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Hidden Folks, released today, offers a delightfully handmade iOS experience

Hidden Folks, which Kill Screen‘s Kathryn Madden originally covered last year, can best be described as an interactive Where’s Waldo? overflowing with personality. With little to no focus on goals, points, or challenge, players simply explore intricate landscapes in search of specific “targets” (or “folks”)  hidden throughout each scene. So much of the digital toy’s charm derives from its handmade feel, with illustrator Sylvain Tegroeg’s heavily inked art style creating lively scenes that feel populated without seeming overly busy. Indeed, the unusual joy of Hidden Folks is just how human and authored it feels, especially when most games (particularly in the free-to-play saturated app marketplace) tend to come…

Hidden Folks
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Get lost (and found) in the playful world of Hidden Folks

When game designer Adriaan de Jongh (of Bounden fame) stumbled upon Sylvain Tegroeg’s work, he was mesmerized. Tegroeg’s black-and-white illustrations showed a tiny world brimming with folks going about their lives. Every nook and cranny told a story. “I was staring at them for 10 minutes,” recalled de Jongh. “They already had this feeling that there’s this big world … with lots of things happening.” Jokingly, de Jongh suggested they should make a game around it. Inspired, he cobbled together art “stolen” from Tegroeg’s website, creating a “really bad” interactive prototype where you can zoom in and out as well…

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Where’s Waldo? finally gets interactive in this videogame

Where’s Waldo? (1987) has stepped out of the past and into a super stylistic new game. Hidden Folks is the latest from game designer Adriaan de Jongh, in which you can relive the eyestrain of days past in a grown-up version of the classic find-the-character game. This new project comes in the wake of de Jong’s previous efforts, the quirky titles Fingle (2012) and Bounden (2014), produced with the now-defunct Game Oven. This time he’s teamed up with illustrator Sylvian Tegroeg to create something entirely different.   The premise is simple and differs little from its striped-shirt predecessor: find the hidden character in a crazy…