Playing a round
Chameleons hide. Hunters find them before the clock runs out. Everything else is detail.
Rooms
A room is one game. Several run side by side on the same server, each with its own map, settings and scoreboard.
Open the menu (brush in the air, or /meccha) and pick Rooms.
The browser lists what is open, how full each one is, and how long is left in the ones already playing.
Click one to join, or make your own.
By command: /meccha room list, /meccha room join <name>,
/meccha room create, /meccha room leave. Rooms can carry a
password, and room creation can be reserved for staff.
Whoever creates a room leads it: they pick the map, the timings and the rules, and start the round.
Inviting people
Getting a group into the same room used to mean typing "leave and join the other one" until everybody had. The leader has an Invite button next to the member list instead: it shows everyone online who is in no room, and one click sends them an invitation.
They get a line in chat to click, and a notification in the corner of the screen in case they were
looking at the world rather than at the chat. An invite also waives the room's password, so you can
bring a friend into a private room without typing the password where everyone can read it. It lasts
three minutes. By command: /meccha room invite <player>.
How many players
A room holds up to 16. Past that it is for people who have supported the mod, which is two euros on Ko-fi, once. Sixteen is a full game of hide and seek, so playing with friends never meets this. What it meets is the hundred-player event, and if you are using the mod to make something for an audience then chipping in is fair. The capacity row shows the ceiling, so you can see it coming.
How a round runs
- Lobby
Everyone gathers. You can ask for a side with
/meccha room role hiderorseeker, though by default the hunters are drawn at random when the round starts. - Hiding
Chameleons are dropped into the map with a set of armour. Hunters are frozen and blinded. Paint, pick your spot, hold a pose.
- The hunt
Hunters are released with a shotgun. A hit on a chameleon finds them.
- Reveal
The chameleons who were never found light up, so everyone finally sees where they had been standing.
Dying, falling into the void or wandering out of the map all count as being caught.
Points
Hiding well is not the same as scoring well. You are paid for nerve, not for safety.
- Being looked at. Every second a hunter has you in view and does not realise, you earn. A spot nobody ever walks past earns nothing.
- Holding still. Running around while being watched pays a quarter of the rate. The reward is on holding a convincing disguise, not on dodging.
- Whistling.
Gplays a flute where you stand and is worth 25 points, but only if a hunter is close enough to actually hear it. The game tells you either way.
Hunting
The shotgun is a spread weapon with a cooldown, and a miss makes you wait longer, so firing at every
suspicious slab is a bad habit. Look for what does not belong: a stair facing the wrong way, a fence post
with no fence, a cake in a room with no table. C crawls into low spaces.
Game modes
The room leader picks these in the room's Rules tab.
| Infection | The default. A caught chameleon joins the hunt, so the pressure builds as the round goes on. |
|---|---|
| Classic | A caught chameleon is out and watches until the round ends. |
| Battle Royale | Every chameleon starts the hunt with a stock of points that drains every second, and drops out at zero. Camping is no longer an option: you have to keep earning. |
Battle Royale is off by default, and stacks with either of the other two, which decide what happens to you when you run dry.
Watching
You can join a room mid-round as a spectator, and being caught puts you there too. Sneak cycles between the players still in play.