Are you truly a hidden object games veteran? Well, if you are, you’ll surely have encountered a lot of scene modes, or in other words, types of scenes in the games that you’ve played. In this article, I’m going to compile some of the common and unique types of scenes and do check out if you know all of them.

The most basic and common scene type is as you may have guessed – the Word Lists! In this scene type, you are given a list of names of random objects that you’ll need to search for in a scene. There are some variations to how the word lists are displayed. One example is that some games, such as the Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, may require you to find only 1 type of item, such as plates, but you’ll need to find say… 10 of them. So, technically, you’ll be only searching for multiple copies of an item, but the copies can vary drastically from each other. Taking the previous scenario as an example, a text that states “PLATES” embedded in the scene may count towards your objective.

Another interesting example is when the item names on the list are only displayed for a brief period of time before being swapped out with another list of names. There are other games like the Yard Sale series that couple hidden object scenes with time management which is somewhat similar to what I’ve described in the previous sentence. These types of scenes are honestly even more exhilarating to play than in a timed hidden objects scene!

Of course, there are other variations which involve replacing some of the names of the objects with riddles or vaguely descriptive phrases. For example, in Aquascapes, you’ll often encounter phrases like “a circle with 4 holes” where you’ll have to first figure out what the phrase mean before you can actually scan the scene for the object. If the game is in timed mode, then the scene would instantly become a whole lot more challenging.

Another interesting scene type that you’ll surely encounter in most hidden object games online is the Silhouette mode. In this mode, you’re given a list of shadows of objects instead of names. Considering that some objects may have very similar shadow images, this scene type can be pretty difficult to play as well.

If you think the silhouette mode is bad enough, there’s another that is a lot more challenging… the Night or Darkness scene mode! In this mode, the entire scene is darkened and you are only given a small beam of light on your cursor to seek out the items in your list of “to-finds”. Sometimes, it can feel like what you’d do when you’re stumbling around in a room on a cloudy night and without the lights on while trying to find something.

There are also unique scene types that only certain games have. For instance, Rooms of Memory and Agency 33 both have an invert scene mode which will, of course, invert the entire scene. So, although the scenes are basically the same, the inversion changes how you view the scene, making it feel like it’s a whole new scene. Furthermore, The Secret Society offers a special Morph mode whereby the items from the list can change their appearances and a Pieces mode in which you are given fragments of an object and you’ll need to piece them together just so you can know which items to find. These may sound elaborate but they are pretty simple to grasp.

All in all, from the many innovative scene types discussed, you can see that the creativity of the developers of many hidden object games in action as they tweak the classic make-up of a hidden object scene and turned it around! Hopefully, we’ll be able to see a lot more of these scene types, especially the unique ones, in the future.