It’s a funky picture—no, a sculpture. Or maybe a poem. A story? Definitely an adventure, shifting and changing with every move. What is this wonder of which I speak?
Hello, and welcome to the Bee’s Knees, the weekly column focusing on some of the many creative ways words and pictures can be combined! One of the notable things about living in the twenty-first century is that things are constantly changing—technology, especially. And with it, graphic art and entertainment. When you combine those two… that’s when you get an interactive and beautiful adventure. My Secret Hideout is an app that puts together the best of technology to make something totally unique and incredibly fun.
It’s simple to play. All you do is drag and drop different shaped leaves onto a tree to create a picture of your tree house. To the left is a box that describes it, changing the description according to how you’ve built it. Every leaf adds a new detail, or changes an old one, and in the end you have a lovely description of the hideout you’ve designed. If you don’t like a detail you can change it. If you want to add another room, go ahead.
It does take some experimentation to figure out, and it’s hard to change the hideout in the way that you want to. As it grows, the different branches of the tree eventually separate into different wings of the hideout, turning different shades of green to keep them separate.
While My Secret Hideout is only available for select Apple products, more information can be found on the site here. Chances are, if you like Choose Your Own Adventure stories and would like a fun illustration to go along with it, you’ll like My Secret Hideout.
And that’s the Bee’s Knees. Please join me next Friday for another way people blend words and pictures to create all-new forms of art. In the meantime, feel free to tell me if there’s something you know of I should write about. I love learning new things!
