Hidden Fears (Moonlight Edition) Reviews

I was interested in this game due to the preview images and video it had - the artwork looked splendid, but unfortunately, that's the only positive to this game. The storyline is a little typical and offers nothing new, having the protagonist's loved one "in trouble" and needing to 'save' them. The main characters are uninteresting as we get to know nothing about them in the introduction besides their marriage problems, and are jumped in right away to save our kidnapped wife without learning a single thing about her. There's no incentive anywhere. If the game had gradually built up to what it wanted to setup for the game, giving us some time to learn more about the characters and the location, then everything wouldn't feel so rushed and like we're 'jumped' into it right away. My main issue with this game that caused me to request for a refund under 20 minutes of play was that it crashed first thing on me. When I finally got it to work, the gameplay lagged and there was no option to change the quality anywhere. I suffered through and found that every time the game cuts into a new scene, or you withdraw from something, you are left with a blank screen for 10 seconds at minimum. This was really aggravating considering there are lots of scenes that cut, and it really eats into gameplay time. The dialogue and voice acting are both executed terribly. The protagonist sounds like he cares very little about any situation he's in, and the ghosts are embarrassing just to hear. I can't stand sitting through the cut scenes because they take so long, they're painful to hear, and they really build up little tension or story in their time. It's better just to skip them, really. I wouldn't recommend this game unless you can stand the lag or it fixes this issue. Not looking very bright for a newly-released HOG, as there are different games with similar setups that are executed much better and with more quality. This one only has good art - but the acting, pacing, and gameplay are unbearable.

I've played quite a few hidden object games, enjoying the puzzles and their casual nature. I've found that some are good, some are mediocre and some are bad, but Hidden Fears doesn't even qualify as the latter. A recently married couple is lured to a hotel for their honeymoon, only for the wife to be abducted shortly after their arrival. The husband has to explore the eerie building, solve puzzles and battle ghosts in order to find and free her. First off, I do like the ghostly atmosphere of the creepy hotel, as well as the horror-themed story. The artwork looks pretty good too and the music does add to the ambiance. But that's about where the enjoyability ended for me, though. What follows is only a selections of the problems I encountered while playing. The game controls are clunky to say the least. For example, during a mini-game near the start of the game a metal ball has to be guided through a maze using the cursor keys. Occasionally a bomb goes of inside the maze (always near the ball) and if the ball is inside the blast radius it will return to its starting point. Due to the unresponsive controls it was nearly impossible to avoid the blast, as the ball would regularly stop moving or not even start moving when pressing a cursor key. After several failed and frustrating attempts I was forced to skip the mini-game (something I don't like doing and don't often do) in order to progress the story. Some of descriptions of the mini-games state that there is a time limit to winning the game but no timer is shown, making it impossible to know how long you have left. Would it have hurt the developers to give the player an on-screen indication of the remaining time? Also, the description often only tell you the goal of mini-game without explaining anything about the controls or mechanics of the game. During the tutorial a clock was visible in the top-left of the screen, for some inexplicable reason measuring how long I took. In itself not a big deal, but whenever it ticked (i.e. every second) the game, or at least the mouse cursor, would freeze, making it difficult to accurately point at anything. Fortunately the timer disappeared after the tutorial was over, along with the annoying freezing every second. Voice acting in games like these is often not great, which I understand and accept, but in this one it is abysmal. Not only does it seem as if the actors are simply reading from a sheet of paper, they also sound as if they'd rather be doing something else. Things are only aggravated by the badly written dialogue. At one point a few lines of subtitles during a cutscene didn't disappear from the screen, causing them to make the following lines unreadable. After the cutscene finished they still remained on top of the inventory bar. Quitting to the main menu and reloading the game fixed this, but it shouldn't have happened to begin with. Loading times when switching rooms are much longer than such a relatively simple game justifies, which can get very annoying when backtracking is involved. I read other reviews which mentioned loading times between 10 and 30 seconds, but fortunately I was spared that. As usual the game automatically pauses when alt-tabbing out of the game. However, upon returning the game wouldn't unpause, despite the on-screen message telling me to "Click the screen to resume the game". Also, during one of the mini-games the game crashed to desktop. I think that Hidden Fears has the potential to be a pretty decent horror-themed hidden object game. However, the problems I encountered while playing just kept piling up, and after the game crashed on me somewhere during chapter 3 I decided that enough was enough. I may never find out if Tony will be able to save his wife from a bunch of ghosts and lunatics, or if he'll become one of them. But frankly I just don't care anymore. My advice is to only buy this if you're a fan of hidden object games with a spooky atmosphere, don't mind the occasional crash and horrible voice acting and other issues mentioned above, [b]and[/b] it is offered at a major discount. Otherwise, stay away from this one.

It wasn't that I didn't like the idea for what the game tried to do, but for one thing the puzzles were so very linear. You really couldn't progress without finding the ONE thing to move forward and then had to back pedal to the whichever room you needed to get back to. As to the controls during "ghost battles" they were so wonky at the best to times that it bordered on frustrating and aggravating. It was extremely easy to not hit arrows or lines if you so much as moved a smidgen of an inch in what the game assumed was the wrong direction. And if you failed so much as a key mech at the wrong time, you were then force you to do the whole thing all over again from the start. The voice acting for most of the characters was pretty good except for the main character... he just felt like he was phoning it at times. So much potential could have been saved if they had better beta testers who said, "No, wait, these controls suck."

The story isn't bad but the gameplay really is. The loading times between EVERY SINGLE ROOM AND PUZZLE are ridiculous. Most of the "puzzles" are really just time wasters or reflex testers. The game also tends to crash a lot. It's too bad because because the story seemed fun and the art wasn't bad. The voice acting was terrible though. Just don't voice it if you can't hire good VA please.

HOG-yes. Otherwise, this is awful. Thirty second long black screens between each room/scene, a whole lot of dialogue and cutscenes, battles (really?). Even for a dollar, I couldn't do it.

This is a solid Hidden Object Adventure game plus some ghost fighting. I recommend this game but with this advice: I have Windows 10 & spent a bit of time finding the right compatability setting and getting the game to run smoothly. In Menu I turned off ambiance, special curser, & music. Then I restarted the PC. The problems had been lagging, 15-second black loading screens, crashing. Following the above steps reduced the loading screens to 5 seconds. Do not click the loading screens or cut scenes or it may crash. Note which rooms need which items so when you find them you can use the fast-travel map, go straight there and avoid a dozen loading screens. Read the instructions provided in the menu so you know how to fight the ghosts & use the flashlight. It's not hard unless you don't know what to do. The game has: fast-travel map easy-use inventory mouse changes over active areas hint button - looks like a radio flashlight for dark areas, HOS, and fighting ghosts Good instructions for puzzles & mini games. Controls for ambiance, music, curser, sfx Guide (in Menu) with a walkthrough, Buttons & Symbols instructions,and GUI instructions The HOS consist of metal shards that form an object after you find them all. Extras are Moonlight Games including Mahjong, Jigsaw puzzle, Find the Differences

It was cheap, and on sale to boot... yet I still feel a little ripped off. The load times are abysmal, absolutely unforgivable for such a low-tech game. And speaking of low-tech, well... it's a shame, because there were tiny bits here and there that hinted at what could have been a halfway decent game. But it isn't.

Very slow, very clunky, some of the mini games don't seem to work properly. Takes about 10 seconds of blank screen as you enter each room before it opens. Really bad dialogue and acting!! Gave up! All in all a real disappointment.

pretty good game, good plot, good music that is not included by 200% when entering the game. It does not require powerful hardware, so it will run on any calculator.

I played this game on Windows 7 64 , so my experience may be different than for those using windows 10. I really pay attention to game's plots. This game didn't really have a plot, or at least one that was understandable. I always love fantasy and paranormal themes in a game but this game was confusing from the very beginning. The premise was that a young couple go to a resort for their honeymoon. From the start, they don't seem like a newly wedded couple . There is no dialogues between them showing affection, etc. They encounter another couple in the resort who are the hosts(?) but of course not really. From there. it gets VERY confusing. I won't give more away but will concentrate now on the game play. On my computer it was smooth except occasionally when accessing the walkthrough (my cursor disappeared ) It would return after I used the touch screen instead. The FROG scenes were tough as the fragments would all be the same colour and often a flashlight was necessary. Plus the indication for striking off each fragment was STRANGE..a runic line with a strike through. The graphics were the high point. They obviously spent a lot of time on them, but there was little with which to interact. Then the game took a big turn about and introduced action scenes . One was obliged to find and eliminate various ghosts. (I actually enjoyed this part, which could get quite tricky) So in summation; A game with a strange plot(and no discernible logic) but WITH fairly good voice overs Smooth enough game play, with no lag on transitions. There is a map with quick travel enabled, which I liked very much. It looked like a journal was meant to be incorporated but it simply turned out to be a very unhelpful list of tasks. I was often wandering around, wondering what to do. There is a walkthrough which I had to resort to once or twice but it WASN'T very helpful as it expected one to be following a certain path . Recommend? Yes for fun.... at the sale price it isn't a big loss...