The point-and-click adventure genre has long been one of my favorites, ever since I was first acquainted with the early Sierra and LucasFilm games back in the Atari ST era when I was still yea-high to a rubber chicken with a pulley in the middle. As with two of my other favorite genres (spacewhippers and JRPGs), it also lapsed for what felt like a long time, shortly after FMV and an over-reliance on moon logic inventory puzzles appeared to kill the whole enterprise stone dead to such a lamentable degree that even the Space Quest narrator wouldn't have been able to muster a sardonic quip for its passing. Fortunately, as with many genres resurrected by an Indie market who are far more keenly aware of where the general population's interests lie than the larger publishers, the graphic adventure game has seen a resurgence over the past decade.

More than that, in fact; it's continued to blossom in myriad new directions, making the genre more expansive and diverse than it's ever been. I've reviewed and spoken at length about "classic" throwback graphic adventures like the kind King Art Games, Pendulo Studios and Wadjet Eye Games produce, but we've also seen a plethora of new variations emerge: the first-person narrative-driven "walking simulator", your Gone Homes and Firewatches of the world, which reduces the number of puzzles and expands the worldbuilding and talking in turn; the complete opposite of those which are the mostly dialogue-free clicky trail-and-error whimsy of Amanita Design's output, or something like Windosill; the slow creeping return of FMV, now in the hands of talents who understand the format's strengths, leading to the likes of Contradiction, Her Story and Late Shift; and, of course, the increasingly popular Japanese visual novel format, which often folds in deductive courtroom drama (Ace Attorney or Danganronpa), IQ-test brainteasers (Professor Layton or Puzzle Agent), dating sim RPG modes (half the VNs on Steam), and even bartending mini-games (VA-11 Hall-A). However, there's a highly popular sub-genre that continues to go largely unnoticed by us "serious" gamers: the humble H.O.P.A., or Hidden Object Puzzle Adventure.

I'll admit to some degree of fascination with these games. I've played a few hidden object puzzles in the past and thought little about them - I tend to see them as interactive Where's Waldo tableaus, just without Martin Handford's distinctive humor. However, the slightly more elaborate Hidden Object Puzzle Adventure genre is actually one that incorporates the occasional hidden object puzzle without necessarily allowing it to dominate the proceedings. Rather, it's simply one of the many puzzle types it regularly throws your way. Of course, that isn't to say that these games are necessarily far deeper than they first appear, just that they have more in common with traditional point-and-click games that I was prepared to acknowledge.

I'm rectifying that myopic viewpoint this year with an ongoing feature looking at a handful of HOPAs, running on alternating Tuesdays. The goal here is to determine: how much of a design formula these games stick to; the complexity and depth of the traditional adventure game experience they offer; critiques about their presentations and narratives; and, really, attempts to describe their general "funness" - that elusive bane of any self-serious games critic. There'll some cynical observations and maybe a few jokes at their expense too, sure, but I'm really here to plumb the last unknown frontier (from my perspective, at least) of a video game genre that is endearing to me.

Episode 1: Grim Legends: The Forsaken Bride

Of course, I spent so long writing excuses for why I'm playing HOPA games that I've barely left any space for the first episode's rundown. Because three of the ten Artifex Mundi games I own come from their Grim Legends series, which all appear to be fairytales with a sinister twist (except every fairytale already has a sinister twist, so great work subverting expectations there), I'm going with the first game in the series - Grim Legends: The Forsaken Bride - as our opening gambit here. This particular game's story involves a cursed werebear, witch's brews, a demon from a big ominous purple-fog-spewing pit just outside of town that people just kind of live next to without a fuss, skeletons left absolutely everywhere for coyotes to gnaw on, and some really ugly townspeople who I'm not wholly sure are supposed to be this ugly.

For the most part the game looks fine, except when it tries to animate people they're either these weak 3D models or they "talk" via an image manipulation affect that doesn't look too hot. It'll also zoom in on its static backdrop images and move them around a bit when something exciting is happening and... well, it doesn't do those static images with their fixed resolutions any favors when it does that.

After those first impressions comes the requisite discussion of the preponderance of hidden object puzzles, because we like to have fun here. Oddly, while the game does indeed have several of them, it also gives players an alternative whenever one arises: a substitute puzzle involving dominoes that the player has to place in the right order. It's almost as if the developers were anticipating an audience that would be put off scouring a screen for hidden junk, which seems kind of counter-intuitive to how it sells itself and the company it keeps. For what it's worth, the hidden object puzzles do vary things up a little, either giving you a list of names or a selection of picture clues, and the solution to these puzzles always nets you an inventory item you'll need elsewhere so it doesn't feel like busywork - though I'm always puzzled why the protagonist doesn't just grab everything in case it comes in useful, especially since they took the time to pick so many items out. The grand majority of the puzzles in this game involve the classic adventure game set-up of finding an object, hidden or otherwise, just lying around somewhere that no-one is going to miss, then finding out where it goes to make more objects appear and sustain the ol' klepto-chain indefinitely. I'd say it's a 50:25:25 split between the usual mashing objects together, picking your through hidden object screens, and then all the other puzzles added together, most of which either involve sliding blocks around, piecing together jigsaws, or figuring out the right pattern or sequence. Typical Layton fare, but they serve their job of breaking up the hidden object puzzles adroitly enough.

Despite all this, I actually found The Forsaken Bride quite engrossing. It has that classic adventure game relativity thing where you could spend five seconds in a new area before you've already figured out where everything is and what everything does and you're off to a new region, only to then take half an hour staring at the same damn hidden object picture trying to find the sailboat, as it were. Even if I breezed through most of the game, there were enough times where I was stuck and eventually resorted to the game's generous hint system - only twice, mind! And the first one of those involved turning a note over to find a key taped to the back, which was duuuumb - that I can't sincerely propose that it's an effortless baby game for casual babies. Well, insofar as any adventure game is only for hardcore point-and-clicking types. I could see the twists in the story coming a mile away, but it was still entertaining in its own right too; a far cry from the witty LucasFilms and Sierras of my youth, perhaps, but perfunctory enough to hang a hundred puzzles about turning cogs and finding random nonsense on.

My study into this sub-genre won't be complete without more examples to compare and contrast with, so I'll be loading up another one of these in two weeks hence. From that point onwards, I should have a better sense of how these games differentiate themselves from each other, and might even revisit some of the more curiously unique decisions made for this game with the benefit of hindsight. If nothing else, I'd really like to come back to address how many skeletons are lying around the place. Nobody felt like burying these poor stiffs?

As someone who has spent a lot of time playing and working on wiki pages for hidden object games it is nice to see someone giving them an honest look. I would say Artifex Mundi makes some of the most high quality of the hidden object games, but I think you will find that many of these games use the same tropes, writing style, and puzzles.

One thing I find pretty awesome about these games is just how many of them feature a female protagonist, as a matter of fact I would say 90% of them I have come across have been so.