Meccha Chameleon Strategy Guide · Cosmo Strategy Guides

01 · The Round Loop

Two phases, one shrinking clock, and a seeker count that only climbs.

The hide clock runs first Every round opens on a countdown labelled Until Search Starts. That number is your build window, and the only stretch where moving is cheap.
Search Time replaces it When the hide clock empties, the HUD switches to Search Time and the seekers are released. The round ends when that timer runs out.
The header strip is your scoreboard The top row draws one white figure per hider still loose and one red figure per seeker. It is the honest read on the round.
Increasing Tag is the default ruleset Get caught and you do not sit out. You switch sides and search. Last to the timer wins, alongside anyone else still hidden.
Every tag compounds Caught players convert, so the seeker count only climbs. A position that held against one searcher will not hold against six.
The last two minutes are the hard ones Early Search Time is one person sweeping wide. Late Search Time is a crowd who know which rooms were skipped.
Being found is not the end You play out the timer on the other side. The seeker seat is the fastest teacher this game has.

02 · Roles & Round States

Four states, four different jobs. Most rounds put you through two of them.

Unpainted Hider Hide phase, factory white

Spawns untextured, with no camouflage applied
Nameplates still drawn over you for your own side
Everything you do now is unopposed, and will not be again

Bring: A destination decided before the level finished loading.
Take: The whole hide countdown to paint, anchor and settle.

The default white model is the loudest object in the level. Losing it matters more than finding a clever location.

Settled Hider Painted, anchored, rotation locked

Skin sampled from the surface you are sitting on
Pose held, rotation frozen, hands off the movement keys
Banking points whenever a seeker looks your way

Bring: Patience. The urge to adjust is the enemy from here.
Take: Score for every second inside a seeker view without being identified.

Once settled, only motion can give you away. Do not improve a position that is already working.

Opening Seeker The first searcher released

Carries the rifle: limited ammunition, cooldown between shots
Alone against the whole lobby for the opening minutes
Sets the sweep pattern every later seeker inherits

Bring: A route rather than a wander, in an order you can recite.
Take: The first tag, worth more than any later one because it doubles your side.

Firing at everything is how an opening seeker finishes with nothing. Each wasted shot buys a hider another minute.

Converted Seeker Caught, and now hunting

Arrives knowing first-hand where hiders actually sit
Joins a group that can cover a room from several angles
No longer earns anything from the overlooked ranking

Bring: The intel you just paid for, and the angles you tested.
Take: A share of the sweep and a place in the found feed.

Converted seekers are dangerous because they were hiders ten seconds ago. Assume they check your style of spot first.

03 · The Control Layer

Nine verbs. Nearly every avoidable mistake is one of them at the wrong moment.

Action	Default	What it actually does
Paint Mode	F	Opens the painting layer so you can sample a colour off the world and apply it to your own model.
Pose	R	Cycles fixed body poses. A pose matching nearby props is worth more than a perfect colour match.
Rotation Lock	Mouse	Freezes your facing so small mouse movements stop turning your body. Set it once the angle is right.
Taunt	1	Plays a loud attention-drawing gesture. High risk, and the reason confident players sit metres from a seeker.
Nameplate Display	2	Toggles the name labels drawn over players. Turn them off while judging how your position reads.
X-Ray Rendering	3	Switches your own silhouette to a see-through render, so you can tell how deep inside a surface you sit.
Camera Detach	5	Swaps to a loose camera you can move around your position. The honest way to check your own eyeline.
Climb	SPACE	Pulls you up onto the surface in front of you, and doubles as Move Up once attached.
Crouch and Stand	CTRL	Drops your stance, and doubles as Move Down while anchored. CTRL with SPACE stands you up.

04 · Paint Mode & Camouflage

The chameleon half of the game, and the cheapest advantage you have.

Sample before you paint Paint Mode works from what is on screen. Take your colour off the exact panel you will sit against.
Match the surface, not the room A wall that reads as one flat brown from the doorway is three browns up close, and close is where seekers look.
Repaint every time you relocate Camouflage that was perfect on a denim wall is a flare on a candy path. Moving without repainting kills good players.
Mid tones survive more glances Pure white and pure black both catch the eye under level lighting. A muddy middle value forgives a wrong hue.
Watch your edges, not your fill Your outline is drawn by whatever sits behind it. A flawless fill on a clean backdrop still shows a human shape.
Paint during the hide phase The painting layer needs camera work, and camera work is movement. Getting caught mid-brushstroke is an avoidable death.
A seam forces a decision When your body straddles two materials, pick one and commit. Half-matching both reads worse than fully matching one.

05 · Anchoring, Posing & Rotation Lock

You are not stuck on the floor. The attach system makes the good spots.

Anchor first, adjust second Climb attaches you to whatever you face. SPACE and CTRL then walk you along the surface while the mouse turns you.
Know where detaching drops you SHIFT releases you from the surface. The fall is visible and audible, so work out your landing first.
Rotation Lock is not optional Without it, every twitch of the mouse turns your model. It separates a statue from a thing that shifts when you breathe.
Pose to match the neighbours If the room is lined with gingerbread figures, the winning pose is the one they hold. At range, silhouette beats colour.
Use X-Ray Rendering to judge depth Sinking into geometry hides you; sinking too far pushes a limb out the far side. The see-through render shows that.
Check yourself from the doorway The loose camera lets you stand where a searcher will stand. Two seconds of looking beats two minutes of hoping.
High is good, reachable is better A place nobody can look at is usually one you cannot leave. Keep an exit that does not need a loud climb.

06 · Reading a Hiding Spot

A strong position is not unseen. It is the one nobody looks at twice.

Sit inside a group, not alone One object on an empty floor gets inspected. The eleventh object in a cluster of ten gets walked straight past.
The obvious corner is searched first Everyone caught once goes to corners, shelf tops and the backs of doors. Those are cleared in the opening minute.
Symmetry is a trap Level art is laid out symmetrically. If the left rack holds four items and the right holds five, a searcher notices.
Duplicate something that already exists The safest shape in any level already appears elsewhere in it. Copy a real object rather than inventing a plausible one.
Respect the scale of the room These levels play with size constantly. A figure that is believable on a supermarket aisle is absurd on a cake platform.
Count the sightlines, not the cover Work out how many places a seeker could stand and still see you. Two is good. Seven is a countdown.
Choose the follow-up position early The moment a searcher looks at you twice you want somewhere already picked. Nobody makes that call well under pressure.

07 · Searching & Sweep Discipline

Limited ammunition and a cooldown between shots. Guessing is expensive.

Sweep in an order you can repeat Rooms cleared in a fixed order stay cleared. Wandering means covering the same ground three times while the timer drains.
Look for the thing without a twin Level art arrives in sets. The one item with no matching copy anywhere else is worth spending a shot on.
Change your eye height constantly Crouch, stand and climb while you scan. A silhouette that is flawless from standing height falls apart from the floor.
Park your view and wait Most hiders eventually adjust something. Hold your crosshair on a suspicious cluster for three full seconds before moving on.
Shots are expensive A miss puts you on cooldown and tells everyone in earshot where you are. Confirm first, then fire.
Not every figure is a player Hiders can leave a decoy behind, and it holds still better than they do. A decoy only costs them a cooldown; it costs you a shot.
Read the found feed The feed names who found whom. It tells you who on your side is productive and which rooms are paying out.
Sweep as a line once you have numbers When the seeker count climbs, spread out and walk a room abreast. Six players on one shelf find nobody.

08 · Scoring & the Overlooked Ranking

You do not score for hiding well. You score for being looked at and missed.

Points come out of a seeker view While a searcher has you in frame and fails to act, your total ticks up. A room nobody enters earns nothing.
The ranking redraws on a timer The board on the left refreshes every few seconds and shows the next refresh. Do not play against an old placement.
Exposure is the whole point The top of the board belongs to players sitting in doorways and on searched shelves, not to whoever found a hole.
Taunting is a scoring tool Pulling a searcher toward you is how you get somebody to stand and stare. It is also how you get tagged.
Distance matters less than framing A seeker looking at you across a hall counts the same as one beside you. You need to be in the picture.
The praise counter is separate The thumbs-up total beside your name is what other players hand you for a position they admired. Reputation, not placement.
Placement survives being caught Getting tagged late with a big overlooked total beats surviving the timer in a corridor nobody walked down.

09 · Map Literacy

From a supermarket aisle to a gingerbread hillside. The reading transfers, the route does not.

Learn the prop sets, not the routes Each level is assembled from a small library of repeated objects. That library is the list of shapes you may imitate.
Grounded levels reward colour Rooms built from real-world references give you big plain planes: shelving, walls, produce bins. Accurate sampling carries you there.
Stylised levels reward shape Candy hillsides and fabric interiors are visually loud, so colour matching is easy and useless. Looking like a lollipop works.
Take the crowd slot early Any level with a row of identical figures is offering you a place in it. Claim it before three other hiders do.
Verticality is uneven Some levels are almost entirely floor level; others stack several storeys. Learn which before spending a hide phase climbing.
Lighting decides your palette The same material reads differently under warm interior light and flat daylight. Sample under the light you will sit in.
Know the dead rooms Every level has a space searchers almost never enter. It is safe and it scores nothing. Keep it for late rounds.

10 · Lobby, Chat & Conduct

A social game with a text box. Nearly all of the friction is avoidable.

Text is the only channel There is no in-game voice. Chat opens with T, everyone can read it including the people hunting you.
Do not call out other hiders Naming a position in chat ends somebody round and earns a reputation that outlives the lobby.
Nameplates give you away Toggle the name display off while you set up. A label floating over a convincing prop is the clearest possible signal.
Pick a readable display name Your name shows in the found feed and on the ranking. A legible one is how you get credit.
Hosts can remove players Lobbies can eject people. Spot-calling, stalling and deliberate griefing all get handled the same way.
Interface language is per client The players around you may be reading the game in another language. Keep chat short; the feed reads the same everywhere.
Hand out the praise The thumbs-up costs nothing and is the only real feedback loop here. Spend it when somebody walked you past twice.

11 · Pro Tips

Habits that compound across a hundred rounds.

Paint first, get clever second Far more rounds are lost to an unpainted model than to a mediocre location. Fix the colour before the concept.
Never improve a position you like The instinct to shuffle two inches left has ended more rounds than any searcher. If it works, stop touching it.
Watch the seeker count, not the clock Two searchers with four minutes left is a different game from six with two. The header strip tells you which.
Practise the seeker side deliberately Ten rounds searching teach you more about what gives a hider away than a hundred rounds hiding.
Study whoever is above you When the ranking updates, go and look at where the leaders are sitting. The board is a lesson every few seconds.
Be in frame, not out of sight The scoring system pays for exposure. Players who optimise for never being looked at finish alive and near the bottom.
One clean round beats five clever ones A simple, repeatable position executed properly outscores an elaborate idea you land one time in five.