Hidden Object: Detective Holmes – Heirloom

Hidden Object: Detective Holmes – Heirloom is the second hidden object game published by Crisp App Studio whose theme revolves around a fictional investigative case of the notorious character. While they do share a similar subject, the two games do not constitute a series of stories, but are rather independent and can be played individually – in fact they also have very different artwork. However, both follow closely the structure of any other Crisp App title – which is in essence a collection of hidden object levels one after another, with a panel of story in between. There are always 4 types of challenges that you can meet in each level (score, no hints, no mistakes, time restriction), thus the levels can be repeated as many times as needed to reach them assuming that one wants to obtain them all, that is; replaying a level also unlocks new objects to find inside that level.

Compared to other titles developed and published by the same team, Hidden Object: Detective Holmes – Heirloom is much shorter but also much easier to play. Crisp App Studio’s staple mechanic of 360° panoramic scenes is only partially present here. The levels are a bit wider than your monitor width, therefore you will still have to pan the camera a bit to the left / right to reveal it, however there is no 360° view any more (you can still zoom in though). This makes the levels appear more compact, with less possible items to find, which has an immediate effect on the difficulty. Hidden Object: Detective Holmes – Heirloom literally feels like a stroll in the park, and if in previous titles you sometimes had to repeat a level several times in order to learn the items’ positions, in preparation for the 45 seconds time limit challenge, here you will often be able to meet that challenge even on the first pass of the level, without knowing beforehand where the objects are. On the downside, there are considerably less find-the pairs or spot-the-differences levels than usual.

It’s a game that you could probably finish in roughly 1h if you don’t replay the levels – achievements are fairly obtainable in a single playthrough anyway). The story isn’t anything out of the ordinary, but still fun to read (albeit it does have some weird details now and then).