Hidden Chronicles

Hidden Chronicles is one of Zynga’s popular new games that centers around hidden object puzzles. As the nephew of a recently deceased member of a secret organization, it’s fallen to you to track down your uncle’s killers using a secret family power that you never knew you had to restore your uncle’s estate and the family name to its former glory. Intrigued yet?

Hidden object games are a somewhat recent genre to hit Facebook and gain popularity, which is where Zynga comes in with the creation of Hidden Chronicles. A hidden object game is the type of thing that you would occasionally see in children’s magazines growing up. You get a picture that is extremely busy with objects and have to find the specific items on a list that are hidden throughout the scene. However, Zynga didn’t stop at making a just a simple hidden object game, it added a whole murder mystery type plot and estate building features.

Following a brief introduction, the story of Hidden Chronicles is told in between you playing and discovering all of the objects in a scene. While the story isn’t necessarily a page turner (and not just because there are not pages), it is a nice feature that is rarely seen in Facebook games. The story is told in text windows by acquaintances of the player’s late uncle. Unfortunately, the storyline is not the only feature that was added to improve the game.

When not searching scenes of the past for hidden objects and clues to your uncle’s murder in Hidden Chronicles, you are also tasked with taking care of his estate. The estate feature comes right out of Zynga’s popular games Farmville and Cityville. You must add to and improve the estate in order to unlock different scenes and further the storyline. To get the objects to decorate and improve the estate you have to visit the market and purchase them with money earned mostly by finding hidden objects in scenes. While the cyclical nature of this seem like it should keep the game in balance, it can be quite a bother to have to go add another row of flowers or a new shrubbery just to continue with the story and the next scene. It becomes like a bad reenactment of Monty Python’s Knights Who Say Ni scene.

Estate feature notwithstanding, there are some good gameplay features of Hidden Chronicles. Aside from the basic hidden object game, you can visit the estates of friends who also play Hidden Chronicles and participate in a Fast Find: a scene that lasts for 60 seconds and challenges the player to find as many objects off of a list as possible. After a match of Fast Find, you can challenge your friend to beat your score on the same scene.

Hidden Chronicles has the necessary features of a hidden object game, but tends to be a bit cluttered with additional gameplay features. While it is a well-polished game with a storyline and soundtrack, it is not likely to suit everyone, even those who enjoy the hunt for hidden objects in pictures.

Hints

When searching for objects in a scene, use the full screen option to make the image larger and clearer.

If a particular item is giving you trouble, use the magnifying glass feature to narrow your search.

Be careful not to click on objects that aren’t on the list. It will affect your score at the end.