Wind Peaks Review Hide And Peak! - Switch Reviews

Read Time:3 Minute, 46 Second

Developed and Published by Actoon Studio, Wind Peaks is a hidden object game releasing onto Switch on 3rd March 2021. It originally released on Steam in July 2020. The game loosely tells the story of a group of Scouts who find a treasure map and go in search of the hidden bounty.

Wind Peaks Switch Review – Hide and Peak!

We’ve not seen many hidden object games recently. Have you spotted any in the wild? What’s your favourite? Let us know in the comments!

Gameplay

Across the 15 levels in Wind Peaks, you will be tasked with searching for and uncovering a list of items. This is done by navigating around the level from a top-down perspective, locating the items and clicking on them with your cursor. You can zoom in and out of the map to give yourself a better view or navigate quicker. Some items are found laying around in relatively plain view. However, some are obscured by the scenery. Not only this some even require a puzzle to be solved or some item interaction for them to be revealed. Though there aren’t many of these puzzles in the game, they were a fun addition. They helped break up the main search for items with something a little bit more interactive.

As you progress, the list of items to find grows larger and the objects become better hidden. A few of them had me scratching my head towards the back-end of the game. If you do find yourself really stuck, you can select an item in the list and start a 3-minute countdown. Once the countdown is up, the location of the item will be shown to you. I used this feature a couple of times and found the items were very well hidden!

The story of Wind Peaks is told through short comic-like cutscenes. These are presented purely visually, with no text or voiceovers. In fact, this is true for most of the game itself. Instructions and gameplay mechanics are introduced by just showing you the buttons on-screen and demonstrating their effect in-game. While this may have helped the developers avoid localisation issues, it also helps with accessibility, meaning those with difficulty reading or hearing don’t miss out on information.

Graphics & Audio

The hand-drawn art style, described by the developers as being inspired by Hilda and Gravity Falls, works brilliantly well for Wind Peaks. The environment on each level feels lush and alive without being overly busy or overwhelming. I was able to distinguish the objects from the background without any more difficulty than the developers intended. I pulled an ‘Oh, you!’ face a few times upon finding some of the well-hidden items.

Audibly there isn’t too much going on. The background music is intended to be just that; it’s not made to be front and centre in the game. Most of the time the music will just have a couple of elements, with notes played occasionally. This goes a long way to not being distracting when you are hunting for objects. If you were to spend a while on one level, a more full-body looping track may have become annoying. There are audio queues when clicking objects and when the hint timer expires to draw your attention, but as mentioned previously, these queues are signalled clearly in a visual manner too.

Longevity

Wind Peaks will be a short game for most players. It took me around 90 minutes from start to finish and looking at the Steam page, this seems to be about right. Younger players may get more time out of it as the difficulty does increase as the levels progress. At the end of the game, a title card pops up saying ‘Season One’. I reached out to the devs to enquire about further content and they said they are definitely looking at adding content but are not sure what format that will take yet.

Final Thoughts

Wind Peaks is a very relaxing, short game that you could play in a couple of hours, cosied up with a blanket and hot chocolate. I do wish there was a little more there, but it seems like the developers are planning to expand the offering in the future so I look forward to that. I award Wind Peaks the Thumb Culture Silver Award.