Free escape and hidden object games

What are escape and hidden object games

These are games about looking closely. In an escape game you search a room, pick up what you find, work out where it goes and open one lock after another until the way out is free. In a hidden object game you get a list and a busy picture, and you scan it until each thing on the list turns up. Spot-the-difference, jigsaws, puzzle boxes, codes and detective grids belong to the same family: the answer is always in front of you, and the fun is the moment you finally see it.

The games in this category on Kiloo are calm rather than tense. Most of them are hand-drawn scenes you can zoom into, most have hints for when you are stuck, and several have a relaxed or Zen mode with no clock at all. Many also have a daily puzzle that is the same for everyone, and stars or best times if you want something to beat.

Escape and hidden object games to start with

For a classic escape, start with Locked Room. It has twelve hand-made rooms with four walls each, from a cosy study to a starlit observatory, and the locks are opened with picture clues rather than words. Island Escape is a longer adventure across eight painted island scenes: combine what you find, trade with a parrot and build a raft to sail home. Lockbox Lab is thirty puzzle boxes on a workbench, each shut by its own mechanism, from dials and bolts to gears, mirrors and a marble maze.

If you would rather search, Lost & Found gives you eight things to find in big scenes such as an attic or a theatre backstage. Flashlight Finds turns the lights off, so you sweep a torch across the room and keep an eye on its battery. Cat Hunt hides eight cats in each of fifteen packed picture-book scenes, and Twin Pictures shows two copies of a scene where you tap every real change between them.

For slower thinking, Jigsaw Garden lets you pick one of sixteen paintings and a size from 12 to 150 pieces. Case Closed is a cosy detective logic grid told with picture clue cards, where you cross out what cannot be true until one answer is left. Cipher Desk is for code-breakers: turn a Caesar wheel, read Morse and pigpen, slide a grille over a grid and type the word you find.

Controls, hints and playing on a tablet

On a computer you mostly click. Click to look and pick things up in Locked Room and Island Escape, click a thing on the list in Lost & Found, click a difference in either picture in Twin Pictures. In the big scenes you drag to look around and scroll the mouse wheel to zoom. Locked Room turns to the next wall with the arrow keys or A and D, and Cipher Desk is the one where you type your answer on the keyboard.

On a touch screen you tap instead of clicking, drag to look around and pinch to zoom. In Locked Room you swipe sideways to turn, and in Cipher Desk you tap the typewriter keys on screen. A tablet is a comfortable size for the busy scenes, since you can zoom right in. H gives a hint in most of these games, P pauses and M mutes, and Island Escape saves after every step, so you can stop and carry on later.

Frequently asked questions