User:JimmyBlackwing/Hidden Runaway

Hidden Runaway is a 2012 hidden object game developed by Pendulo Studios and published by Bulkypix.

Gameplay and plot
Hidden Runaway's story is a retelling of the first half of Runaway: A Road Adventure, the debut game of the Runaway series. Brian and Gina have had a falling out, but have been brought together by a film producer to tell their life story for his new feature.

Development
Following the release of Runaway: A Twist of Fate (2009), the Spanish company Pendulo Studios retired its Runaway franchise and chose to explore other projects, citing exhaustion with the series. Rafael Latiegui of Pendulo noted that "2–3 scripts" for Runaway 4 existed by 2011, but that no new entries were yet planned. However, mobile game publisher Bulkypix revealed a new installment under the name Hidden Runaway, developed by Pendulo, at the Game Developers Conference in March 2012. TouchArcade reported at the time that Hidden Runaway would be a hidden-object title that featured 12 minigames. It was one of the studio's two projects, alongside the crowdfunded Day One, planned to follow the 2012 game Yesterday. According to writer Josué Monchan, both projects came at a difficult time for Pendulo, as the commercial failure of The Next Big Thing and ultimately Yesterday alienated publishers and made funding hard to obtain.

Hidden Runaway marked a departure for Pendulo. Lead programmer Felipe Gómez Pinilla called it "our first non-adventure game", the genre for which Pendulo had been known since its 1994 debut. Latiegui summarized it as "Runaway revisited in a casual way", and the studio's Ramón Hernáez noted that it was Pendulo's first foray into the casual game market. In 2012, he called hidden-object and "casual adventure [games] ... two genres very attractive for us" going forward, as they were similar to Pendulo's existing work but at a smaller scale and with different expectations from buyers. Hernáez said that Hidden Runaway would be the first of several casual titles intended as lighthearted counterparts to the studio's darker Yesterday and Day One. Latiegui and Monchan characterized Hidden Runaway's development as an enjoyable new experience. Conversely, Pendulo composer Juan Miguel Marín later dubbed it "the only time that Pendulo Studios responded to the demands of the market", and unsatisfying as a result.

Hidden Runaway was developed for both computers and iOS devices, and was initially scheduled for a May 2012 release. The game remained in production by August, at which point it was undergoing the final stages of development, Latiegui said. Bulkypix launched Hidden Runaway's iOS version via the App Store on October 18, 2012. In Germany, its computer version debuted during August 2013.

Reception
Josué Monchan of Pendulo Studios called Hidden Runaway "a complete disaster" financially. According to Juan Miguel Marín, it was the company's worst-selling game by October 2016. Combined with the poor performances of The Next Big Thing and Yesterday, and the failed crowdfunding campaign of Day One, Hidden Runaway contributed to Pendulo's financial decline. After its release, the company entered a several-year period in which it released no original games, and instead ported its back catalog to iOS in an attempt to survive. Pendulo ultimately returned with the game Yesterday Origins in 2016.

Metacritic calculated Hidden Runaway's reviews as "mixed or average".