Hide and Seek is a hidden picture puzzle like the ones in children’s books. A few animals of the same kind are hiding in a drawn picture, and you have to find all of them. The game is designed so that young children can manage it with a parent’s help, while the higher levels give adults a challenge too.
Picking an animal
First you choose who you will look for. There are ten animals to pick from, for example a cat, a frog, a hedgehog, an owl or a ladybird. Each animal has its own hundred levels, so you can play only with the owl, say, and keep the others for later. For each animal you can see how many of its hundred levels you have finished.
Levels and settings
Levels come one after another. The next one unlocks when you finish the one before. You can replay finished levels at any time.
The setting changes every ten levels. You go through a garden, a park, a farm, a forest, a village, a beach, a market, the mountains, a town and winter. Each setting has its own objects and its own hiding places. In the forest the animals hide among spruces, tree stumps and ferns, at the market between stalls, baskets and sacks, in town by houses, kiosks and a fountain.
The pictures grow bigger and busier as you go. Level 1 has five animals in a small, clear picture. Level 100 has about thirty in a large picture full of objects, and more of them only peek out. Some animals are in plain view, others half hidden, and some show only their head from behind a bush.
Marking an animal
When you spot an animal, tap it with your finger or click it with the mouse. It gets its colour and a ring. Above the picture you can always see how many you have found and how many are left.
In regular levels, tapping the wrong spot is not a mistake. The game just tells you there is nothing there, and you keep looking. Regular levels have no time limit either. If you like, you can spend half an hour on a single picture.
When you have found all the animals, the level is done and the game shows a Next level button.
Moving and zooming
In the higher levels, the picture does not fit on the screen at a size where you can see everything. You need to zoom in and move around. The game lets you do that in several ways:
- With a finger: drag the picture with one finger and spread two fingers to zoom in. A double tap on an empty spot zooms in.
- With a mouse: drag the picture and zoom with the wheel or a double click.
- With the buttons in the corner of the picture: plus zooms in, minus zooms out and the button with four corners shows the whole picture.
- With a keyboard: the arrow keys move the picture, plus and minus zoom, and zero shows the whole picture. Enter marks the spot under the cross in the middle of the screen.
The keyboard is handy for people who cannot point precisely with a mouse or a finger. The picture moves under a fixed cross, and you only need to bring an animal under it.
Hints
You have three hints in every level. When you use one, a green circle appears on the picture with one of the animals you have not found yet inside it. The circle is fairly large, so you still have to search, just in a smaller area.
If you use another hint before finding the animal in the circle, the circle shrinks. So a second hint narrows down the first one rather than showing a new animal. When the hints run out, the game suggests zooming in and going through the picture part by part.
The daily challenge
Besides the hundred levels, Hide and Seek has a daily challenge. Each day there is one picture with the animal of the day, the same for every player. The animal picker shows who is hiding today.
The daily challenge differs from regular levels in that it is scored. When you finish, you see your time, the number of hints used and the number of taps that missed. You can share the result, for example with grandparents or friends who played the same picture. The clock only runs while the page is open. A new challenge starts at midnight.
Saving
Finished levels and the level in progress are saved in this browser. After a page reload, or when you come back the next day, the game continues where you left off. Animals you have already found in an unfinished level stay marked.
Who the game is for
The youngest players can manage the first levels in the garden and the park, where there are only a few animals and they are easy to see. The task above the picture is written out, for example Find 5 cats, but a child who cannot read yet can go by the picture of the animal. A parent reads out who to look for at the start, and after that the child can play alone.
The game puts no time pressure on players, does not count mistakes in regular levels and needs no account. More advice for parents is in Games for kids with nothing to install.
The pictures
Every picture was drawn for this game. The animals and objects are based on freely available reference drawings, which are listed on the Licences page.
Hide and Seek search tips explains how to find animals faster. The story of hidden picture puzzles is told in A history of hidden picture puzzles.