Lost & Found Co. - Cozy hidden-object game - Review

Help people find their stuff while surviving a big-(evil)-corp takeover in Lost and Found Co..

Cozy and wholesome game developed by Bit Egg Inc., and published by Gamirror Games and Bit Egg Inc.

More than just Finding Stuff

Calling Lost and Found Co. a hidden-object game would not make justice to the title, as it goes way beyond finding things.

But you don’t need to take my word for it. You know how I love games that have demos? Yeah, go to Steam and try the demo and then come back to complain to me if the game is not as good as I say.

Well, I guess I ruined the conclusion, but I do recommend the game. So back to the review.

As a hidden-object game, each stage is well-drawn as childhood favourite games, like Where’s Wally? (Waldo in some places) and as the game progresses the scenarios get just as busy.

Everything is animated and clickable, and it is fun to do so, even if it is not part of the scenario main quest, or optional-objectives, for a few reasons: learn more about the many stories in the game, ultra-secret-objectives, unlock hints, and just for fun’s sake.

In the game main story, you are Ducky. Here to help the goddess of war recover her power and protect her shrine from destruction by the OK-Corp, a big organization that affects every aspect of the people’s lives. Since no one prays for war anymore, she involuntarily became the goddess of finding lost things.

Every scenario moves the main story forward a bit, but also tells the story of other characters: some appear in multiple scenarios, some are well contained in the scenario. As you collect the items, or just click around, you will unveil so many details of that moment. It was definitely one of the highlights for me, as I love gameplay-based storytelling.

By clicking around, you will learn how a person got their job, or what are some intentions of a cunning fox. You can help some characters in dire need of help, or just laugh when you accidentally set up a comic situation.

The game also uses animations between scenarios or events, in the style of comic books, to expand the story. It is usually played as a reward for completing a task or a scenario.

The main objectives always appear in the HUD, and they are necessary to complete the scenario. If you are having trouble, you can click on them to get a hint.

You can also click and hold to get another, more straightforward hint, but those consume a point. You replenish those points by finding greyed-out items in the map, they are little creatures in disguise.

The optional objectives as listed on a checklist you access on the top-left of the map. You have no hints for those and can be quite challenging to find. It took me about 10 hours to get 100% in 16 scenarios, there are 27 in total I believe based on the number of Steam Achievements (I am not there yet). Completing those will reward you with reward you with the stuff that happens in between scenarios, I will get there soon.

There is also the ultra-secret objectives that appear nowhere, but you get rewarded for them. Once, I clicked on a fish that spit-out a cat. After the scenario, at the home base, I got a thank-you letter from the cat owner and some reward.

And lastly, clicking for fun. Some maps were littered and clicking on the trash would make them disappear, or play an animation of an aluminium can entering a recycling bin. I don’t know if it was because of the little tune that played, or just because it would make the map neat, I was always doing a clean-up on every scenario.

There is no time limit, and the relaxing music is just right for me to expend time finding things around the map. It can be quite time-consuming and I put one of my kitchen alarm, so I would not spend too much time each session of the game.

Every time you complete a scenario, an animation plays, and you go back to the base management mode. Well, you can go back at any moment. And it is not really base management, it is more like a place to customize the park where the goddess shrine (and Lost and Find Co.) is located, and to interact with some people visiting it.

As you find things you get rewarded, and those rewards unlock cosmetics, or currency to be exchanged by cosmetics. In your home base you can add those, either to the main scenario, or to Ducky’s room.

There you can also interact with people visiting the park. People that you helped in previous scenarios, or characters that will appear in future scenarios, will show up there. And you can have a chat with them, learning about their role in the story, or a sneak-peek on what the next scenario will be about.

You also have a phone, where you track the popularity of your lost and found business/shrine. One of measurements to save your shrine, but also to unlock new scenarios and cosmetics. There you can also check the selfies you took with famous people in the scenarios. In one of them I found a citric-fruit-like musician called John Lemon.

I like hidden-object games since I was a kid playing it on paper. I had fun with games that are just hidden-figures in more complex drawing, like a baseball bat hidden as a wooden table leg or a cat hidden in the shapes of stainless-glass art, like most hidden-objects games on Steam. But my heart was always fond of microcosms art, like the ones found in Where’s Wally books or Hidden Folks game on Steam. Lost and Found Co. pushes the concept further, with compelling story-telling that goes beyond scenarios, tying together the many puzzles in this adventure with characters and items, but also using gameplay mechanics as a narrative instrument.

Steam Deck

The game works well on Steam Deck. It has controller support, but, I, despite growing up with touching a screen being a capital sin for gaming, preferred it over using the controller. It is weird that it is not Deck Verified, only playable, with the only warning mentioning that some icons might appear related to keyboard. All icons I noticed matched with my controller layout, so maybe there is a gap between the check and the version I played.

The game is power hungry too, busy scenarios drain about 17Wh. By busy, I mean very dense population and items, usually with components moving around the scenario. If you zoom out, you get a huge fps drop, from 90 to 45. You can cap your screen at 30Hz to save battery.

But again (as you might have me reminding you at every review), in this day and age, devs should not overlook performance. On one hand, this game is one of the busiest I ever play, on the other hand I played well-made bullet hells that could maintain high framerate no matter how busy, with low power drain.

While playing on Deck was satisfactory, my favourite way was playing on a big screen with my family. We already have this thing where we play some puzzles from the newspaper once a week or so, and this game was for sure a step-up on that tradition. Not only by finding stuff, but also commenting on the stories being played.

Lost and Found Co. is available on Steam, give the demo a try.

Note: We were provided a review key by the publisher.