In the first levels of Hide and Seek you find the animals almost at once. On the farm, in town or in winter it is a different story. The pictures are bigger and full of objects, and the animals hide so that only their ears or tail show. Here are a few ways to search faster without wandering aimlessly around the picture.
Go through the picture part by part
The most common mistake is to let your eyes roam over the whole picture at once. Your gaze then jumps from one corner to another, passing some places several times and others not at all.
It works better to divide the picture into strips and go through them like lines in a book. Zoom in so that you see about a third of the picture’s width. Start in the top left corner, go along the strip to the right, move down and come back to the left. That way you look at every spot exactly once.
This is especially easy with a keyboard. The arrow keys move the picture a little at a time, and the fixed cross in the middle helps you keep your attention on one place.
Look for a part, not the whole animal
In the higher levels, many animals are half hidden. If you look for a whole cat, you will miss the cat peeking over a fence. It helps to think first about what makes the animal stand out:
- cats and bunnies have ears that stick up over the edge of things,
- an owl has large round eyes,
- a ladybird has spots,
- a snail has a shell that is easily mistaken for a stone,
- a hedgehog has spines that blend into grass.
Look at the edges of objects, where one shape meets another. That is where heads and tails peek out.
Where the animals hide
Each setting has its typical hiding places. In the garden they are bushes, flowers, pumpkins and the wheelbarrow, in the park hedges, benches and the playground. In the forest it is tree stumps, ferns and tree trunks. At the market stalls, baskets and sacks. In town houses, kiosks and the fountain. In winter snowdrifts, snowmen and sledges.
After a few levels in one setting you will remember where the animals like to hide. When you get stuck, go back to those places and check them again.
Zoom in early, not late
On big pictures there is no point searching fully zoomed out. The animals are simply too small. Zoom in right at the start. On a phone this matters even more than on a computer, because the screen is small.
The button with four corners shows you the whole picture at any time. It is useful for a quick check of which parts you have already covered.
The counter above the picture
Above the picture you can see how many animals you have found and how many there are in total. When the last two are missing and you have been over the whole picture, they may well be where you thought there was nothing. A corner of the picture, for example, or an edge that easily slips out of view when you are zoomed in.
When to use a hint
You have three hints in every level. A hint shows a green circle containing one animal you have not found yet. A second hint used before you find that animal makes the circle smaller.
Hints are most useful at the end. You will find the first animals without them, and the last ones are usually the best hidden. When you do need a hint, search inside the circle on your own for a while first. Only use another hint to shrink the circle when that does not work.
The daily challenge
In the daily challenge, your time, the hints you use and the taps that miss are all counted. If you want a good result, avoid tapping at random. Every missed tap shows up in your result.
The clock only runs while the page is open. Speed is not everything, though. A result with no hints and no missed taps is often worth more than a time a minute faster. It is up to you what you compare with others.
For parents of young children
Hide and Seek works well for children who cannot read yet. A few suggestions to keep it enjoyable:
- Let the child do the tapping. You can give directions in words: “look up, near the roof”.
- Name what you see together. While searching you can talk about colours, objects and what is where. Picture books with hidden objects have been used for exactly this for decades.
- Do not worry about missed taps. In regular levels they do not count as mistakes, so the child can keep trying.
- Stop after a level. A finished level is a natural place for a break. The game saves and next time carries on where you stopped.
- Choose the animal together. If your child loves hedgehogs, let them play just the hedgehog’s hundred levels.
When nothing works
Sometimes your eyes get tired and you cannot see an animal that is right in front of you. The best advice then is to put the game aside for a while. When you come back, the picture looks different, and you often spot the animal at once. The level waits for you, and the animals you found stay marked.
The full description of the game is in How to play Hide and Seek.