You often hear the phrase “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it”. Sequels can take this approach but have to at least break some kind of new ground, otherwise gamers will wonder why they’ve shelled out money for the same thing again. This is exactly how I feel having played Shy Dogs Hidden Orchestra, an almost exact blow for blow and click for click copy/paste of Shy Cats Hidden Orchestra.
Both games have 10 levels full of 20 of their animals. The levels are different but in the doggy sequel things aren’t bigger, more complex or prettier. They feel cut from the exact same cloth. You can zoom in and out and move around the maps to find 20 dogs and doing some adds them to the bottom of the screen. They’ll then start playing their MIDI instrument and as you find more dogs, the music grows and develops. The music matches the backdrop of the landscape you are in so some are tribal, others are oriental or folksy and others are more electronic and sci-fi themed. The music then plays a key role with a bonus riddle to solve to unlock a final secret puppy. This involves solving a riddle by turning on and off specific instruments to play a set song, thus unveiling the final hidden pup.
All of this is cute and entertaining but it is identical to the first game. If you repeat the same game blow for blow, you’ll get diminishing returns and so my interest and joy faded quickly when I realised this was closer to a reskin than I’d have liked. The riddles feel more obtuse this time around, with two making no sense at all. I also ran into a small bug where the level wouldn’t load and it lost my progress. I’d just hoped for the series to push on a little, offering something more than “we did cats, so here’s the same game with dogs”. Examples of this would be the Cats In… and the An X full of Cats series. Both switch up things like level design, scope or hidden objectives between entries and it makes each purchase feel unique and warranted. Shy Dogs Hidden Orchestra does none of that and falls short as a result.
Whilst Shy Dogs Hidden Orchestra will still give you a couple of hours of medium difficulty hidden object gameplay, if you’ve played the first one there is absolutely nothing new here. Only come back if you just want more of the exact same.
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