Yard Sale Hidden Treasures takes the extra leap from finding hidden objects to do-it-yourself home decoration, and is far more satisfying to play as a result. What’s more, the theme of searching through junk for valuable treasure has been taken to its logical conclusion: yard sales!

You’re a new resident in the quirky town of Sunnyville, where everyone (except you) has a themed home of some sort, be it a haunted house, ancient Roman villa, ’50s-style motor home or circus. Fortunately, it seems like all the other homes are having yard sales, which is good news for you. You’ve got to pick through the heaps of junk for useful hidden treasures to decorate your home with. If you do a good enough job, you might just beat your snobby neighbor in the Superstar Homes Magazine Contest!

The hidden object portion of the game will take up the bulk of your time, unless you’re particularly skilled at sussing out such puzzles. All the tricks are on display here - translucent objects, really tiny objects, and carefully blended colors that fade right into the background. If you’re looking for a hidden object challenge, this one certainly will test you in every screen. The hint system and timer are both fairly generous, and the artwork is all top-notch, with a bit of animation and some nice incidental sounds to make you feel more at home. Sometimes you get a side-mission, such as searching for a bunch of lost records at another house, or reassembling a mixed-up treasure map, which adds even more spice to the game.

The second part of the game is the DIY home improvement section. This is where you take the seemingly worthless objects you found in the yard sales, and turn them into stunning decorations for your new home. It’s a lot like a cooking game, to be honest - click and drag, click and trace, and so forth. There are old lanterns to repair, paintings to clean, lampshades to beautify, and rusty chains to repaint. If you complete the tasks fast enough, you get the superstar award for them; otherwise you have to settle for a gold or silver. At the end of each stage you get to see one of your rooms fully decorated with all the treasures you’ve found and fixed up. After that, you have the option to go back to a previous stage to redo one of the rooms, and when I tried this, the way it was done bothered me. I had to replay the previous stage with no possibility of skipping back to the house screen. There was no way to “quit out” of it. I guess when the game designers say “replay” the stage, they really mean it!

Apart from that bit of trouble, I really enjoyed the game, don’t think that I didn’t. The hidden object part of the game exercises your brain and your eyes, while the DIY part is all about action-packed hand-eye coordination. The story is more than enough to keep you motivated to keep stocking your house with more pretty things. With time and effort, your home could be a winner. This game certainly is!

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