In this hectic world we live in, many times work and appointments must come before the fun and joys in our lives, including that of getting to play videogames whenever we want. Gone are the days when we could fire up a game of our choice and spend hours toiling away – now we seem to game in stolen moments here and there. With that in mind, perhaps it is no wonder that casual games have become such a popular gaming choice (especially with women who make up the vast majority of casual game players), as casual games allow us to either jump in and get those quick fixes of gaming bliss or either play them for as long as we want when we do have the time. In honor of the casual game, we'll be bringing you a new Casual Game of the Week every Monday to help you find that fix you might be needing in your life, and this week we have: Hidden Secrets: The Nightmare

Imagine it’s your birthday and you get a scratch-off lottery ticket for your birthday, one which just so happens to be a winning ticket too. You reveal to your husband the good news over the phone, but before you two can celebrate and meet your friend for dinner, you’re having a tussle with someone in the dark, you are pushed down the stairs and now you are in a coma and stuck within the nightmare of your own mind. There is a potential murderer out there, and you may be the only who can finger the perp and figure out why they wanted you dead, but the mission is easier said than done, because first you’ve got to escape your mental prison or risk death and the perp getting away with murder.

I was very surprised to find a really engaging storyline within Hidden Secrets: The Nightmare (HSTN from here on), as it unfolds through a mixture of static screens and fully voiced dialogue, letting our hero voice all the thoughts that are going on in her head about what’s happening to her. Why are you waking up in a hospital? What does a toy truck have to do with anything? What’s up with this number you found? All the clues and memories you unlock will eventually lead you to the end of the game and hopefully escaping your memories and waking from your coma to get the bad guy.

In order to complete a level you generally have to go through the same formula from beginning to end, where you’ll start with a set piece that plays like an old-school point and click Myst like adventure, where you’ll have to search the scene for objects you can interact with, and then use some of those objects to then interact with other objects within the scene until you’ve uncovered your memory. The scenes range in toughness, as some are fairly obvious and easy to quickly solve, while others will have you scouring the scene and still not being able to find what you are looking for. If you get stumped, however, you can always get a help to move you along.

Once you’ve completed the puzzle scene, you’ll then usually have to complete two more puzzles before you can move on to the next scene, making you one step closer to escaping from your coma and bringing down the perp. The challenges after the scenes vary much like the scene puzzles, where you’ll be wondering where the challenge is one minute, and cursing the game because you just don’t know what to do to beat the puzzle. Puzzles and challenges include flipping tiles to make colored loops; lighting and blowing a candle out to drive away moths and cockroaches; peg games where you have to jump over other pegs or switch them from one side to another; Simon Says memory games; fill in the blanks where you find what symbol would complete the puzzle; and there is even a full-blown game of sudoku you’ll have to play too in order to move on. Thankfully you are able to skip through the really tough games if you want and if you have a skip to spare, but you only get so many of them so you really need to use them wisely.

The game isn’t very long, as you’re able to breeze through it in a couple of hours, but you can always go back to play any of the minigames you’ve unlocked and then play them again whenever you feel like. Once you’ve beaten the game, however, there is probably very little reason to go back and replay the games.

The graphics are quite beautiful, especially the puzzle scenes which have a great bit of depth and don’t look completely flat and as wallpaper or background images at all. You’ll find yourself in your hospital room, at a restaurant, in front of a safe, and other places as well. Besides the puzzle scenes the other challenges are equally good-looking, as you can tell the developers spent some quality time making this game look as visually pleasing and beautiful as possible. In terms of audio there is a very haunting Twilight Zone-esque background music that plays throughout the puzzles, which is admittedly pretty unnerving and creepy at times. The sound effects of you interacting with the scenes and solving the puzzles are equally well done. The game only suffers a bit in the audio department when it comes to the voiceovers, as they are adequate but far from perfect.

The game isn’t terribly long and there isn’t much reason to replay some of these games or even go through the story again once you’ve already solved it, but Hidden Secrets: The Nightmare is an interesting story mixed with some pretty challenging puzzles and enough technical pizzazz to impress nearly anyone. The game won’t last long, but you’ll enjoy it for as long as it does.

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