The game

What is Mottle?

A camouflage hide-and-seek by Star Lord, and the independent version that runs on this page.

Updated 15 November 2026. The numbers match the game on this site.

Mottle — Hide & Seek is a single-player camouflage game. You are small, coral, and obvious whenever you move. Let go and you become the colour of the ground. Seekers sweep the garden with cones of light. Fireflies are the reason you ever leave a safe patch.

The original was created by Star Lord and published on 8x.gg on 22 September 2026, tagged as stealth, arcade, and survival. It is free in the browser. It is not a board game, and it is not a motel-management simulator that happens to share part of the name.

What this site is

Mottle Zone is an independent playable version of those rules, plus the notes around them. The code, the drawing, and the writing here are ours. We do not embed the original build, we do not ask for an account, and we are not affiliated with Star Lord or 8x.gg.

The rules page lists the numbers the garden actually uses: blend time, Alert rates, lives, and how each round adds Seekers, fireflies, and a little more speed.

What kind of game it is

It plays in real time. There is no turn order and no inventory. The strategy is almost entirely about when not to move. That is closer to a stealth game’s vision cone than to a puzzle, and closer to an arcade survival run than to a story. A round is short. A good run is a series of small permissions to be seen.

If you want the gestures first, start with how to play. If you already know them, the tips are the part the garden never spells out.