If there's one genre that attracts my attention more than any other, it's hidden object games. This type of app is a brain stretcher and a terrific way to spend a few idle minutes.

Earlier this week, publisher Namco Bandai released a pair of hidden objects titles. Both are free on iTunes with the caveat that they really -aren't- free beyond the first screen or two. These two titles are a study in the highs and lows of the hidden object genre...literally.

Lost in Time: The Clockwork Tower, developed by Spark Plug Games, was released early last week. The game sends players on a quest to restart time after it is stopped when a mysterious pocket watch is broken. The main character, Eliza, is charged with repairing the watch and freeing her friends from their frozen state.

The Clockwork Tower features some really nice 3D graphics, certainly something new and different from the typical hidden object game. But the terrible performance of the game makes the beauty of the graphics fade into the background. Not only is the game laggy, but it freezes and crashes at times with maddening frequency.

Alongside the technical-graphical problems, the game's puzzles are frustratingly difficult. Now, I don't mind figuring out a puzzle. After all, that's kind of the point. But these are so obscure as to be enough to want to uninstall the game. I didn't get past the third area before I gave up in utter frustration. There is no hint system that actually offers insight into what needs to be done. The hints that ARE given are essentially useless.

If I had to guess, I'd say that Namco-Bandai released The Clockwork Tower in a beta state as "free" to get folks to play it in order to know where to make improvements. Let's hope they fix the obvious and HUGE problems the game has. The potential is there but it's not worth playing right now.

Lost in Time: The Clockwork Tower earns 1/5 from me until such time as an update fixing the game stopping issues is released.

By contrast, The Stroke of Midnight, developed by Nikitova Games, is everything that hidden object gamers have been waiting for: Gorgeous 3D graphics and animations, challenging but not impossible puzzles, hidden objects that are well hidden, not just tiny, and a pretty good story on top of it all.

In The Stroke of Midnight, players are put in the personnae of a frustrated romance writer visiting a haunted castle. While there, she becomes embroiled in an adventure to reunite a pair of ghostly lovers from more than a hundred years ago. Players proceed through the castle finding objects and solving puzzles to move from room to room.

There are not enough good things to say about the graphics in The Stroke of Midnight. There is camera movement that resembles that found in PC/Mac titles. For instance, moving from one end of the hall to the other, the first person view 'flies' down the hall past the portraits hanging on the walls, etc. It's really a boundary stretcher for hidden object games.

The puzzles are challenging and will cause some frustration but are not impossible to solve. There is also a 'skip' option if they're just too much. The hidden objects are actually hidden, not made microscopically small to make them impossible to find.  There are no hints for the hidden objects but that's OK as they are all eventually 'findable'. It's just a matter of time.

There were a few times that the game lagged but not enough to make it unplayable. If you've been looking for a great hidden objects game, this is definitely one to try out. It is free to play through the first two scenes but must be purchased after that for $4.99. You can purchase the game via an in-game interface that immediately unlocks the other scenarios without having to re-download the game.

The Stroke of Midnight earns 5/5 from me. It's worth every penny and more.