Bored? Try Prop & Seek!

January 28, 2021 Dave Bernasibo

Bored out of your wits in this seemingly endless lockdown? Dying to go out and play games with your friends? Bored of playing Among Us? You might want to check out this game I found for free on Steam.

Prop & Seek is a fun party game by Vidibidi Games. Despite being released on Steam on January 7, 2020, the game is still in early access.

The game belongs to a category of games called the “Prop Hunt” genre. The “Prop Hunt” genre refers to games that all follow a certain game mechanic: Hide n’ seek. Basically, these games put a virtual twist to the classic children’s game, turning those who hide into things that blend into the map of the game.

Yep. That’s me as a brick in a box.

These are the basic rules of the game:

  1. Players are separated into two teams: Props and Hunters.
  2. Props are given thirty seconds to hide after they’ve transformed into a random item.
  3. The goal of the Hunters is to find the Props and shoot them down.
  4. Props win if there at least one (1) player on their team; Hunters lose if they cannot hunt down all the Props.

However, due to the game’s structure, the Hunter’s role is often taxing to play. You must memorize the layout of the map in order to point out things that are misplaced or weren’t originally there. To add to that huge responsibility, you also have to be careful where and when you shoot, as every wrong target you shoot inflicts self-damage on your character. Talk about a lesson on responsible firearm carry.

Before the match offically starts, players roam around the map as literal floating cameras, allowing them to study every posible nook, cranny, and object placement on the field. You might think that this is an advantage for the Hunters, but Props have the abiility to move around objects towards them. By entering First Person view, Props can pull objects  towards them and turn it into a makeshift barricade. So no matter how hard you study the map, if a Prop has a shield around them, it would still be hard to hit them.

Prop & Seek requires the following hardware (at the minimum) to run:

  • a 64-bit processor and operating system
  • Memory: 8 GB RAM
  • Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 2GB / AMD Radeon R7 370 2GB
  • DirectX: Version 11
  • Network: Broadband Internet connection
  • Storage: 5 GB available space

But for the game to run at full potential, Vidibidi Games recommend these specs:

  •  a 64-bit processor and operating system
  • Memory: 16 GB RAM
  • Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 3GB / AMD Radeon RX 580 4GB
  • DirectX: Version 11
  • Network: Broadband Internet connection
  • Storage: 10 GB available space

As the game is still in its Alpha stage, it is normal to encounter a large amount of bugs. They vary in size, from something as inconvenient as getting stuck in an inanimate object as a Prop, to lobby-breaking bugs such as the timer suddenly freezing, forcing players to leave and 1,000 in-game coins.

The game’s queues for quick matches are ironically long, and so is the queue for competitive matches. The game currently also lacks a feature to add players as friends in-game, and there is no voice chat feature as of yet.

Overall the game is fun, whether you play with a group or friends, or get into random lobbies. It’s a small, fun, enojyable party game, albeit the numerous bugs and queueing issues.

Try out the game for yourself here.