Hidden Folks goes On Tour with musical stages and a pricing rethink
Musical monochrome mouth sounds
Hidden Folks never needed instruments to be musical. This week, the hidden object sketchbook goes On Tour, bringing its quirky vocals to muddy festivals, basement discos and the studio floor. It's free, too, along with all of Hidden Folks' previously-released DLC - at the cost of making the charming monochrome pixel-hunt a little pricier for newcomers.
Hidden Folks, as per John Walker's review, is "a calm, calming and pleasingly silly game" about spotting curiosities across bustling hand-drawn setpieces. A more lived-in Where's Wally picturebook with fewer sweaters. Developer Adriaan De Jonge and co have now expanded those pages with On Tour, a toe-tapping new set of levels to poke and prod at.
As you'd guess, On Tour brings a more musical flair to Hidden Folks. The update's six new areas span from open-air festivals and packed stages to more intimate recording studios - all backed by a musical mouth-sounds belted out by the devs.
If you've already picked up Hidden Folks, On Tour's new stages are free. Granted, so is every other piece of DLC released so far as of this week's update. De Jong admitted that the DLC model was always a somewhat uneasy fit for their a capella curiosity, and has rolled back every paid add-on - save for a DLC compilation of 71 Hidden Folks Mouth Sounds.
"A couple of months after the release of the Beach DLC, we agreed that the pricing model we slid into (a base game with DLCs) didn't feel right," he explained in a Steam Announcement last week. "After much discussion and consideration, we decided that we want to come back and unify all areas into a single 'Hidden Folks' purchase."
All those lip-smacking new doodles didn't pop out of thin air, mind. To balance out the free gifts, Hidden Folks has had a small price-hike across all platforms for new players - bringing the new cost-of-entry to £11/€12/$13 on Steam and Itch.io.