Hiding Spot

Hiding Spot is a 3D grid-based puzzle game where the player’s goal is to build a safe, cozy space by pushing and pulling furniture around. Designed by Corey Martin (Pipe Push Paradise), the game features minimalist voxel art, a relaxing ambient synth score, and dozens of elegant puzzles themed around managing anxiety and the need for solitude.

Hiding Spot: A Cozy, Claustrophobic Masterpiece of Introspective Puzzle Design

In the vast and often overwhelming landscape of indie puzzle games, few manage to carve out a space that feels both intellectually demanding and emotionally resonant. Hiding Spot, a 2018 title from solo developer Corey Martin, is one such rare gem—a game that transforms the simple, childish urge to hide into a profound meditation on anxiety, solitude, and the search for safety.

Development History & Context

A Solo Vision in a Collaborative Indie Landscape
Hiding Spot emerged from the mind of Corey Martin, following his previous work, Pipe Push Paradise. Developed using the Unity engine and showcased through a distinct minimalist voxel art style crafted with MagicaVoxel, the game is a testament to the power of solo development within a supportive community. The credits list 20 individuals, with 13 thanked for their support, including notable indie figures like Alan Hazelden (Pipe Push Paradise, Bonfire Peaks), Arvi Teikari (Hempuli, creator of Baba Is You), and Dario Zubović. This list reads like a who’s who of the modern sokoban-inspired puzzle scene, placing Martin firmly within a cadre of developers dedicated to refining the art of the spatial logic puzzle.

Released on October 16, 2018, for Windows and Macintosh, Hiding Spot entered a market hungry for sophisticated puzzle experiences. It was a time when games like Stephen’s Sausage Roll (2016) had redefined player expectations for difficulty and elegance, and Baba Is You (2017) was on the horizon, poised to explode onto the scene. Martin’s game, priced accessibly at a mere $1.24 on sale, was not a blockbuster endeavor but a focused, personal project. It was developed relatively quickly, with a jam version containing 13 levels eventually expanding to a final release featuring 55 meticulously designed puzzles. The technological constraints were seemingly self-imposed—a deliberate choice to use a simple voxel aesthetic and a controlled, grid-based system to ensure that the complexity arose purely from the mechanics, not from graphical fidelity.

Narrative & Thematic Deep Dive

The Silent Story of Anxiety
Hiding Spot possesses no traditional narrative, no dialogue, and no named characters. Yet, it is one of the most narrative-rich puzzle games of its time. The story is told entirely through environmental action and thematic implication. You control a small, anonymous voxel figure inside a stark, multi-floored building. Each room is a puzzle with one goal: manipulate the objects—boxes, desks, chairs, chests of drawers—to create a fully enclosed space, and then crouch within it.

This simple act is loaded with profound meaning. The official description frames it perfectly: it’s a game about “isolating yourself,” “manag[ing] your anxiety,” and making a “judgment call about whether you’re depressed or just in need of some alone time.” The game is a mechanical metaphor for the overwhelming desire to withdraw from the world. The building itself is a character—a cold, impersonal, and often eerily empty structure of grey and brown utilitarian spaces. As noted in a poignant player review on Backloggd, for some players, this evoked not cozy solitude but a deep-seated dread related to real-world trauma, such as hiding from active shooters. This unintended, cultural layer of interpretation speaks to the game’s powerful and ambiguous atmosphere.

The culmination of this journey is the rooftop finale, described by players as a brilliant and affecting capstone to the experience. Without spoiling it, this final puzzle resolves the game’s central tension in a way that is both mechanically satisfying and thematically resonant, offering a quiet commentary on the journey the player has undertaken.

Gameplay Mechanics & Systems

The Elegant Brutality of Spatial Logic
At its core, Hiding Spot is a sokoban variant, but one that brilliantly subverts the genre’s typical goal of traversal or placement. The goal is concealment. The control scheme is deceptively simple: WASD for movement, spacebar to grab objects, ‘C’ to crouch, and ‘R’ to reset a room. However, as noted in a GGS Gamer review, the isometric perspective makes movement itself a initial puzzle, as the directional inputs don’t always correspond perfectly to the on-screen movement, adding a layer of physical precarity.

The genius of the design lies in its gradual introduction of mechanics and objects. The first floors introduce basic box-pushing. Soon, chairs and small tables are added, which can be tipped over or moved in specific, often frustrating ways. The chest of drawers is a masterstroke; its drawers can be opened individually, creating overhead cover or new surfaces to slide objects across. One key, unspoken mechanic involves pulling an object over your head when your character is backed against a wall—a move that players must discover organically, a design choice Martin confirmed in Steam discussions was intentional to foster a sense of discovery.

The puzzles are ruthlessly efficient. They are small in scope but immense in their logical complexity, frequently eliciting a sense of impossibility that makes their solution immensely satisfying. The game does not hold your hand; it respects your intelligence and perseverance. This places it directly in the pantheon of “masocore” puzzle games, though its melancholic tone sets it apart from the more abstract or comedic tones of its peers.

World-Building, Art & Sound

The Atmosphere of Isolation
The world of Hiding Spot is a character in itself. Rendered in minimalist, low-poly voxels, the environments are stark and impersonal. The color palette is dominated by muted greys, browns, and dull blues, creating a sense of melancholy and loneliness. The lighting is gloomy, casting long shadows in empty offices and apartments that feel devoid of life or purpose. This is not a welcoming world; it is a clinical space where the only goal is to find a corner to call your own.

The sound design is a critical pillar of this atmosphere. Martin, using FL Studio and NI Massive, crafted a relaxing ambient synth score. The music is sparse, featuring gentle pads and subtle melodies that are less about energizing the player and more about immersing them in a state of contemplative isolation. The sound effects are minimal—the scrape of furniture on the floor, the soft thud of a character crouching—which makes the act of finally achieving silence within your hiding spot all the more powerful. The audiovisual presentation is a masterclass in using minimal elements to achieve maximum emotional and atmospheric impact.

Reception & Legacy

A Cult Classic’s Quiet Influence
Upon release, Hiding Spot was not a commercial blockbuster. Analytics from GameRebellion estimate sales around 5,000 units. It garnered no mainstream critic reviews on Metacritic or MobyGames, existing largely under the radar. However, its reception among those who did play it was intensely positive. Player reviews on platforms like Steam and Backloggd praise its clever puzzles, unique concept, and affecting tone, with many comparing its brilliance to genre titans.

Its legacy is twofold. First, it cemented Corey Martin’s reputation as a premier designer of thoughtful and mechanically dense puzzle games, a lineage continued through his work with others on titles like Bonfire Peaks. Second, and more importantly, Hiding Spot stands as a seminal work in a small but vital subgenre: the introspective puzzle game. It demonstrated how game mechanics could directly embody a mental state, using the language of sokoban to explore themes of anxiety and depression years before games like Unpacking or A Little to the Left explored similar themes of organization as therapy. It proved that a game could be a quiet, personal, and emotionally complex experience without a single word of dialogue.

Conclusion

Hiding Spot is a masterpiece of minimalist design and emotional resonance. It is a game that understands its theme on a mechanical level, every push and pull reflecting the internal struggle of its silent protagonist. While its difficulty and somber tone may not be for everyone, for those who connect with its premise, it offers an experience that is as intellectually rewarding as it is emotionally haunting. It is not merely a game about hiding; it is a game about the need for a safe place, and the quiet, profound satisfaction of building one for yourself. In the annals of indie game history, Hiding Spot deserves to be remembered not as a hidden gem, but as a foundational text in the art of therapeutic puzzle design.