Yard Sale: Hidden Treasures Review

Hidden object games are starting to invade Facebook and Yard Sale: Hidden Treasures is one of the latest titles to be released on the social platform, challenging us to test out spotting skills, combine them with a bit of mystery solving and a lot of waiting and have a great time… or not. I am here to share with you some details on what makes Yard Sale: Hidden Treasures great and not so great, so read on this review and enjoy!

Personally, I have no idea what is the story behind Yard Sale: Hidden Treasures – or if there’s a story at all – but the clear thing is that you keep searching for items in different junkyards (aka different people’s yards) trying to complete goals, find items to create various items that are later on sold to get more money to decorate your own estate. And you do this over and over again until you’re filthy rich and your estate looks exactly like those junkyards that you’re visiting so often.

Unfortunately, there are many problems with Yard Sale: Hidden Treasures. The first of them is the energy limit: you start with just six energy to use, and to start a hidden object game you need two energy. This means that you can play just three times, which is at most 10 minutes of play time. Then you have to wait 36 minutes for your energy bar to be filled, which seems an awful lot of time. It is true that you can invite friends and use them as free energy – but when you start playing a game you don’t have many neighbors, so they should’ve allowed us a bit more play time to start with.

Leveling up seems to be your only real source of getting extra energy (one extra energy to your energy bar per level) and you do so by increasing your house value, by purchasing all sorts of decorations from the store. The good thing is that these decorations give some money in return, money that can be used to purchase even more and increase your level, so it’s a “keep buying” mentality here that’s simple and fun as the offer of items in the market is great and offers huge customization options.

The hidden object scenes themselves are pretty solid, but if you’re not playing in full screen, you might end up cursing and breaking stuff around you. As I did when I had to find a Hangman’s Noose and you can see where it was in the image below (and it was also dangling, most of the time being out of the screen):

Apart from the bits of frustrating “missing” things that are well hidden on the hidden object scene (which can be eventually found by using the free hints), the levels look pretty solid and do not tire your eyes. The level of challenge is medium and apart from a few exceptions, relatively easy to spot. However, since you will end up playing the same scene over and over again, you will start to learn the locations of the items, and even though that will add to your mastery, it can also become pretty boring.

A very interesting bit of the game is selling junk part (aka the collections). Completing hidden object scenes rewards you with all sorts of items that you can place in your yard – some time later, you will end up with somebody having an offer for your junk and the idea here is to get as much as possible for your item and usually getting 50% more of the market value is a real option. This way you will make more money which, in turn, will help you buy the items that you really want. This also adds a bit of variety into play and is extremely welcome.

All in all, Yard Sale: Hidden Treasures is a pretty decent game for those who love the hidden object genre, but you need to get really social and add a decent amount of friends to get the most of it, otherwise it will be nothing but a frustrating bit of waiting for your energy meter to fill up. And as a word of advice: do play this game in full screen to save you from a lot of trouble!

Click here to check out Yard Sale: Hidden Treasures on Facebook.

Final rating: 3 out of 5