Mottle Game Rules
A run in Mottle: Hide & Seek starts with three lives. You clear each round by surviving until the Seek timer reaches zero. Fireflies add to your score, and a full Alert meter costs one life. You can survive a round without collecting a single firefly.
What changes from round to round?
Each round opens with three seconds of Hide time. Once the search starts, the first round lasts 13 seconds. The second lasts 15 seconds. Each successive round adds two seconds of search time up to a limit of 26 seconds. The countdown on the board shows how long you still have to survive. The garden also gets busier. Round one has one Seeker and four fireflies. Round two has two Seekers and five fireflies. Later rounds can contain up to four Seekers and nine fireflies. More fireflies give you more scoring opportunities, but the extra Seekers can cover the same escape route from different angles.
How do Camo and Alert interact?
Steering makes your creature stand out against the ground. When you release, your creature takes on the color of its current tile as Camo fills. Reaching full camouflage from fully exposed takes about three quarters of a second. Any tile can provide camouflage once you stay still. Alert rises when a Seeker sees you while you are exposed. It rises faster if several Seekers see you at once. As you escape their sight or finish blending in, Alert drains. A partly filled meter can fall again without costing a heart. Look at both meters if you have just stopped inside a cone: your camouflage may still be building.
How are points calculated?
Each firefly adds 10 points as soon as your creature reaches it. Clearing a round adds a separate bonus of 100 times the round number. In a fresh run, collecting two fireflies and finishing round one gives you 120 points. If you then finish round two without collecting any more fireflies, your total becomes 320. Collecting the last firefly does not end the search early. The clock continues until time runs out or Alert fills. If you leave a lone firefly behind near the end of a round, you still receive the full survival bonus when the timer reaches zero.
What happens after a catch?
When Alert reaches its maximum, one heart is removed. If you still have a life, the same round starts again with its Hide countdown, a fresh set of pickups and an empty Alert meter. Points you have already earned stay in your score. You earn the round bonus only when you finish that round.
Does the round number on the result screen count cleared rounds?
The final result shows the round you reached. If you cleared round one and lost your last life during round two, the result shows round two. Your score includes the bonus for round one and any fireflies you collected, including pickups from the unfinished round.