Wind Peaks Switch Review – Short and Sweet Camp Fun

Wind Peaks is a short but sweet hidden object game. When I say hidden object, think more along the lines of Where’s Wally/Waldo than the myriad hidden object adventure story games out there.

The concept of Wind Peaks is fairly simple. Essentially, you follow a group of scouts finding objects to lead them on a magical adventure, and there’s not really much more to it than that. Each level is a self-contained scene filled with lovely artwork, and somewhere in the scene are a number of items for you to seek out and collect.

Objects that you’ll be tasked on finding can range between anything from a totem pole (that you’ll need to assemble) to a banana. Generally, these items will play into the continuing story of the scout group like the map you find in the first level that has them set out on their journey. However, some objects do seem somewhat unrelated such as the aforementioned totem pole. The reasoning for this is never really apparent. But over all, it doesn’t detract too much from the relaxing little story you follow.

In addition to the objects, some levels will contain small puzzles or collectibles. Both of these appear to be optional and reward you with an achievement once you complete them. So while you don’t need to finish them to continue the story, they are a welcome little side quest to help pad the otherwise quite short run-time of the main game.

The game has about an hour and a half total running time, and replayability is unfortunately also low as once you’ve completed the game and found all the objects you know where all the objects are for any subsequent runs. However, as the title of this article might allude to, the time may be short but it’s also sweet.

The actual world of Wind Peaks is one that is very relaxing to venture through. There are no evil creatures out to get you, you’re not being hunted, and you don’t have to worry about survival. It’s more like an interactive hidden object book than a game in most ways, but that also makes it great for a relaxing, casual gaming experience and perfect for children.

Furthering the casual/kid gaming experience, is the addition of the hint function. While playing the game you can hold the X button to set up a hint timer, which will narrow down where the selected object is when it runs down. The fact that there is a timer that has to count down rather than just giving you the hint is an interesting idea. As during this countdown you really have nothing to do but continue searching so you may find the object or maybe one of the others while waiting.

This prompts the player to try a little harder than just using the hints as soon as they finish a cursory sweep of the stage. Although, it would have been nice if there was an option to adjust the length of the countdown especially when you find the object before it finishes and want to move the timer to another object.

Another interesting idea that has been added to Wind Peaks are a few objects that have a function you need to find another object. For instance, there is a camera you can find in an early level which you need to take a picture of a deer. While you can find the deer without the camera, you won’t be able to get the picture without the camera. There are a number of these objects in the game, and they were added after the game was released. This means that there may still be the possibility of some more content being added to the game in the future.

For what it is, though, the current game is quite a nice experience. With some lovely hand-drawn art that reminds me of another game (also about Scouts), Cosy Grove, and a similar sort of relaxing feel, despite being markedly different games (including genre), I think Wind Peaks is a great little experience despite its length.

Cozy Grove Review provided by Nintendo Link
Publisher: Actoon Studio
Developer: Actoon Studio
Release Date: March 03, 2021
Price: $14.99, £9.99, €11,99
Game Size: 828 MB