Find hidden objectors in Velvet 89

I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating. Every nation needs a developer like Charles Games. Passionate about transmuting Twentieth Century Czechoslovak history into memorable docugames, the Praguers’ latest project is a free hidden object game that tells the story of the Velvet Revolution.

Never played a hidden object game? Avoid them as assiduously as you avoid cookie clickers and aim trainers? An evening or two with Velvet 89 may alter your view.

Not only does V89 inform and absorb, it challenges and relaxes. Each of the five levels depicts a different November 1989 protest. The player spends time in Národní Street and Letna in Prague, and joins demonstrators (and, occasionally, policemen) in Teplice, Ostrava, and České Budějovice.

Amongst the plucky chanters and placard wavers in each location are 9-12 individuals who are happy to explain to you why they are protesting – why they are so utterly sick of the totalitarian system they’re living under. The snag is you’ve got to find and click on these people to spawn their speech bubbles.

Although the screenshots don’t communicate the prodigious size of some of the crowds you’re asked to scour (all pics are small portions of much bigger scenes), they do illustrate V89’s appealing art and hint at the game’s talent for evocation. Inter-mission archival footage and appropriate background audio help roll back the years too. As you move through the throngs searching for blue woolly hats… red scarves… bushy beards… clutched candles… the pent-up frustration, the nervous excitement, the fear and the hope is palpable.