Hidden Runaway

Runaway marked a departure for Pendulo, as it was the company's first casual game and first project outside the graphic adventure game genre. Developed during a difficult economic period for Pendulo, and the game was itself a commercial failure. It remained Pendulo's worst-selling title by 2016 and contributed to a financial decline at the company. Critical reviews for Hidden Runaway were "mixed or average", according to Metacritic. Following Hidden Runaway, Pendulo stopped releasing original games for several years, until it returned with Yesterday Origins in 2016.

• Title — Hidden Runaway • Developer — Pendulo Studios • Publisher — BulkyPix (iOS) • Released — October 18, 2012 (iOS) • Genre — Hidden object • Modes — Single-player • Platforms — iOS, Windows

• Illustration — The player searches a backdrop for hidden objects, aided by the object list at the top of the screen. Hidden Runaway is a hidden object game. The player searches static backdrops for a series of objects concealed in the game world, as indicated by a list on the screen. Locating enough of these objects rewards the player with key items that enable progression through the story, via either their combination or their use on the environment. The key items needed to complete the player's goals are displayed at the start of each scene. Alongside its object-hunt gameplay, Hidden Runaway features optional minigame puzzle sequences, such as matching musical notes, piecing together a ripped ticket or playing a variant of Whac-A-Mole. Once completed, minigames may be replayed at any time. Hidden Runaways story retells the first half of Runaway: A Road Adventure, the debut game in the Runaway series. It is set after that game's events: protagonists Brian Basco and Gina Timmins have since fallen out with each other, but have been reunited by a film producer to recount their life story for the script of his new feature. This frame story progresses via cutscenes between gameplay sequences; gameplay occurs during flashbacks to moments from the first Runaway. The retelling concludes when Brian and Gina describe their arrival in Arizona's Hopi region. Afterward, the player encounters a minigame sequence and a teaser for Hidden Runaway 2, which was planned to continue the story.

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 Pendulo's two projects, alongside the crowdfunded Day One, planned to follow the studio's 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 the team's first title outside the adventure genre, for which Pendulo had been known since its 1994 debut. Latiegui summarized it as "Runaway revisited in a casual way", and studio head Ramón Hernáez noted that it was Pendulo's first foray into the casual game market. In 2012, he called hidden object games "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 Runaways 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 Microsoft Windows, OS X 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 for iOS via the App Store on October 18, 2012. In Germany, its computer version debuted in retail stores during August 2013, published for Windows by Rondomedia.