Between Nintendo’s classic family-friendly image and the fact that the Switch is both portable and includes a touchscreen, it seems that casual games geared primarily towards kids would be an inevitability. While more hard core gamers may scoff at such fare as hidden object games and the like, I have no doubt that either parents or at least people who enjoy something more basic and innocent appreciate their presence. This generation has actually brought some surprises as well, offering more in the way of kid-friendly styles than I would have thought possible, making for some relaxing and even endearing fun for the people who don’t mind letting themselves enjoy it.

Sophia the Traveler is yet another hidden object game, building on pretty dense and busy hand-drawn artwork that’s both colorful and detailed. As is normally the case you’ll have a list of things you’ll need to find hidden within the scene, and there’s no doubt that can be a tricky proposition. One reason for this is, of course, that there are loads of distractions everywhere you look, so being somewhat systematic may be a better plan than simply letting your eyes wander. Another challenge is the fact that a fair number of the items aren’t plainly visible and will actually require that you trigger something else in the scene, including some leaps of faith where there’s seemingly no logical reason for them to be tied to one another. While this is something that other titles do as well, in this case the connection generally seemed weaker than I’ve typically seen.

Since so many of these titles are quite similar to one another in multiple respects, it really comes down to small implementation quirks or outright problems to decide where they stand. One issue I had with the game is simply that its implementation for playing with a controller isn’t as good as some others. Just on a general level the mappings don’t feel quite as intuitive, but the biggest issue is that while scrolling the bar on the right that shows everything you need to find does work with the touchscreen, I couldn’t find any button or method to do that with a controller. Throw in the touch of variety some of the competition have had, adding a layer with additional mechanics from time travel to being able to change the scenes in some ways, and Sophia the Traveler also simply seems a bit more basic by comparison.

I wouldn’t say there’s anything particularly wrong with this budget and casual-friendly title, but while it checks most of the mandatory boxes for this subgenre, the fact that some of its peers have gone the extra mile to differentiate themselves does knock it down a few pegs. It is reasonably well-implemented, outside of some concerns with how it performs using a controller, and its art style is at least endearing and easy on the eyes. If you’ve played through the competition and just need more of your image finding fix, it should suffice, but I’d recommend some of its contemporaries first.