I have to admit, when I first came across Finding America: The West Collector’s Edition, I thought it was just another one of those hidden objects games that you can play on the internet. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing, just that it’s been done before. However, I like these sorts of games (having played and done reviews for Hidden Through Time 2: Myths & Magic and Sophia the Traveler), so I decided to give this one a go. I think the Western America theme was partly what attracted me. When I started playing this game, I was quickly and pleasantly surprised at how good it was. It is a hidden objects game, plus lots more beyond that. Let me tell you why I think you should give Finding America: The West Collector’s Edition a go.
Finding America: The West Collector’s Edition is available on PC, Mac, and Nintendo Switch for $9.99.
Story – Going West
The main focus on Finding America are all the puzzles you can do, as well as bonus content you can unlock. These puzzles aren’t set to a story to follow. It’s simply a series of puzzles with an American West theme, with no story elements at all. This doesn’t stop the game from being good though. A game such as Finding America doesn’t really need a story.
Gameplay – Hidden Objects… and Lots More Puzzles to Enjoy
As I mentioned previously, I initially thought Finding America: The West Collector’s Edition was just a hidden objects game. It is… but there are a lot more puzzles to play, and they’re all fun to do and addictive without being ridiculously challenging.
Tutorial and Control Options
When you first boot up the game, Finding America offers you a tutorial. If you’re unfamiliar with hidden objects game, you can use it, but if not and you just want to get on, you can decline the tutorial. Some games force tutorials on you, so it’s good that Finding America offers it to you instead. You can also turn the tutorial back on if you change your mind after.
When I first began playing Finding America, since I was playing in docked mode on the Switch, I found navigating with the joystick quite tricky, as the reticle moved around quite quickly. However, exploring the options allowed me to adjust the controls so I could slow down the reticle. You can have it really slow or fast. Dabbling with these controls made gameplay a lot better and smoother for me, so I could focus on playing the puzzles rather than grappling with the tricky navigation.
Hidden Objects Gameplay
Most of the puzzles are hidden objects, but even these vary between each other. There are various scenes to find objects in, and each puzzle has a different list of about a dozen or so objects to find. It’s not just the scenes and objects to find that change from puzzle to puzzle either. Some tell you what objects to look out for, either the name of the object written out or showing you the picture. Others just show you the silhouette. Some puzzles have the words either scrambled up or have missing letters. This stops the game from getting too repetitive and keeps you on your toes. It’s a lot harder to find objects when its name is scrambled or letters are missing.
The hidden objects puzzles also include two special objects to find: a key and a star. The star unlocks that scene’s unlimited play. The key gives you a fun fact about the scene you are searching, such as Yellowstone Park or the Golden Gate Bridge.
If you ever get stuck in any of the hidden objects puzzles, there is a tool to help you. In fact, there’s 3. One is a hint, which reveals the location of one hidden object. The super hint reveals the location of all the remaining hidden objects. However, the hints do have a cooldown period before you can use it again, but it’s only a few seconds, so not too long to wait. There’s also a magnifying glass if you’re struggling to search the scene.
Tools such as the magnifying glass help you to find those harder-to-spot objects.
The main campaign of Finding America: The West Collector’s Edition has a series of puzzles divided up into 38 chapters. Each chapter contains 2 to 4 hidden objects puzzles, plus an extra puzzle. There are about a dozen different puzzles you can get, such as colouring in a poster, sliding puzzles, spot the difference, jigsaws, matching items, and more. These extra puzzles become available after you’ve completed the hidden objects puzzle.
At first glance, Finding America looks like a simple puzzle game, and I guess it is, but it’s a good one. The puzzles aren’t silly hard; you can just play and enjoy. It’s one of those games you can play even for a few minutes, if you want a quick break to play. It’s also surprisingly addictive. You’ll finish one puzzle, and then want to do another… and another, and so on. It’s quite easy to do a number of chapters in a row and lose track of time.
Any Bugs?
I don’t think I have anything bad to say about Finding America. However, my gameplay wasn’t totally flawless. I did encounter one or two bugs, although these were minor. In one instance, for some reason, the scene would come up blank, with just a grey canvas. I tried the other puzzles and they were the same: the HUD was visible, but not the scene. Another bug was after I finished an extra puzzle, it didn’t take me back to the chapter screen and I was effectively stuck. In both cases, a quick closing of the game and rebooting fixed these issues no bother, and they’re not frequent either, so it’s not anything to get too concerned about. Nothing that a quick reboot can fix anyway.
Finding America presents you with spectacular scenes with lots of different objects to find.
Graphics & Audio – Taking You to the American West
In terms of its set up, I was impressed with Finding America. It’s easy to navigate between the different menus and find what you’re looking for. All the information you’re given is presented clearly, so there’s never any confusion. All the scenes with the hidden objects kind of reminds me of heavily Photoshopped pictures, but I grew to like it very quickly. It doesn’t come off as cheap-looking. The pictures are clear, at least so you can’t blame not finding an object on poor quality graphics. Visually, Finding America looks good.
Not only does Finding America look good, but it sounds good too. Music plays in the menu screens as well as during puzzles, so you have something to listen to throughout. While the music varies, it all matches the American West theme, further emphasizing what the game is about. I found the music pleasant to listen to, warping me right over to West America, and it’s not annoying or overly repetitive. The sound effects do their job well too.
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- The main bulk of Finding America are scenes with hidden objects to find.
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- Some objects are found by zooming into certain areas in a scene, such as a pile of suitcases.
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- Finding America is full of other puzzles as well, such as finding a specific portion of an image.
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- Word search puzzles also appear in Finding America.
Finding America: The West Collector’s Edition was reviewed on Nintendo Switch with a key provided by Games Branding.
