Rating (out of 10)

★★

Overview

Showing Tonight is the first Hidden Object Game by Phime Studio. It's really bad.

Positive (good features)

• Unintentionally funny at points.

Neutral (average/expected features)

• Some of the Hidden Object Puzzles are okay.
• The environments are okay.

Negative (bad features)

• I got stuck on some 'unlock' screen the first time i launched the game. No clue why.
• Has the worst puzzle i've ever had the misfortune of encountering in a video game.
• Also has the second and third worst puzzles ever.
• The other puzzles are almost all bad. Some don't seem to work, some aren't even puzzles just busywork.
• The 'skip' button takes over 90 seconds to load after you've started a puzzle.
• The game is about 2,5 hours long plus the 15-20 minutes you spend on waiting for the skip button to load.
• The "silhouette matching mode" is dreadful and i skipped each one as quickly as possible
• HOPs don't indicate when items require several steps to find/complete.
• Some HOPs show items you don't have to find. I have no idea why.
• The map only shows zones, not individual rooms. And you constantly have to backtrack.
• The game plays this weird sound every time you move between rooms/zones.
• There is almost no dialogue. Whenever you save someone, they say their one line and disappear.
• The story is threadbare.
• Items in the inventory are incredibly unresponsive and you often have to click twice to use them.
• You constantly have to spam the hints button because active zones aren't indicated and the next step to take is often zo bizarre you would think this was written by aliens.
• Perhaps the most nonsensical thing you have to do: A hole in the wall has been boarded up with planks. To remove the planks you have to use meat held by tongs to capture a piranha and then press the piranha against the boards.

Conclusion

I probably still left some negative points out. Suffice to say i would not recommend this trash to anyone. I only completed it so i could see just how bad it gets. The bugs, poor coding, and the almost absent story would be bad enough. But the utterly illogical steps you have to take, the constant backtracking and the truly awful puzzles mean you waste half your time moving between screens and waiting for the hints/skip button to load. I paid €0,01 and i feel ripped off.

Details

• Experience with genre: 37 HOGs played, 33 completed
• Experience with game: Completed
• Recommended to: No one