Mom Hid My Game spoiler-free mini-review

[Victar]

Mom Hid My Game is a Kemco puzzle game for the Switch, 3DS, PS4, and iOS. I played through the 3DS version.

This game is VERY short. I finished it in 75 minutes; it might have taken closer to 2 hours if I hadn't resorted to using the in-game hints a few times. Finishing the puzzle game unlocks an extremely simple minigame that one can replay for a high score.

Mom Hid My Game consists of 50 super-short puzzles. No puzzle spans more than two rooms. The puzzles are primarily point-and-click adventure style. Touching objects with the stylus interacts with them. Sometimes objects are collected into an inventory, and they can be used on various other objects. A few puzzles are more unusual.

Some of the puzzles have a surprising amount of creativity or "out-of-the-box" thinking. Others just deviate from the basic point-and-click formula, which itself can be perplexing. An in-game hint system ensures that the player won't have to look up any puzzle solutions in a FAQ (most puzzles are so minimalist that their "hints" basically are the solutions).

The basic premise of the puzzles is that the player is a kid whose mom has hidden his 3DS. While the kid searches for his 3DS, he can fail a puzzle and get a Game Over in any number of ways. Retrying a failed puzzle is extremely quick and easy, with no load times.

The art is extremely simplistic, and there is only a little bit of music and voice acting (outcries from the kid). All voice acting is in Japanese.

There almost isn't a story other than "Mom hid my game! I've got to find it!" I say "almost" because there is a genuine story-ending for playing through all of the puzzles, and this ending just might make paying $3 to $5 for a 75-minute game worth the money.

Then again, maybe not. Puzzle solving is very much its own reward in Mom Hid My Game. It was an amusing 75 minutes, at least.