Little Shop of Treasures

When somebody says, "I seem to spend half my life looking for things," it's probably safe to assume that they find it annoying. Scouring the house for misplaced mobiles, wayward wallets, inscrutable iPods, recalcitrant roadmaps and lost lip-glosses is about as rewarding as coming up with alliterative adjectives, so why would you want to play a game about it?

Or, to put it another way, why would millions of people want to play such Hidden Object games, as the casual gaming genre is known? The answer, it turns out, is that it's quite fun.

You've just moved to a town called Huntingdon, goes the backstory of RealArcade's popular web-based title Little Shop of Treasures, and you want to open up a shop. To bring your dilapidated premises up to code, however, you have to earn money by working in your prospective rivals' shops, helping customers to find the items on their bizarre shopping lists amongst the clutter of stock.

This process is timed, and as you advance through the levels, marked out by the days of the week, the time limits come down and the number of objects you need to find goes up. If you serve three more customers than you need to, you get a silver medal; serve five and you get a gold one. That, in a nutshell, is the game.

As with RealArcade's other recent releases, Burger Rush and Bounce Out, you can control Little Shop of Treasures either using a stylus with a touchscreen phone or a cursor on a conventional handset. We're reviewing on an LG KU990, and we're not going to lie to you: stylus matters.

The area in which you're looking for objects is larger than the screen, so you need to scroll it left, right, up, and down by dragging it about with the stylus. To finger an item you've spotted, you tap it.

This control method is excellent, and if you have the right sort of kit Little Shop is a joy to play. If you don't, it's by no means terrible, but you should add or subtract a point from the 'gameplay' category of the score below depending on whether or not your screen knows when it's being fondled.

Arguably the most important aspect of a Hidden Object title is its graphics, since the graphics and gameplay are literally knitted together. Like the DS title I Spy Fun House, Little Shop has a quaint, old-fashioned look, characterised by touches like the candlestick phone and, more generally, that fact that it has the un-modern quality of busyness.

There are intricately patterned rugs, ornate picture frames, endless shelves of bric-a-brac and generally anything against which an object that didn't want to be seen might disguise itself, all of which creates an air of chaotic, slightly creepy neglect.

As distinctive and crucial to the gameplay as this visual style is, we have some reservations about how well it translates to mobile. The screen on the KU990 is amongst the biggest you can get, but even with the almost unrivalled length and girth of LG's display, the game's features are incredibly tiny, and Little Shop is so visually rich with shadow, colour, and detail that caution is advised.

I never get headaches – and I didn't get one playing this – but one loomed like a smudge of grim weather. If you're a headachy sort, this game might be trouble. Little Shop has been scaled down for the mobile, but not optimised.

Just as the graphics have a slightly antique look, the objects that the customers ask for can be, like this sentence, arcane to the point of obfuscation. Sometimes, you'll be powerless to complete a level because you just don't know what's being asked for. Do you know, for instance, what Beethoven looks like? Maybe, but I defy you to tell me what a 'bobber' is.

Still, after you've been forced to find one a few times you'll at least know exactly where to look, and that brings us neatly alongside an issue that, since we're in the neighbourhood, we might as well address: if you play for long enough, you'll eventually know where everything is by rote.

However, while this is undeniably true, you shouldn't let it put you off. There are 70 objects distributed across the five shops, and despite an allowance of three clues per level you really will struggle to find them. The challenge won't evaporate any time soon, and nor will the appeal.

It's a funny old game, looking for things, and not one that's had much time to establish itself on mobile. Little Shop – particularly on a touchscreen phone – represents the best attempt at the genre so far, and it's a solid game, but those with a decent vocabulary and the eyesight of a jeweller will get far more out of it than those without.