Disease -Hidden Object- review for Nintendo Switch, Xbox One

I wanted so very much to like Disease -Hidden Object-. It?s been awhile since I?ve played a really good hidden object game, and, given that the phrase appears right there in the game?s title, I had high hopes.

And, for the first couple of levels, I was pretty happy with what I found. A straight-up hidden object game, with an enjoyably creepy mood, a mysterious story, and puzzles where the objects to be found made sense, rather than standing out by virtue of their incongruity. It was a little annoying to discover that you couldn?t zoom in, which would have been useful for some of the smaller objects, but, all in all, Disease -Hidden Object- was delivering exactly what I wanted.

Then I discovered the game?s, shall we say, “idiosyncratic” logic.

When Disease -Hidden Object- is just asking you to find objects (hidden ones, at that), it works. When it branches out, however, and asks you to solve puzzles, the whole thing falls apart. It demands that you make leaps of logic that, as far as I could tell have no grounding in reason — nor, for that matter, are even vaguely hinted at by anything else in the game. I?m still not sure how I cleared certain levels. As far as I could tell, I just clicked around the screen, until, magically, it said I was done. Judging from other people?s playthroughs, I don?t think that my experience was unique, either.

I?m not sure why Disease -Hidden Object- sometimes devolves into these random clickfests. It could be that something got lost in translation, or it could be that I just missed something. Whatever the explanation, I know this: if it had just stuck to the “hidden object” part of its name, it could?ve been one heck of a game. Instead, it?s half very good hidden object game, and half thoroughly nonsensical puzzle — and, unfortunately, those two halves don?t quite match up to being a worthwhile whole.

D3Publisher provided us with a Disease -Hidden Object- Switch code for review purposes.