Hunt the pixel

There are 12 screens like this in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Graphic Adventure. Some of the books can be picked up, but you won't know which until you move the mouse cursor over every single one!

Hunt the pixel, also referred to as a pixel hunt, is a video game term used to describe when a player must find something very small or inconspicuous on the screen, usually only a few pixels in size. The term was originally used in graphic adventures, though it could apply to any genre where the player is expected to find something on the screen and hidden object video games are event built around the concept.

The term is primarily used in games which use a cursor and require the player to click on a very small area, but it is sometimes used in games where the player must position their character into a small specific area. Hunt the pixel is analogous to the guess the verb problem seen in text adventures.

Personal

Although I played my fair share of graphic adventures, none of the games I played ever had any unfair pixel hunts. There are a few King's Quest games which expect you to find tiny objects, but they tend to have a shimmer animation making them more conspicuous. I'm glad I haven't had to deal with this problem very much, because I find puzzles like this tedious and unrewarding and a good example of bad game design.

Examples

These are examples of "hunt the pixel" in games which are important to me.

Title	Notes
Diablo	In the original game, killing a monster which drops a ring-type item will result in a metallic ding sound, but they're often difficult to find because the washed out color palette causes the graphic to blend into the floor. Thankfully, the game lets you zoom in with the Z key.
Final Fantasy VI	Doom Gaze, later referred to as "Deathgaze," is an optional boss who appears in a random location in the air each time you ride in the airship. However, you can't see where he is, so the only way to find him is to just fly around the 65,535 map tiles and hope you eventually stumble upon the right one.
King's Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella	The gold ball is only four pixels in size, and, although it stands out from its surroundings, very easy to miss since there are no other clues to its existence.
Ultima VII: The Black Gate	There are a large number of items and switches scattered around the map hidden behind trees and other objects where only a few pixels are visible.
Where's Waldo?	The game is built around the concept.

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