Do you want to give your audience the opportunity of a moment of fun and entertainment? We present to you the Hidden objects game, where participants have a specified amount of time to find all hidden objects in the image. Users will earn points for each object they find, and will also get additional points based on the time remaining. In this way, participants will compete with each other to obtain the highest score in the Ranking and as administrator you will be able to reward the best classified.

These are the contents of the tutorial:

1. General description

2. How is the user participation flow

3. Create the promotion

4. Set up the Hidden objects game

5. Customize the score screen

6. Customize the design and finish the settings

7. Manage score and publication of winners

1. General description

Games have always captured the attention of users, who enjoy solving challenges such as word searches, word games, puzzles and memory games.

In particular, in this tutorial we explain all the steps to create a Hidden objects game. You'll be able to upload the image that will hide the hidden objects that users must find to complete the game.

The Hidden objects game has the following features:

• You can upload the image with the hidden objects and mark the areas on the image where the objects are hidden.
• You can control the difficulty level of the game, uploading an image with more or less objects to find, as well as designing smaller or bigger areas.
• You can limit the time available for players to complete the game (from 30 to 300 seconds). To increase the difficulty, you can also limit the maximum number of moves.
• Multiple options to reward participants: You can assign the prize/s to the participants with the highest score, run a random draw among the participants with the highest score, draw a prize among all the participants, etc.

2. How is the user participation flow

What will the user experience be like? The promotion is made up of different pages that the user will find when interacting with the promotion to participate, such as: the initial welcome page, the registration page, where the user will register with their data, the page that presents the game, etc. As a whole, the different pages will make up the structure of the promotion and the flow of participation that the user will follow to complete the promotional mechanics of the promotion.

In addition, as an administrator, you can select which participation flow you want users to follow. Specifically, there are three different participation flows: Identified Mode, where the user must identify and register before being able to play; Visitor Mode, where the users first play and then identify and register in order to claim their prize; and Anonymous Mode, where the users participate without identifying themselves or registering. The choice of one modality or another will determine how the users' participation and experience in the promotion will be.

Learn in this article how each participation flow works, as well as the different pages that make up a promotion.

3. Create the promotion

How to start creating the Hidden objects game? The following tutorial presents the first steps to create your promotion so that you don't miss any important point. You will learn all the general management options that you have available as an administrator in your dashboard to manage and edit the promotion.

Discover the first steps to create my first promotion.

4. Set up the Hidden objects game

As a next step, go to the Editor > Pages > Participation > Hidden objects. You will see that a game is set up as a sample so you can see how to configure it and thus be inspired to design your own game. You can use the "Test the game" tab to test the user experience when playing:

Next, go to the "General" tab where you can first customize the following layout options where the game will be presented:

1. Introduction message: This is the message that will be shown above the game board. You can use this text to give the users instructions if necessary.

2. "Upload media": Click this option to upload the image that you will present to the participants and in which they must find the hidden objects:

3.Correct/Incorrect color: By default, the color of the symbol when an object is found (Correct) is green, and the color of the symbol when it's not the right object (Incorrect) is red, but now the administrator can change these colors as they wish to adapt it to, for example, the corporative colors of the company or brand:

4. Areas: The next step is to mark where the hidden objects are in the image. To do so, you need to create what we call “search areas”, which are where the user can click on the image to mark the hidden objects they’ve found. To mark the hidden objects in the image, first of all remove the areas that were enabled with the predefined image so you can add your own areas:

Once you have removed the areas, click on the image to create different clickable areas (these will not be visible to the participants):

You can:

• Add as many areas as you want.
• While creating, you can edit the shape of each area and move it around. Once created, it’s only possible to edit the name of the area, and you can delete areas and create new ones.
• Add a name to the area so users can identify what to search for in the image.

Next, click on the "Gameplay settings" tab, where you will find the following options:

• Display legend. You can check this option to show the name of the area that you have created to give the participants hints on what to search for.
• Time limit. You can establish a maximum time that you want to give the users to finish the game (30 to 300 seconds).
• Limit moves. You can establish a maximum amount of moves that the user gets to find all objects (between 10 and 50).

💡 Don't miss this article with tips for designing a creative hidden objects image.

In the "Instructions" tab you can upload an image to explain to users the steps they must follow to play.

Finally, in the "Test the game" tab, you can test the game before publishing, and make changes if necessary.

5. Customize the score screen

In the "Score screen" section you can customize the colors and texts that will be displayed on the screen that the user will access after completing the game, which allows the user to be shown a summary of their game with the score achieved. This screen is divided into:

1. OK screen: It is the screen that is displayed when the user finishes the game in the established time.
2. KO screen by time: It is the screen that appears when the user has run out of time and has not been able to complete the game.

In this way, for each of these screens you can customize the following elements:

• "Feedback message text": Message displayed at the top of the screen, which by default comes with the text "Good job!" in the case of "OK screen" and "Time's up!" on the "KO screen by time".
• Background Color: The administrator can set up the background color of both screens to adapt it to the corporate colors of the brand.

6. Customize the design and finish the settings

Once you have configured the Hidden objects game, the next step is to finish the configuration of the other options of the promotion, such as customizing the design template with your own colors and texts, introducing the legal bases, the viral content settings, etc. Check the tutorial to finish the configuration and customization of your promotion.

7. Manage scores and publication of winners

By default, the system will assign 100 points for each correct move, considering each object found to be a correct move.

Additionally, points will be assigned based on the participant's remaining time. In particular, 10 points will be assigned for each remaining second.

How to publish the winners

Easypromos provides a complete Prize and Winners Management system that will allow you to create the prize or prizes that you want to give to the users who participate in the game, as well as configure how you want to assign the prizes and select the winners.

Specifically, you have three ways to assign the prize to the winners, depending on your preference:

1. Assign the award to the player in the first position of the Ranking.In this case, follow the steps of this tutorial that explains how you can assign the prize to the fastest player.

2. Carry out a giveaway among the users who have obtained a higher score.Follow the steps of this tutorial that explains how you can create the prize to be raffled among the players with the highest score, for example, the 5 players with the most points.

3. Carry out a draw among all the users who have participated in the game.Follow the steps of this tutorial to create the prize and raffle it among all the participants.