Hidden object video game
Hidden object video games are those where the player is expected to find objects hidden within a scene. The genre was directly influenced by hidden object puzzles first seen in print many decades earlier. The genre was slow to adapt to video games because the low resolution and color depth of the earliest platforms coupled with little memory to hold a variety of graphics, meant the first attempts were pretty terrible-looking. It wasn't until the advent of systems with high-resolution graphics and plenty of video memory that the genre started to look good, and, through the 2000s, the genre exploded in popularity from about five titles a year at the beginning of the decade to around 300 a year at the decade's close, and 300 more every subsequent year.
Hidden object video games are based around the game mechanic of hunt the pixel, which, ironically, is often seen as a flaw in graphic adventures.
Personal
Although I enjoyed hidden object game books when I was a child, I had little interest in playing them on video game consoles. I knew that the low resolution of platforms at the time couldn't possibly do the genre justice, and, even when the hardware allowed for decent visuals, I still don't find the genre very appealing. For me, the joy of hidden object game books is the fun of looking through a cleverly-arranged or well-drawn scene, but most hidden object video games use a randomizer to litter a scene with unrelated objects. Also, I prefer to peruse the scenes at my leisure, and most of the hidden object games I've played use times limits.
Games
There are no hidden object video games that are important to me. For all the games, see the category.
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