Sometimes you don’t need a huge open world or much sense in a game to have fun. That is exactly why Mom Hid My Game works so well with its short, simple and zany premise. Note to self, I’m glad my mum didn’t hide my game collection as inventively as this.
In this madcap puzzle game, you have to find your handheld game across 50 levels of the bluest house I’ve ever seen. You do this by moving your hand icon around like a mouse icon and clicking various things in the room to see what happens. The majority of puzzles only take 3 – 5 clicks to solve but the fun is in seeing the crazy antics unfold and using trial and error to get it right. This is because Mom Hid My Game teaches you how the game works for the first ten levels or so and then proceeds to flip those rules on their head in different ways from then on.

An example will be using a certain pick up twice in a one way so that when you try it for a third time, its wrong and your mum will appear to tell you off. Other examples include placing extra objects that make logical sense to solve a puzzle to make you not try to silly option first or doing things like stealing speech bubbles to cover holes in the floor. It is all good fun and nothing will keep you guessing for more than two minutes. There is a card matching hint mini game if you do get stuck which always gives the level away if you really need it but those cases will be few and far between.
Whilst its fun and silly, its also short by design. Its minimal artwork and repetition of levels with a twist on a theme also means that you won’t really be wanting to play it too much beyond its light but enjoyable 50 levels. it is as if the concept has run its very narrow course. There is a very boring high bar mini game to unlock silly landing poses but as its entirely random, there is no skill involved and the grind to get all the poses is nearly as long as the main game itself.
Fun, irrelevant and quintessentially Japanese, I enjoyed Mom Hid My Game but equally I have no desire to return to it either. One for the lovers of quirky things.

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