Hidden Object Fanblog

A fan blog for my favorite Hidden Object games. Pfp by @psychicaves , header by @mosswyrmz !

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Introduction Post

Hello and welcome! This is my main blog that I've now repurposed into a Hidden Object Game-fanbased space. My pronouns are they/them and you may call me "Rainbow"!

My favorite HOPA games:

Brink of Consciousness: Dorian Gray Syndrome

Weird Park: Broken Tune + Scary Tales

Whispered Secrets: Morbid Obsession

Mystery Legends: The Phantom of the Opera

Nightmares From the Deep: The Cursed Heart

Bonfire Stories: The Faceless Gravedigger + Heartless

Other games/series I've played:

Engimatis and Ghost Files series + lots of Artifex Mundi games

Mystery Case Files

Dark Parables (Not too invested in them, though, sorry!)

True Fear: Forsaken Souls 1, 2 & 3

Otherworld: Spring of Shadows (Currently playing the other games)

Seeker's Notes: Hidden Objects

Phantasmat (Currently playing the other games)

The Invisible Man

-And many more!

On this blog, I plan to share & create content, headcanons, theories, fanart, reviews, fanfiction, etc. based upon Hidden Object games. You can send me an ask about the games I post, for mine/your own recommendations, and/or anything! Feel free to DM me as well. I'd love to meet other people that play these games!

More information below the cut:

My sideblogs are as listed:

@tnbc-thoughtsandheadcanons (Nightmare Before Christmas fanblog) @rainbows-fanfics (Fanfiction/writing blog) @rainbowfox-art (Art/reference blog) @piecesofchess (Pirate101 fanblog) @rainbowthefox (Personal blog, where I first posted about Hidden Object games) @haveyouplayedthispinball (Poll blog for pinball machines)

--If you see me following you, it may be for any of these fanbases. I cannot change my Main blog, so please bear with me. <3

Additional Info:

-I try to tag all potentially upsetting/triggering material. If I missed anything, feel free to let me know in a DM! I will tag/delete posts properly.

-Please do not repost, trace, or steal my art without permission.

-While I am 21+, please don’t send me NSFW-related anonymous asks. I’d rather talk about that with people I know personally and not anonymously.

-My icon is Curioso from Whispered Secrets: Morbid Obsession (drawn by @/psychicaves), and my header is Oscar from Brink of Consciousness: Dorian Gray Syndrome! (Drawn by @/mosswyrmz)

-Please do not send any anonymous hate, and keep an open mind that I have personal opinions on the games I play.

[hiddenobject-fanblog]

Idk if I’ve just played lame hopas lately but yesterday I tried up a bonfire stories game for the first time and the production value feels off the charts!?

Like way, way more effort in the presentation than any game that came out in recent years

BONFIRE STORIES SUPREMACY!!!

Gravedigger and Heartless are some of my favorite modern (ish) hopas! The plots are super interesting, I love the way they frame them as 'bonfire stories' (and how they give you a fun little teaser at the end making you question if they're real or not)! I remember being blown away when I played the free trial for Heartless and shelled out a lot of money for them right away. No regrets at all!

Manifest Horror didn't land for me...I think others felt the same when I looked at the reviews on Big Fish Games. I remember the experience being more boring/unpleasant, they introduced a weird mechanic that interrupted the flow of the game. I don't know if you've tried that one yet, if you end up enjoying it, that's great! But I'd only personally recommend the first two in the series.

[hiddenobject-fanblog]

What’s your personal sweet spot for hopa releases? I tend to be disappointed by the newer ones, especially anything past 2020

This is a great question! Admittedly, I do look for specific things in hopas (masked character, gothic literature-based, carnival or pirate-themed, horror, etc) but there IS a sweet spot in finding ones released years ago so you're avoiding potentially-AI-made-games. I've mentioned I don't play fantasy games so anything more realistic or detective-esque is riiiiight up alley!

You're so right, though. Modern hopas suck a majority of the time. It's like these developers have given up on making any decent story, set of characters, and/or art because you can either make it all with AI or they have no artistic integrity/interest in making these games. I miss the times when you can tell a team of genuine writers/artists were *actually* interested in telling a story via hidden object puzzle adventure...I don't track new relases for this reason.

[greelin]

i ❤️ faceless character designs like yesss keep the mask on… Obscurity is so hot

[greelin]

“what if you could see their face” well i neither want nor need any of that. i’m right where i want to be

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I love how most of the rooms in the manor are pretty and decorated but then you reach this one and there's very little elaboration

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this oscar x reader fic is going to be the most fucked up thing i ever wrote. i cannot WAIT to write it!!

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it does stress me out that brink of conscioussness dorian gray syndrome doesn't include the FULL character concept arts in the game because what do you mean these are the closest i have to oscar, sam, and anna's fully drawn designs

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Whispered Secrets: Morbid Obsession - Main Menu

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Brink of Consciousness: Dorian Gray Syndrome - Loading Screen

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A DECADE???

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I've never been one to call myself a "#1 fan" of any character, but I hope to be worthy of the title someday when it comes to oscar

[roamermonkey]

Big Fish Games sues Elephant Games (yes, just 7 days after being sued by GrandMA Studios)

TLDR: BFG Entertainment (Big Fish Games' new owners) is suing HOPA developer Elephant Games over allegedly not providing their games' requested source code to BFG. While Elephant claims to have already provided the source code to the original Big Fish pre-BFG Entertainment and claims to not have been paid royalties since November 2025, BFG Entertainment still seeks said source code and disputes Elephant's legal ownership of their self-published games on mobile, thus demanding Elephant to remove these games on these platforms. This seems to contradict GrandMA's lawsuit claiming BFG themselves admitted in writing that a studio like GrandMA still had self-publishing mobile rights even after their contracts was terminated per Big Fish's original agreements.

I made a more extensive Reddit post detailing the back-and-forth exchanges between BFG and Elephant, because I'm too tired right now to tidy and dump all of it as a Tumblr post.

Sources:

Law360's article. Requires signing up for an account with a non-free email domain to fully view; I used my university email. The Google Drive links to a PDF version of the article is here, and to the attached complaint by BFG Entertainment's lawyer is here (this is a public record, so it is legal to share).

The official government King County Superior Court website in Washington. Search up the civil case with the case number 26-2-16333-2, and you'll see the case "BFG ENTERTAINMENT INC VS ELEPHANT GAMES AR LLC". Viewing basic details is free; viewing other court documents requires signing up for an account and paying $8, which I opted to not do.

[videogameoutofcontext]

[roamermonkey]

GrandMA Studios sues Big Fish Games

Please read the documents in the below sources section for the full, original details.

A few days ago (May 11, 2026), the HOPA game developer GrandMA Studios has officially filed a lawsuit against BFG Entertainment (Big Fish Games' new owners) for allegedly illegally terminating their royalties, contracts, and distribution and licensing rights, threatening to remove GrandMA's games from online and mobile stores if GrandMA continued distributing their games, and having "gross negligence" in months-late communication to outdated or non-existent addresses, and less detailed royalty reports that made "independent verification mathematically impossible".

GrandMA is represented by Mark P. Walters, a lawyer from the intellectual property law firm Lowe Graham Jones based in Seattle, Washington (like Big Fish Games was before BFG Entertainment bought it). A trial is scheduled by next year, May 17, 2027. An extra note: GrandMA is stated to be incorporated in the Republic of Cyprus. While the documents don't explicitly mention this, I believe GrandMA at some recent point moved from Ukraine to Cyprus due to the Ukraine war (similar to Domini Games), which is verified by GrandMA's website's terms and conditions.

It is currently unknown if and how will the eventual verdict of this case will decide GrandMA and Big Fish's future in the HOPA game industry; GrandMA's layoffs seem to be irreversible regardless, but who knows.

Sources:

Law360's article. Requires signing up for an account with a non-free email domain to fully view; I used my university email. The Google Drive links to a PDF version of the article is here, and to the attached complaint by GrandMA's lawyer is here (this is a public record, so it is legal to share).

The official government King County Superior Court website in Washington. Search up the civil case with the case number 26-2-15547-0, and you'll see the case "GRANDMA STUDIOS LIMITED VS BFG ENTERTAINMENT INC". Viewing basic details is free; viewing other court documents requires signing up for an account and paying $8, which I opted to not do.

[hiddenobject-fanblog]

My greatest accomplishment tbh

[hiddenobject-fanblog]

Hey, just thought I would share. Nightmares From the Deep: The Cursed Heart is on The Internet Archive (including the Mobile Ports and Clean Steam Files).

Saw your answer post saying it’s “practically lost media”, so I gave the Internet Archive a check (Been playing some hidden object games thanks to them). And now I'm about to give it a try. So thought I'd share the info. 👍

Thank you so much!

[hiddenobject-fanblog]

One of the key points to the ending of Brink of Consciousness: Dorian Gray Syndrome is how Oscar tells Sam the following, that everything he'd found and read about himself wasn't true:

And I've been thinking...is that necessarily true? That Oscar would have went through the trouble of faking these diary 'entries' and making up false documents about himself, just to throw Sam off?

...In my theory, yes-and-no.

It's entirely possible for Oscar to have typed up his own 'diagnosis papers', as it is incredibly easy to make up names and he could've used a typewriter for it. There's no official stamping or signature on them, which could be a giveaway of their illegitimacy. I like the idea of Oscar sticking so consistently with the same ideas of himself that they all read believable. He's a master of manipulation.

But when you take a look at the notes Oscar leaves lying around the Manor for Sam to find, it gets a bit more tricky. They're all written in the same blue ink with splatter stains on them, with a singular exception in black ink (left):

Now see, I was thinking that the smudging on the writing might be a sign of their age and thus prove to be legitimate notes, but if you take a look at the handwritten note Oscar recently left for Sam (right), it also has some smudges on it. It's either possible Oscar had worn the pages on purpose (as they all look that way) or Sam is smudging the writing while handling these notes. It's a difficult detail to go on - but if it does point to anything, then the top two notes in the left picture are recently-made, while the ones on the bottom may be 'legitimate' ones.

For the note written in the black ink, it's torn in a particular way and the paper stands out from the others. It's also incredibly vague compared to the other notes. I theorize this one was made the same day Oscar started his 'killing', and is possibly alluding to his girlfriend cheating on him at the time. There's also a chance Oscar just might have used a different pen/ink for this one, to try and not be *too* consistent with the notes, but it's up for interpretation.

But now I want to talk about *this* note in particular. It stands out to me because it was not laying on the floor for Sam to easily find like the others, but was hidden BEHIND a mirror. And it was incidentally revealed to Sam when he shook it and a loose piece fell off to reveal it to him. (I wonder if the mirror was broken like that because Oscar punched it, and decided to cover the note back up with it to keep the memories away from himself? Haha.)

This one is the only note which we know is real, and that is attributed to the (prequel-game-but-released-after) Lonely Heart Murders, where Oscar's great-aunt mentions her nephew eventually naming his son Oscar and taking him hunting:

There is the argument that since the prequel was made *after* this game, it could've been an afterthought by the creators to make this note real, and it was originally intended to be part of Oscar's lies. But since it's been proven to have some truth to it, that builds the possibility of the other notes holding some sincerity to them.

And note that when I talk about these being 'legitimate', I am referring to the ones that were not written purposefully for Sam, but were made by Oscar prior to him kidnapping Anna. They could very-well be real stories Oscar is lying about and wrote at a later time. I'm not too far beyond believing that the one about Oscar's father locking him in a closet may be real, but that *also* might be another lie to garner some sympathy from Sam.

...Which is funny. Because Sam's recording of it is absolutely brutal. Damn! Give some pity to the serial killer who kidnapped your fiancee!

I love how this game makes me think nothing is 100%. You would think Oscar could be lying about his name, too, if it weren't for Lonely Hearts Murders. And that piece of dialogue pictured above about Oscar isn't something that's given to you - you have to keep clicking on her to find it and realize it's referring to Dorian Gray Syndrome.

What do you guys think?