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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.