When reviewing the average puzzle game on the Switch, it’s typically a challenge to feel out how to score them. Given that so many of them are tapping into very familiar styles of play, just changing up a detail here or there, or a base style to help them look and feel unique, at some point it gets harder and harder to meaningfully separate them and determine their respective fair scores. While they thankfully aren’t the most over-represented subgenre of puzzlers on the system, there are quite a lot of variations on the hidden object puzzle out there. As a starting point, I do at least give Tiny Lands 2 some credit for tackling them in a way that feels more distinct though.

While “Spot the difference” challenges aren’t quite the same as your typical hidden object ones, I would consider them to be siblings of a sort. I have played some of these on the system before, though more often as a subset of puzzles in a larger and more diverse collection. What I can’t say I’ve done before is tackle them in 3D, and that does make for a somewhat different challenge. As you can imagine, comparing two flat and static images is quite a lot simpler than needing to manipulate a 3D scene put in front of you, then working to determine what doesn’t match between the two sides. While most discrepancies can be found by simply rotating the camera around, in order to find each difference, and to spot each level’s hidden puzzle piece, you’ll also have to pan and zoom to identify everything.

The good news is that for the most part the controls to help you do this work well and don’t really get in the way. Thankfully we’ve gotten to the point in gaming where camera controls have become pretty locked in for standard expectations, and these work well. Navigating the scene to find what may be missing on one side, or in some other way different, is pretty easy, and even less dexterous casual gamers should likely get acclimated pretty easily. If you ever get yourself stuck, unable to find something, there’s also a pretty handy hint system that will highlight the general area a difference is in, not simply choosing it for you but instead narrowing down the area you’ll need to look in. It’s hardly a revolution, but it’s a good idea implemented well.