Hidden Through Time 2: Myths & Magic Review

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Fast Facts

Where’s Wally meets the history books.

In Hidden Through Time 2: Myths & Magic, the team at Rogueside offer up an adorable and calming little puzzler. This is a title that offers a pretty impressive array of interactivity on the Nintendo Switch. The concept of the game is pretty straightforward. Each level has a variety of spaces, items, characters and objects that the player can click on to prompt a reaction from.

In each level, you are tasked with locating a selection of objects. Anyone who enjoyed the ‘find the chap in the striped sweater with glasses’ books as a child will be pretty familiar with the essence of the game.

The player works through a self-contained little story from the past in each level. There’s some reasonable variety here: Greek myths, Arabian nights and more. It’s not always perfect on execution, and I found areas of the game wanting in places, but what you see is very much what you get with Rogueside’s latest offering.

With calming audio, a cutesy hand-drawn art style and simple game design, Hidden Through Time 2 slots perfectly into the ever-popular “cosy games” category. Read on to find out what I thought of it in this Rapid Review.

Gameplay

The gameplay of Hidden Through Time 2 succeeds in its simplicity. I didn’t find my hands doing much other than clicking objects in the world with a singular face button, which is exactly what the game asks of you. It’s not something than can go wrong, and it did its job. In essence, you use the left analogue stick to move a cursor around the screen and then ‘click’ on something of interest in the world or HUD. Simple yes, but it’s all the game really needs.

I never ran into anything that interrupted my searches. I’m consistently impressed with how much of the world is interactive. No matter what I clicked on, there was almost always feedback and a response that prompted a grin from me.

There is an in-game modifier available that changes each level from day to night. This gives each stage a little more depth and variety, changing up their appearance and visuals. I found myself getting a little agitated at times when I was pretty adamant I’d found the right thing, only to then zoom in and realise that there were milimetres between my discovery and what the game was looking for. This is as much a design thing as a gameplay one I suppose, but it was a rare annoyance. 

Hidden Through Time 2 also offers a level builder that I experimented with a little bit during my testing. Personally, it’s not something that I was drawn to use at length, but it looks like a pretty competent level designer. Community growth will be key here. Perhaps I’ll return to the game at a later time and find a variety of community creations to delve into.

Sound and Music

If you’re looking for something cute and cosy, then sound design is pretty important. Hidden Through Time 2 has an appropriately warm soundtrack that suits the calm vibes of the game wonderfully. The music is always thematically consistent with the levels with light relaxing tracks that help carry you into the world. It all adds to that relaxing ‘cosy’ energy.

The complexity in the levels is matched from an audio perspective too. There can be a lot on the screen at any given time. A cute little sound effect paired with opening a chest or the shaking a tree is simple but effective. It’s a nice touch that provides player feedback and makes the levels feel interactive, no matter what they’re investigating.

Story Time

The narrative of Hidden Through Time 2 is an aspect I wish had been given a little more love. The game at its core has the player search for the objects in a level. As they progress they learn more about the story. This forms a minimal narrative for each level but not one with any real depth. This was a big frustration. Some deeper character work could have elevated the experience. Ultimately the stories don’t offer a whole lot to drive the player on.

While the narrator wonderfully introduced me to each world they never offered much else. The stories never engaged or interested me. I couldn’t help feeling like giving objects and items importance, tying them to the stories, would have helped drive the gameplay. There was a wonderful opportunity to bridge the gap between puzzle and narrative but this never delivered.

How did it run?

Hidden Through Time 2 runs relatively smoothly from moment to moment, rarely stuttering on Nintendo Switch. During my time with the game, I didn’t come across any bugs that halted progress or issues that crashed the game. It ran without any real game-stopping or game-breaking issues, and any issues I did have were mostly minimal issues.

One of those minimal issues however was rough movement in a more complex level. In this way, the game did occasionally struggle on my Nintendo Switch, specifically when the camera was zoomed out. I imagine this is due to so many active elements on the screen at a single time but with a relatively simple hand-drawn style, it was a bit of a shame but not devastating.

It’s not entirely clear whether or not this is an issue isolated to the Nintendo Switch or not, or if the other platforms the game is available on are also affected.

Conclusion

Hidden Through Time 2: Myths & Magic delivers on what it promises well. There’s good fun to be had in a comfortable little package with an atmosphere and style that produces lovely little atmospheres. While some of the storytelling felt lacklustre in places, it balances this with an aesthetic that produces an enjoyable game with minimal technical issues.

Overall, while it’s a solid little game, it did feel a little out of place on the Nintendo Switch. Using the joycons and controllers, it was impossible to shift the feeling that the game would be more at home on a mobile device or tablet. Swinging a cursor around on the screen instead of just pointing and clicking with my finger seemed a little silly when I think about it, but that shouldn’t deter someone who’s looking for this kind of cosy and puzzle experience on their favourite console. 

3.5

You can purchase Hidden Through Time 2: Myths & Magic on the Nintendo eShop here.