How to play Mottle

Mottle controls

Mottle works with a mouse, a touchscreen or a keyboard. Your creature moves only while you hold a direction or keep a finger down.

• Mouse: press and hold, then drag. The creature walks toward the pointer. Release the button to stop and blend in.
• Touch: drag with one finger and lift it to stop. The game plays in portrait or landscape.
• Keyboard: arrow keys or W, A, S and D. Let go of every key to stop. On this site, click the game once so it receives your key presses.
• Pause: press Esc or P, or use the pause button. The game also pauses itself when you switch to another tab.

How a round works

Every round has two phases. You win the round by surviving the second one.

1. Hide (3 seconds). The Seekers are counting. You start in the middle of the garden, already blended in.
2. Seek. The Seekers patrol with their light cones and fireflies appear around the garden. The Seek timer is 13 seconds in round 1 and grows by 2 seconds each round, up to 26 seconds.
3. Round Clear. When the timer reaches zero you clear the round, collect the round bonus and move on to a harder round.

If the Alert meter fills first, you are Spotted: you lose a life and the same round starts again with a new layout. Lose all three lives and the run ends with Caught Out.

Camouflage: when you are hidden

Stand still and your creature takes on the colour of the patch it is standing on. Full camouflage takes 0.75 seconds. Moving breaks it in about 0.2 seconds, and while you move you stay at least 55% visible, however long you waited before.

The garden is a 5 by 5 grid of patches in seven grounds: moss, fern, clay, sand, stone, pond and heather. The colour itself does not matter. Seekers only check how far you have blended, so a clay patch hides you exactly as well as a moss patch.

The Alert meter

The Alert meter is the only way to lose a life. It rises only while you are inside a Seeker's light cone and more than 10% visible.

• Speed: the more visible you are, the faster it fills. At full visibility in one cone it fills in about 1.7 seconds.
• More cones: each extra Seeker that sees you at the same time adds 45% to the fill rate.
• Recovery: out of sight, the meter drains. Going from full to empty takes about 3.8 seconds.

How the Seekers behave

Seekers walk between random points in the garden and point their light cone the way they walk.

• Scanning: when a Seeker reaches a point, it may stop and sweep a wider cone from side to side for 1.7 seconds. A patrolling cone is about 57 degrees wide; a scanning sweep covers about 109 degrees.
• Chasing: a Seeker that sees you while you are more than about a third visible starts chasing you, 45% faster than it patrols. It gives up after 1.1 seconds without seeing you.
• Too close: right next to a Seeker, it notices you whichever way it faces if you are more than 40% visible.

Rounds get harder

Each new round adds Seekers, fireflies and Seek time. Seekers also walk faster and see farther every round, until round 11 for speed and round 13 for range.

Scoring

Fireflies are optional. You clear a round by surviving, not by collecting, and the round bonus is worth more than all the fireflies in that round.

• Firefly: 10 points. Walk over it to collect it.
• Round Clear: 100 points times the round number, so 100 for round 1 and 500 for round 5.
• Getting spotted: you keep the points you already scored. The round restarts with fresh fireflies.
• Best score: the game keeps your best score and shows it on the result screen.

Tips for your first runs

These follow from the rules above.

• Survive first. A cleared round is worth more than every firefly in it. Skip a firefly that sits in a busy cone.
• Stop before the light arrives. Blending takes 0.75 seconds, so stop while the cone is still a step away, not once it is on you.
• Move in short hops. The meter drains while nobody sees you. A short dash between still moments rarely fills it.
• Watch a Seeker that stops. It may be about to scan with a cone almost twice as wide.
• When chased, stop. Standing still drops your visibility fast, and the Seeker gives up about a second after it loses you.
• Keep some distance. Hiding right beside a Seeker is risky while you are still blending in.

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