Game: OVERLOOK
Genre: Adventure, Casual, Indie
System: Steam (Windows) (also available for macOS)
Developer | Publisher: omidjm | the Thinking Pixel
Controller Support: None
Price: US $8.49 | UK £7.22 | EU € 8,28
Release Date: November 10, 2025
Review code provided, with many thanks to Press Engine.
OVERLOOK is a short, hidden object puzzle game with a twist. Unlike most of its kind, you’ll need to dig, cut, tape, and even unlock the items you need to find.
A Perfect Thing
OVERLOOK is a triumph of a hidden object game. It’s deeply detailed, beautifully made, and thoughtfully put together. The puzzles inside the game are challenging; instead of just looking for Waldo in another scene, you actually have to interact with everything. You need to unlock doors with hidden keys, look inside windows and doors, head inside buildings, dig up items with a shovel, and even give gifts to some NPCs.
The levels are incredibly challenging. In spite of the fact that there are only seven levels, it will take the average person at least an hour or two to complete it, depending on if you want to 100% all the levels or not.
Each level is lovingly crafted and animated, and each scene is a little weird and fun to look at. You can tell just by playing that everything was well-thought-out and made with care. This feels like a real passion project; you can feel it in every detail, including the sound design and music.
Difficult With No Tutorial
OVERLOOK is one of those games that doesn’t have a tutorial; the game expects you to have played a hidden object game before and have some working knowledge of how to do things. If you don’t know that you can zoom in with the scroll wheel on the mouse or click and drag to move the scene, you are going to quickly be lost.
I thought this was a little odd; I would have expected a button layout screen at least in the menu, but I didn’t see one. There was a brief, one-screen tutorial page in the beginning saying something about how it was my job to find hidden objects, but there didn’t appear to be any additional slides after that, though it appears there was supposed to be.
Overall, I didn’t have issues interacting with OVERLOOK, but I know some others wouldn’t think to click around the way I do when playing games like this. I hope the tutorial issue is fixed before launch.
One Weird Hint System
If you’ve read any of my other reviews over the years at Ladies Gamers, you know that I have a lot to say about hint systems in games. Like a lot to say. Like a lot, a lot. OVERLOOK has a very unique hint system in the form of a to-do list that you can access in the upper left-hand part of the screen. However, these to-do items don’t appear until you have interacted with the NPC that needs them.
There is also a roll-over hint system; you just hover your cursor over the picture of the thing you are missing at the bottom of the screen to get a hint for where that object might be hiding. It’s a pretty interesting way of sneaking hints into the game without straight-up giving them away or having a timer on them.
I liked this hint system a lot, except when the hints weren’t very helpful. There is one in the final level about time-bending sound, which didn’t make sense until I actually accidentally completed the puzzle.
Conclusion
I had a little bit of an issue with the tutorial in OVERLOOK, but other than that, I think it was a perfect hidden object puzzle game. The music and sound design were great, the puzzles were challenging, and there was a hint system. All the levels look hand-drawn and are charmingly rendered. It has a unique style that I am all about, and I like the interactive-ness of each of the levels. Not to mention, you can pet the cat.
Overall, OVERLOOK was everything I wanted it to be and more. If you like hidden object puzzles and feel like you don’t need a tutorial to help you get a handle on the controls, it’s literally the perfect game. I love it a lot, and I think every puzzle lover will love it just as much as I did.
Final Verdict: Two Thumbs Up:Â
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