Nature Escapes is a new genre to me, a hidden object puzzle game! Like a multiple "Where's Wally" that includes all kinds of things, from insects to elephants, from daisies to cacti. The game is simply a series of real snapshots that have various objects; animals, plants, fruit, toys, images–allsorts really–hidden within the photo, and it's your job to find them. You are given a list of items to find, and then have to click the cursor on them to cross them off the list–the twist being that they may be well hidden, camouflaged or a drawing or artistic representation of that item rather than a photograph.
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If you spot items successfully in consecutive turns you activate a multiplier to boost your score, which is vital if you want to get a good medal rank on each level.
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Every level will offer some info on related fauna on completion, and you can collect a selection of flowers, plants and shrubs to decorate your very own little garden picture with.
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The game occasionally educated me as it threw up questions such as “What the heck is a Mangosteen?” and “What on Earth is a Kinkajou?” Well we know now, do you?
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Okay, so far so good. It's a fun little diversion that is actually quite a challenge if you're after all Gold rankings. If we have to pick holes they'd be that the cursor movement is a bit twitchy, and I'd have expected a finer level of control, particularly on the Jigsaw puzzles, I mean, why isn't the PlayStation's touch pad used? Another recurring issue is that the images, and particularly some inserted objects, are disappointingly low-res and blurry, making some of them difficult to recognise, even on a big TV and playing on the PS5 in supposed 4K. One last thing, why change the control method for the extras? It all smacks of a quick PC port, which is a shame.
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We had a lot of family participation fun with Nature Escapes, 4 of us surrounding the TV and yelling out the location of an item we'd spotted to the player holding the controller. Despite a few gripes the game's lifespan is rather good for its bargain price of £7.99 (on PS Store) with 24 chapters included with the Collector's Edition, which is nice.
Thanks to Tiny Little Lion & Boomzap for the review code.