How to Play Mottle Game — Controls, Goal and First Round

How to play Mottle Game in one minute

Mottle Game has one input and one idea. Hold and drag to run. Let go to stop. That is the whole control scheme, and every decision in the game comes out of it, because your creature glows while it moves and blends in when it stops.

You cannot be fast and invisible at the same time. Everything below is just detail on top of that.

The goal

Collect fireflies and survive. The golden lights are the only score in Mottle Game. There is no finish line to cross and no level to clear, so a good run is simply one where you picked up more fireflies than last time before the Seekers caught you.

Mottle Game controls on a computer

Move: press and hold the left mouse button, then drag in the direction you want to go. Your creature runs for as long as you hold.
Hide: release the button. Your creature freezes on the spot and copies the colour of the ground under it.
Pause: use the pause control inside the game frame.

Mottle Game controls on a phone or tablet

Move: put one finger down on the game and drag.
Hide: lift your finger.
Bigger view: tap the Fullscreen button right under the game. On phones the game will try to rotate to landscape, which gives you a wider view of the garden.

Mottle Game is built around a single gesture on purpose. One thumb is enough, which is why it works in a queue, on a bus, or anywhere you have thirty seconds.

Your first round, step by step

Press Play Mottle at the top of this page. The game loads in the same place on the page, so you will not have to scroll to find it.
Drag to run toward the nearest firefly. Watch how bright your creature gets while you are moving.
Let go in the middle of a darker patch of ground. Watch the colour under you change to match the ground.
Watch a Seeker's light cone sweep across the garden. Notice that when you are still, the cone passes over you without ending the round.
Pick up two or three fireflies. Then keep going, and notice that the Seekers come around faster than they did in the first ten seconds.

That is a whole round of Mottle Game. Everything after the first minute is about doing those five things with better timing.

What the two bars mean

There are two meters in the game and they answer two different questions.

How exposed you are. This bar climbs while you are moving in the open and settles when you are still. It is a readout of the risk you are currently taking.
How alert the Seekers are. This bar climbs as you get noticed and stays high. When it fills, the round ends.

New players watch the fireflies. Experienced players watch the second bar, because that bar decides when the round is over.

The mistake almost everyone makes first

Most first runs end the same way: the player keeps running until a light cone is already on top of them, then tries to stop. By then it is too late, because the exposure you built up while running is still on you.

Stop before the light arrives, not after. Pick a patch of ground that already looks like your creature, get there, and release. The moment the cone is sweeping past you and you are standing still is the moment the game becomes easy.

How long a run lasts

There is no fixed length. A first run usually lasts under a minute. Once you have learned to freeze early, runs stretch out, because the thing that kills you is almost never the speed of the Seekers, it is the extra half second you spent running.

Keep reading

Mottle Game rules — the two bars, scoring and what ends a round.
Mottle Game tips — the habits that add fireflies to a run.
What is Mottle Game? — who made it, and why it is not a board game.