So you’ve got me, my main weakness is a good seek and solve title, otherwise known as a hidden object game. I grew up with Where’s Wally (Waldo for any American’s reading) and when comparing the two you can of course see a lot of similarities, plus it’s a test of your memory and vocabulary at times too which is always good for the brain. Hidden object games can be found on a variety of platforms now, on the Nintendo DS, Nintendo Wii as well as of course on your computer. They’re aimed mainly at the casual market, which is why there are so many of them on the shelves in your local game store, this of course makes it a tough decision to know which one you should spend your money on.

So I had a good long play of Amazing Adventures Around the World which was developed by SpinTop Games back in 2008. You play an adventurer and your task is to locate the world diamond, which of course isn’t that easy to find, you have to collect every piece of the ancient tablet, which have conveniently started turning up in various locations around the world, once found they need assembling in order to inform you on the location of this world famous diamond.

So for each level you play you have to find 10 objects hidden amongst the environment, once you’ve found these you then solve a puzzle which could be anything from a word search, to a jigsaw puzzle or spot the difference; there’s about six variations. You then need to complete 5 of these levels in different locations to finish a mission, which then gains you a piece of the tablet, along with an interesting fact about the location that you recovered the tablet piece from.

The game features a hint system for those odd object here and there that you just cannot find, so it does help you out in those sticky situations, however if you do find yourself not in the mood to find objects you can turn on the unlimited hint mode, giving you access to hints all the time, however this does affect your score.

As well as your main targets, very similar to Where’s Wally there are other things for you to find on the side, in Amazing Adventures Around the World you are required (should you choose) to find gems, but there’s a great pay-off in the end. Each level contains two gems, and if you manage to collect all 50 gems from the 25 different locations then you unlock two modes from the main menu which are ‘Unlimited Seek and Find’ and ‘Spot the Differences’. Also don’t worry if you miss any gems the first time round you play a level, you will re-visit all locations giving you the chance to find those pesky gems.

The Unlimited seek and find mode really did it for me, you’re given all 25 locations and you just have to keep finding the objects you are asked to locate, until you’ve found everything in the entire level, the number of items varies from around 70-80. I feel that the unlimited spot the difference may have worked better if all the different puzzles were used and not just spot the difference, as I’ve never been a huge spot the difference fan. The spot the difference takes less time for you to 100% finish as you have a puzzle for each location, and then 10 differences to spot, so depending on how easy you find spot the difference you could get it finished all quite quickly.

Being a fan of seek and solve games it’s hard not to enjoy one put in front of me, of course some deliver the game better than others. I felt Amazing Adventures Around the World is a great example of a brilliant seek and solve game, my only real issue with it being the repetition of visiting locations, but I understand the reasoning for this would be down to expanding the play experience without having to spend double the development time that would be required in order to do so. Even with the repetition I recommend it for all seek and solve fans out there.

You can pick up Amazing Adventures Around the World off Steam, PopCap Games or you can find it in your local game store, costing you between £7-£15 depending on where you purchase it.