, and Hand-Drawn Indies
How hidden object games grew from busy picture books into Mystery Case Files, June's Journey, and Hidden Folks, why the genre is fun, and tips for finding things faster.
A hidden object game asks you to find and tap the items or characters on a list inside a cluttered scene. It is often shortened to HOG. The idea is simple, yet over the past twenty-odd years it has kept changing shape, from downloadable PC games to free smartphone games to hand-drawn indie titles, with new releases arriving all the while.
This post follows, in chronological order, how "pictures for searching" on paper became a game genre. It focuses on three stages: how the genre's format took shape in the PC casual game market of the 2000s, how mobile games added story and decoration, and how indie games returned to hand-drawn art. At the end, we also look at why the genre is fun and share tips for finding objects in games.
Timeline at a Glance
| Year | Event |
|---|---|
| 1559 | Pieter Bruegel the Elder paints Netherlandish Proverbs, packed with people and objects |
| 1968 | German illustrator Ali Mitgutsch publishes the busy picture book Rundherum in meiner Stadt |
| 1987 | Martin Handford's Where's Wally? is first published |
| 1991 | Mother Goose: Hidden Pictures is released for CD-i |
| 1992 | The first I Spy photographic picture book is published |
| 2005 | Big Fish Games releases Mystery Case Files: Huntsville |
| 2017 | Hand-drawn indie game Hidden Folks and mobile game June's Journey are released |
| 2020 | Hidden Through Time is released on Steam |
Roots: The Tradition of Poring Over Busy Pictures
Behind hidden object games lies the pleasure of studying a picture crammed with people and things. German has a word for this kind of book, Wimmelbilderbuch, meaning a "teeming picture book." It is a wordless format in which a full two-page spread is filled with people, animals, and objects, and readers search for all sorts of things inside it.
The painters Hieronymus Bosch and Pieter Bruegel the Elder, from the Low Countries, are regarded as the fathers of this format. Bruegel's Netherlandish Proverbs (1559) depicts proverbs and idioms literally within a single village, and part of its appeal is finding them one by one.
The person who established it as a picture-book form was Germany's Ali Mitgutsch (1935–2022). Starting with Rundherum in meiner Stadt ("All Around My City") in 1968, he published books depicting crowded places such as markets and playgrounds, and was called the father of Wimmelbilder books.
In the English-speaking world, the format became widely known through Martin Handford's Where's Wally?, published in the UK in 1987. In the United States, the "Hidden Pictures" puzzles of Highlights, a children's magazine founded in 1946, and the photographic I Spy picture books by Jean Marzollo and Walter Wick, published from 1992, popularized the method of "looking at a list and finding the objects in a picture." Wikipedia's article on hidden object games also traces the genre's origins to print publications such as I Spy and Highlights.
Early examples of the idea moving into games include Mother Goose: Hidden Pictures for CD-i in 1991 and the I Spy games published by Scholastic from 1997. Until then, however, most were closer to educational software for children.
The PC Casual Era: Mystery Case Files and HOPA
Hidden object games became a genre for adults in the mid-2000s PC casual game market. Casual games at the time were mostly sold by downloading a trial from the internet, playing it for a set time, and then buying the full version. Big Fish Games, founded in Seattle in 2002, made and distributed such games, and in July 2010 it announced that game downloads from its portal had passed one billion.
Mystery Case Files: Huntsville, released by the company in November 2005, casts the player as a "Master Detective" solving crimes in a small town. Finding the listed items in a painted scene within the time limit moves you to the next location, and the clues you gather are matched on the "Crime Computer" to narrow down the culprit. According to Wikipedia, the game sold over $1 million worth of digital copies in under three months, far surpassing the casual game sales records of the time.
The series broadened its format with a new game nearly every year.
- Prime Suspects (2006): Added items found in scenes that are used in later stages.
- Ravenhearst (2006): Put mechanical puzzles on each door of a manor and had players collect diary pages to follow the story. It was the third-best-selling PC title in the US for the week of Black Friday and sold 100,000 copies in six weeks.
- Madame Fate (2007): Added combining two items and hidden object scenes inside other scenes.
- Return to Ravenhearst (2008): Added adventure elements, letting players move around the manor and its grounds and use collected items, along with live-action actor footage.
Big Fish Games estimated in 2007 that 100 million people had already tried trial versions of the series, and the series has lasted long enough that its 28th game came out in November 2025.
This format, where story, puzzles, movement, and item use are attached to search scenes, is called the "hidden object puzzle adventure" (HOPA). As the genre grew, subtypes appeared.
| Type | Features |
|---|---|
| HOG | The basic form: find objects from a word list |
| AHOG | Search scenes plus story, exploration, and puzzles |
| iHOG | Interaction with the scene, such as opening drawers or moving objects |
| FrOG | Find fragments of an object and assemble them |
| HOPA | Heavier on point-and-click adventure and puzzles |
Helper features such as the magnifying glass (showing where an item is), zoom, and time extensions also became standard in this period.
Mobile: Free Games and Long Stories
After smartphones spread, hidden object games shifted to a model where you start for free and pay in-game or watch ads. A leading example is June's Journey, released in October 2017 on Facebook, iOS, and Android by Wooga, a game company in Berlin, Germany.
The setting is the late 1920s. The heroine, June Parker, doubts the official story behind the deaths of her sister and brother-in-law and starts her own investigation, and the player turns the story page by page by finding the listed items in hand-drawn scenes. According to German Wikipedia, the game combines the following elements.
- Search scenes: Places such as rooms of a manor, New York, and Havana open in story order.
- Energy: Each scene costs energy to start, and energy refills over time.
- Decoration: You decorate the manor and garden on the island to level up.
- Live service: New chapters and events keep being added after launch.
If PC-era HOPAs were games you "buy once and play through," mobile hidden object games are closer to games you "keep playing a little every day." According to English Wikipedia's article on Wooga, June's Journey had generated $500 million in revenue from its launch to mid-2022.
The Return of Hand-Drawn Indies
From the late 2010s, small teams began releasing hidden object games built around hand-drawn art. Instead of detective stories or item puzzles, they went back to the pleasure of slowly scanning one big picture, like Where's Wally?.
Hidden Folks (2017) was made by Dutch developer Adriaan de Jongh and artist Sylvain Tegroeg and released on February 15, 2017. It began when de Jongh made a prototype after seeing Tegroeg's illustrations at his graduate art show. All of the art was hand-drawn on paper, then scanned and layered into monochrome scenes, and most objects can be tapped, such as lifting tent flaps or cutting through bushes. It is also known that its sound effects were made from the developers' own mouth noises. A sequel, Hidden Folks 2, is listed on Steam as upcoming.
Hidden Through Time (2020) was made by Rogueside and released on Steam on March 12, 2020. Starting in the Stone Age, you travel through four ages, finding objects in colorful hand-drawn scenes. Instead of item names, you search using riddle-like hints, and anyone can build and share their own scenes with the map editor. It was followed by the Hidden Through Time 2 series.
Cat-finding games have become a trend of their own. 100 hidden cats, released on Steam in April 2021, has you find 100 cats hidden in a black-and-white hand-drawn city. Because there is only one kind of target, there is no list to memorize, and its strength is the simplicity of clearing the cats from the picture one by one. Searching Steam for "hidden cats" today brings up several games that work in a similar way.
Why Is This Genre Fun?
The fun of hidden object games comes from several overlapping structures.
- Small successes come often. Each item you find is marked immediately and crossed off the list. Small achievements repeat many times within a single scene.
- There is almost no failure. In most games, a wrong tap carries no heavy penalty, and hints are there when you get stuck. Since it is a game of spending time on observation rather than skill, it puts little pressure on players.
- The picture itself is the reward. While searching, you look at every corner of the scene and discover small stories and jokes along the way. Hand-drawn indie games make the most of this.
- The goal is clear. The number of remaining items is always visible, which makes it easy to keep going "just a bit more."
- Story provides motivation. HOPAs and mobile games give you a reason to continue by showing the next part of the story once you finish a scene.
English Wikipedia cites 2021 data showing that 85% of Big Fish Games' players were women, 76% of whom were over 55. The genre's character, which asks for calm observation rather than quick reflexes, can be seen as having drawn players across a wide range of ages.
Tips for Finding Objects in Games
Unlike paper puzzles, games have tools such as zoom, hints, and interaction. Using them well makes things much easier.
- Turn the list into shapes: Picturing "a hook-shaped handle" rather than the word "umbrella" helps it jump out of the picture faster. If the game shows a silhouette list, look at the outlines first.
- Scan in one direction: Moving your eyes around at random makes you look at the same spots again and again. Scan from the top left to the right, moving down one row at a time.
- Zoom by section: Divide the scene into a few blocks, zoom into one block at a time, and move on once it is checked.
- Check what can be tapped: In games like Hidden Folks, where targets hide behind doors, bushes, or curtains, tap the movable objects first.
- Decode hint sentences: When hints are riddles, as in Hidden Through Time, first think about where the object is likely to be and start searching there.
- Save hints for the last one or two: If hints are limited, find all the easy ones first and use hints only on objects you truly cannot see.
- Mark progress when there are many identical targets: In games where you find the same target many times, like 100 cats, rule out the places you have already found to narrow down the empty areas.
Closing Thoughts
Hidden object games started from 16th-century paintings and busy picture books, gained detective stories and puzzles in the PC casual market, turned into long serialized stories on mobile, and returned to "the pleasure of studying a picture" in hand-drawn indie games. The format has kept changing, but the small thrill of spotting something in a complicated scene has stayed the same.
If you want to casually enjoy finding objects in hand-drawn scenes, you can try out the tips above in JIGGLEBELL Hidden Hunt.
