Short version Press play, survive the Hide countdown, then drag or use the keys only for a short hop. Release and let Camo finish before a cone arrives. Collect fireflies for ten points each. Stay unseen until the seek clock ends, and you clear the round.
See the loop before you start
How to play Mottle Game is mostly a decision about when not to move. The garden is a mosaic of coloured tiles. Your character wears a bright coral body whenever you are steering, and it fades toward the tile underneath once you are truly still. Seekers patrol with a cone of light. If that cone can see a body that is still too vivid, the Alert meter climbs. Fill Alert and you lose a life.
A round has two beats. Hide is a short countdown while the Seekers wait and you cannot steer yet. Seek is the live clock. Fireflies sit on the mosaic as the reason to travel. You do not have to collect every one. Clearing the clock is enough, and each firefly you do take is worth ten points. A cleared round also adds a bonus that grows with the round number.
Start a run
On the home page, press Play Mottle Game. The field is a same-origin frame that loads only after that press, so the guide itself stays light. You can also open the full-screen field. The title screen shows a small self-playing stroll. Tap the arena, press Play on the caught-out card, or hit Enter. Hide begins: a banner, a three-second count, and no steering. Use it to look, not to fidget. Note where the fireflies are and which tile you are standing on.
When the banner switches to the seek, the clock starts and your input works. The first round fields a single Seeker. Later rounds add more, up to four, and their cones reach a little farther. The seek clock also lasts longer as rounds climb, so you are asked to stay calm for more time, not less. That is why early habits matter. If you learn to sprint, the extra seconds only give you more chances to be seen.
Two actions do the work
Hold the pointer and the character walks toward it, up to a fixed speed. Arrow keys or WASD walk in that direction instead. Either way, holding counts as moving even if you are already on the spot you wanted. Camouflage drains quickly while any steer is active, and your visibility jumps so the Seekers have something to catch. Release everything to stop. Camo then fills over roughly three quarters of a second. Until it finishes you are still partly the coral colour, and a cone can still feed Alert.
That delay is the whole skill. Letting go when the light is already painting you is often too late. Let go on the tile you mean to wear, with a margin. The controls reference lists every key, including pause and mute. This page stays with the round itself so the two intents do not copy each other.
Read Camo and Alert
Camo is how finished the blend is.
At 100% you match the ground and a cone should not raise Alert. Midway, you are a bad disguise. The hint line under the meters says revealed, blending, hidden, or spotted. Trust the numbers more than the hint if they disagree with your nerves. Camo does not rise while a mouse button, finger, or movement key is down.
Alert is how close this life is to ending.
Alert climbs only when at least one cone (or a very close Seeker) can see a body above a small visibility threshold. It climbs faster if you are brighter, and a second cone adds more. When you are unseen it falls on its own. You can survive a graze if you blend and the light moves on before the bar fills. You cannot tank a full second of being obvious in the middle of a cone.
Points without giving the round away
Each firefly you touch during seek is ten points. You do not need them to clear. When the seek clock hits zero you clear even with fireflies left, and the round bonus is one hundred times the round number. Round one is a hundred, round two is two hundred, and so on, on top of whatever you collected. Then the next round starts with a fresh Hide.
Lives start at three. A filled Alert drops one, flashes the arena, and sends you back through Hide on the same round with a new layout of flies. The score you already earned stays. At zero lives the run ends: score, best, and rounds reached. Best is stored in this browser only. It is not an account and it is not sent anywhere. The result card is marked so it does not compete with this article in a snippet.
Give the first run one job
Ignore high scores the first time. Collect a single nearby firefly, blend, and let the clock expire. That teaches the delay in Camo better than a reckless sweep. On the second run, try a second fly only after Alert has fallen and the cone is pointed away. If you are caught, watch whether you were still moving or merely not finished blending. Those are different mistakes, and the tips and strategy notes separate them.
Pause with Esc, P, or the pause button if you need to read this page mid-round. Leaving the tab also pauses, so a notification will not quietly get you caught. Mute is the speaker button; the simulation keeps running. When you are ready for phone-sized play or a question about files, the online guide and the download guide take those topics so this one can stay a rules page.
- Wait out Hide. Look at fireflies and the tile under you. You cannot move yet.
- Steer briefly. Drag or use WASD toward one firefly. You are vivid the whole time.
- Release and blend. Let Camo finish on a tile before a cone arrives.
- Watch Alert. If it climbs, you are still visible. Stop and let the light pass.
- Last the clock. Fireflies are optional points. The clock is the round.