Escaping into the world of hidden objects

My view right now isn't quite so messy as the crime scene above. It's a beautiful cusp-of-summer day, and I'm sitting on my deck and watching little breezes shiver the leaves on our willow tree. It's nice to take a bit of a break from gaming and just breathe.

I had picked up Criminal Case, a free-to-play hidden object game (HOG). I find HOGs to be soothing, mindless fun, filled with too-pretty oversaturated graphics and melodramatic storylines. Some of the tales are quite bizarre (like Mystery Case Files: Escape From Ravenhurst), and all of them usually involve missing relatives; haunted houses, boats, lighthouses, and more; or spooky retellings of literary classics.

The free-to-play subcategory of HOGs are a bit of a different beast. You get limited amounts of various game currencies, such as stars, energy, gold, that will sometimes refill over time. These aren't the type of games you pick up if you want to sit down and play for a few hours; that is, unless you're happy to part with a dollar here or there (or constantly pester your friends to join you on Facebook) to instantly refill your in-game currencies when they run out.

Criminal Case has its fill of messy rooms brimming with easy to find objects that all point to obvious clues to who did it. However, it's still a bit of mindless fun that I'm perfectly happy setting down at any point to go out side and enjoy the beautiful weather.

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