Rogueside Games’Hidden Through Time 2: Discovery has been a pleasure to play over the last week despite a few issues. As my first real experience with the series, I went ahead and bought the two prior games to play after finishing this one, and I likely will chip away at the levels over time. But this review is about Hidden Through Time 2: Discovery ($2.99), and I’ve played it on iPhone 15 Pro, iPad Pro (2020), and Steam Deck. I’m going to focus on the iOS version, but it has been interesting to see how it controls and feels with a controller as well.
If you’ve never played a game in the Hidden Through Time series, these are colorful hand-drawn hidden object games with lovely animations, puzzles, and even a story. While it starts out relatively simple, finding each item in a specific level is hard, and later levels get more complex. You interact with the levels by zooming, panning, looking indoors, and even opening certain things while looking for the specific things, people, animals, and more for each level. The good news is that you don’t need to find every single thing a level asks for to move to the next one.
Some levels have different times of the day where items or people show up adding another layer of strategy, but I love just tapping on everything to see the interactions and animation work by the team. It is worth clicking on everything because there are some surprises and references to other games or characters sprinkled in. While you can just view the level requirements on the bottom, tapping on any of them will give you a vague hint to find said item. Some of these end up clicking immediately, but Hidden Through Time 2: Discovery doesn’t give everything away from the get go.
Hidden Through Time 2: Discovery is split up into three sections with their own stories and levels: Noir, Victorian, and Science Fiction. The stories aren’t anything to write home about. After playing through these and looking at earlier games in the series, I feel like Hidden Through Time 2 was originally planned to be like the first game with multiple DLC packs rather than having two Hidden Through Time games with a “2" in the title now. Either way, Hidden Through Time 2: Discovery is an excellent hidden object game.
In addition to the core campaign levels, Hidden Through Time 2: Discovery features online levels on all platforms, but the level editor (Architect) is not on mobile, at least not in the build I have. I didn’t spend too much time creating levels on Steam Deck because this review is for the iOS version, but keep that in mind. If the final build on the App Store has this included, I’ll update this review.
When it comes to features, I’m disappointed in the lack of cloud saves on iOS. I couldn’t get my progress on either device to sync at all. The Steam version has support for creating accounts or linking your Steam account, but I didn’t see this on iOS. That’s my biggest issue with the iOS version right now. Aside from that, some UI elements look a bit blurry on iPad Pro and two of the menus have tiny text for some reason with a lot of white space. These smaller issues don’t affect the gameplay, but are disappointing to see in an otherwise polished and gorgeous game.
Hidden Through Time 2: Discovery controls best with touchscreen as far as I’m concerned, but the iPhone version feels a bit cramped. I ended up enjoying the game a lot more on iPad like I do with most point and click adventure games as well as hidden object games. The iOS version doesn’t seem to have controller support, and I only tested it to mention here. I wouldn’t play it with a controller after seeing how it controls on Steam Deck. it doesn’t feel as intuitive, but was fine after I got used to it.
The levels, performance, and load times are all good on iOS and Steam Deck with them running smoothly and not dropping frames at all in my testing. I hope future updates can fix the UI issues and bring in cloud saves. If it does have iCloud saves, I couldn’t get them to work at all in the build I have.
Hidden Through Time 2: Discovery is an excellent hidden object game across its campaign and the many user-created levels I’ve played so far on iPad and iPhone. It has a few UI issues holding it back, but Hidden Through Time 2: Discovery is an easy recommendation if you enjoy the genre or want a new game to relax with.
