Mystery Hotel: Hidden Objects

Introduction

Mystery Hotel: Hidden Objects casts players as an investigator piecing together a murder at Hotel Noir, searching room by room for hidden objects and clues toward a killer's identity. Developed and published by Crisp App Studio, it launched on Steam on 16 October 2020 at NZ$13.25. Five years on, its 37 English-language reviews sit at 78% positive, Mostly Positive. This review read all 8 negative reviews in that sample alongside a range of the positive side.

A loop that works, briefly

The core appeal here isn't contested by either side of the review sample — it's a functional, relaxing hunt-and-click loop that does what hidden-object fans come for. "It's entertaining, easy on the eyes... just what I love to do: find hidden objects and that's it," reads one positive review. Another describes playing it together with a young grandchild, a genuinely nice fit for the genre's traditional family-friendly audience. Where even the happy reviewers agree with their critical counterparts is on length: "I enjoyed the game very much but i would say, its not worth $10 — it only took me 3 hours to play and finish," one wrote, a sentiment echoed almost word for word across several other positive reviews.

What the negative reviews sharpen

The negative-review sample takes that same short-runtime observation and sharpens it into a harder structural complaint. "You have to redo the same levels, with only one or two new items to locate and none of the items have been rearranged, just to continue on with the story," one detailed review reports, adding there's no clear indicator of when enough progress has been made to move on — meaning a level can end up replayed more times than necessary. Another notable complaint, present in an earlier version of the game: it "ends abruptly with 'to be continued'" and offers no further way to progress. A separate reviewer flags a persistent display bug — the image unexpectedly zooming in on one corner during play, unresolved through the settings menu — and another notes there's no option to start a fresh game after finishing, an odd omission for a game this short.

The ending complaint, checked against the update history

The "ends abruptly" complaint is specific enough to check independently, and it turns out to be addressed rather than ongoing: Crisp App Studio's own update history shows the developer adding "9 new locations" in December 2021, and explicitly "a new part of story and 7 new levels" in December 2023 — directly responding to the kind of unfinished-feeling ending the earlier negative review describes. That's a genuine point in the developer's favour, and it means at least one of the sharper complaints in the negative sample reflects an earlier state of the game rather than what buyers get today. Steam's own achievement data backs up a game that's genuinely completable rather than abandoned mid-experience: 38% of players clear even the hardest of its five achievements, a healthy rate for a short, low-friction casual title. A live concurrent-player check for this review returned 1 — modest, but not zero, five years after launch.

Verdict

Mystery Hotel: Hidden Objects does the one thing it sets out to do reasonably well — a relaxed, approachable hidden-object hunt with a hotel-murder framing that most reviewers, on both sides of the aggregate, describe as enjoyable while it lasts. The consistent complaint across the whole sample is length and repetition relative to price, not whether the core loop works, and the specific "abrupt ending" issue raised in early negative reviews has since been addressed with real post-launch content. A fine pickup for genre fans at a discount; a harder sell at full price given how short even its fans say it is.