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REVIEW: Hidden in my Paradise - Big charm in the tiny details

Writer's picture: Julie CooperJulie Cooper
A screenshot from Hidden in my Paradise. A bunch of animals are sitting at an outdoor dinner party on a farm, with a cat behind a counter serving grapes or wine from large barrels.

I became a fast fan of Ogre Pixel after their 2023 release, A Tiny Sticker Tale. Now having played through their latest, a cozy hidden object game called Hidden in my Paradise, I see the throughline of what makes their games so pleasant for me — their hand-drawn, highly interactive, pick-upable worlds.


If there’s one thing about me, it’s that I love to pick stuff up in games. Anything and everything, I am looting it. Just ask my Fortnite squad (they despise me). Just ask Nate, who’s been watching me run around combing the beaches and plucking up seasonal items in my latest fixation game, Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp, for the last two weeks.


In Hidden in my Paradise, every single object is movable by design. That’s because the “Where’s Waldo” element is only the beginning. You’re encouraged to move items to complete several of your hidden object missions as well as decorate your own DIY levels, which can be uploaded and shared for others to play online.


I’ve spent 8.5 hours in the game and completed all the Steam achievements, including messing around in the sandbox mode long enough to create one level that I’m satisfied with. Having made it through to the other side and grown attached to its many cute :3 animal faces, it’s an impressive addition to the hidden object genre, giving players not only the usual structure of hidden object checklists but also an open-ended playground for building their own tiny and wonderful worlds.


​Just the Facts

Developer: Ogre Pixel

Publisher: Ogre Pixel

Platform(s): PC*, Nintendo Switch, Android [requires Crunchyroll Game Vault subscription] *denotes platform reviewed

Price: $9.99

Release Date: October 9, 2024

Review key personally purchased.

A screenshot from Hidden in my Paradise. The snapshot mission in progress. A polaroid labeled "two by the bonfire" shows a dog and cat on logs and stumps near a campfire, with two drinks and two twigs nearby. To the right, the same scene is recreated in the level and the player has the camera out and is about to click the green check mark to take a picture.

Hidden in my Paradise is a hidden object game with several objectives to complete in each of 25 levels: 

  • Find everything in your prescribed list of hidden objects (the amount varies from around 6-15 per scene). 

  • Reveal fairies by looking for the shimmering objects and moving them. 

  • Recreate snapshots, placing certain items and animals together and taking a photo — for example, you might be prompted to place a cat and dog warming themselves by the campfire or three animals riding the merry-go-round.


One of my few downsides for this game was that, in this snapshot feature, the camera can be finicky. At times, I took my snap only to be told that something was missing, even though all of the elements were there, placed just so to match the reference photo. I eventually realized the trick was often to make the snap larger around the subjects — a downer for me, since I prefer a tight shot, but that wouldn’t cut it here. So, a word to the wise: When in doubt, zoom out.


Also, the composition of it all doesn’t need to be an exact match; you just need to have all the right items in the snap in approximately the right places. This part of the gameplay became less tedious once I learned that!


Hidden in my Paradise has four different zones, with multiple levels in each one: The forest, beach, farm, and city, plus bonus Halloween and snow zones in the “Extras.”


By completing your missions, you unlock the next levels and earn coins and tickets for a gacha machine in the shop — and clicking on every animal and finding every treasure chest will snag you some extra currency. Each biome comes with its own store and gacha, packed with bundles of items and animals you can use to decorate your own paradise in the game’s level creator. They come to you in small bundles that vary in size, so you do get that classic gacha excitement when you get an especially stacked capsule pull.


A screenshot from Hidden in my Paradise, a green gacha machine dispensing a capsule for the cost of one pink paw print ticket.

For me, this sandbox mode is where the game really sets itself apart. Recreating snaps within the base game acts as your training wheels, giving you practice in moving things around and getting an eye for placements, before setting you loose to create your own worlds and upload them for fellow players to enjoy online.


The sandbox mode allows you to get creative, using all these lovely hand-drawn assets and recombining them in ways that are entertaining to you, perhaps around a theme or visual style. I’ve explored a few of the player-created stages and tinkered with my own — naturally, I went with a “campout” visual theme as we were fresh off of our 24-hour VGG Campout. Meanwhile, community levels I’ve played have been centered around snowball fights, capybara onsens, and more. There’s something special about seeing how every community member’s style differs, and how all of these same assets can be rearranged in so many ways apart from the development team’s signature Ogre Pixel style.


I’m a big fan of Animal Crossing and other games with the ability to decorate your own space, and I absolutely enjoyed the freedom here — no grids, just hundreds of items and pure vibes.


Many of the items are interactive or "alive" in some way, which makes it feel polished and kinetic. Lamps and car headlights can be turned on or off. Swings and hammocks sway back and forth. Kites fly in the wind. Water flows. Playground toys and carnival rides go 'round.


There are even different settings for time of day and various filters to give your worlds a fresh look. You can change these in the main levels, too, which doubles as both aesthetic tool and accessibility tool: Changing the lighting helped me on several occasions when I was struggling to find objects in the dimmer levels, and I imagine the color-changing filters would be useful for those who can’t differentiate between certain colors.


I plan to come back to this game to create and explore more sandbox levels, as there are pages and pages of them I haven’t got to yet.


A screenshot of the level I created in Hidden in my Paradise. The title of it is overlaid, Campout Pals, over a world with lots of animals, tents, trees, ponds, and other camp themed items.
I made this! I like it!

Let’s talk about the game’s finer details.


Here’s where I make my second nitpick. The Steam store page hints at some setup for who you are in the world — Laly, an aspiring photographer striving to become the world’s best, accompanied by Coronya the Fairy. I don’t think you can actually glean this from playing the game; it’s not hinted at, aside from a mention of “starting your training” as the game begins tutorializing you in the first level and the fact that Coronya and Laly are there on the screen as you play. 


Do you need a story in a hidden object game? Certifiably no. But it’s a peeve of mine when there’s the suggestion of one in the marketing but not a whiff of setup explained in the game.


Although it’s not a big focus, I enjoyed the audio design of the game, with cute squeaks and satisfying shimmery flourishes as I clicked on objects from my missions.


The background music is a plucky, meandering little piano and guitar tune that feels befitting of this chibi style hand-drawn world. It’s a pleasant listen accompanying you as you coast along through your search. However, I’ll note, it’s just this one track throughout the game. Sometimes it’s adjusted slightly — for example, nighttime scenes bring down the volume to just a whisper and add a soft, constant drone of wind and distant chirping crickets.


I never found the looping theme to be a problem, as I tended to prefer playing Hidden in my Paradise in short bursts — a few levels at a time during a lunch break or while unwinding for the evening. After all, this is a great pick-up-and-go game. You can easily complete most levels in 10 minutes or so.


But you know yourself best, and if you’re wired to find a repeating tune grating, you can adjust the game’s sound sliders separately, so it’s easy to mute and enjoy your own playlist while still hearing the gameplay trills.


The game is playable on PC, Switch, and apparently on mobile, but it’s accessible only if you have a Crunchyroll Game Vault Mega Fan or Ultimate Fan membership. It’s also Steam Deck verified, and although I gave it a test and found the controls simple enough to use, trusty old PC was definitely my preference, as I like the versatility of being able to move and zoom in and out with either the mouse or keyboard.


A screenshot from Hidden in my Paradise. A nighttime scene in a city level, with a few houses and buildings, an outdoor stage, and a pool and park in the center.
Provided by Ogre Pixel.

Where Hidden in my Paradise shines is that it is artistically intricate but mechanically simple. It strikes an excellent balance in its difficulty level across the board, in my opinion never straying into either hidden object extreme — you know, the old, “This is so simple that I might as well not be playing anything at all,” or the classic, “I just spent 30 minutes searching for one item and, actually, who made this cruel game? The DEVIL?” Its middle-of-the-road difficulty makes it approachable, but at the same time it gets a bump in complexity from having multiple objectives (hidden objects, fairies, snaps, and chests) in each level as well as the creative sandbox mode that can add hours of additional gameplay.


It brings all these elements together seamlessly and with great charm, and I loved experiencing for myself via the sandbox mode just how painstakingly designed each level must have been created by Ogre Pixel.


Video Games Are Good and Hidden in my Paradise is . . . . GOOD (7.5/10)


+ adorable and highly interactive hand-drawn art; great for short sessions; encourages creativity and extends playable content with sandbox mode

- snapshot mode can be fussy; not too challenging; repetitive soundtrack


Key art for Hidden in my Paradise. It shows previews of the first four levels, with the first represented by a house, the second represented by a grove of trees, the third represented by a tent and sleeping bag, and the fourth represented by a water fountain in a park.

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