No doubt you’ve played and heard about Criminal Case. This HO game in Facebook proved to be very popular, just a few days after it was released on the popular social networking site. The game had, at its peak, an average traffic of ten million players in the year 2013.

In fact, Criminal Case (CC) became so popular that it nearly rivaled another popular game in the social network: Candy Crush Saga. For comparison, Candy Crush Saga had 46 million users every month in that same year.

The game’s popularity resulted to the resurgence of other similar games on Facebook. Each of them had their own share of fame in Mark Zuckerberg’s website, with each one their own unique features that made them stand out with their competition.

If you have not found the answer just yet, you might be asking yourself the question: “Why are games like Criminal Case so popular?”

First off, CC belongs to the investigative genre of HO games. While most HO games are investigative in their own right, their storylines unfold a lot differently. Criminal Case, on the other hand, plays out like an adaptation of a crime drama on TV. The game’s stories progress in the form of chapters, each of which is an individual crime that the protagonist and his partner have to solve. Each chapter also has its own sub-chapters; segments in the investigation that moves the story forward until the case reveals enough evidence for you to pinpoint exactly who the culprit is.

This, perhaps, is the factor that makes investigative Hidden Object games popular among casual gamers online. Storyline is very important, which is what makes the game and its contemporaries attractive to its audience. There’s more than just the simple HO puzzle to solve in investigative HO games like Criminal Case.

The mechanics may differ from one title to another, but there’s always the time limit that adds an additional layer of challenge for the player. Ideally, one would want to have a game that allows him or her to take their time in solving each puzzle, but these games do not have that kind of luxury for them.

Alternatively, investigative HO games do not impose a time limit but uses the time consumed to solve each puzzle as a basis for the score, among others.

Either way, the time limit makes HO games difficult or at least challenging enough to continue to entice even the most casual gamer to come back and play. Criminal Case definitely pulled it off, and so did other investigative games in their own way.

Last but not the least, the social aspect of these Facebook investigative HO games encourages players to invite other gamers to enter the game. There’s an incentive for this – there are bonuses that these games give to the player that make the game slightly easier or manageable for the player, like Hints or time bonuses.

With the success of Criminal Case, there’s no doubt that investigative Hidden Object games are here to stay. Give these games a try and find out for yourself just what makes them really popular with casual gamers.