About This Game

You're a small blob of wet paint with two enormous eyes, loose in a building full of patrols, watchtowers and locked exits. There's no gun, no dash, no takedown. What you have is the ability to be any color you can find. Hold the eyedropper over the ground until it magnifies, pick out the exact shade under your feet, and paint it onto yourself until nothing is sticking out. Then stand very still and watch a guard sweep its cone right over you.

Everything here is honest color - grass tufts, road grit, cobble grout, the pool of light under a lamp, even the brushwork of a painting on a gallery wall - and every one of them is a shade you can wear. Nail the greens of one particular bush and a guard walks past close enough to touch you. Miss by a shade and it stops, turns round, and comes over to look at the smudge on its floor.

Then it gets harder. A clock ticks down, and the guards get sharper as it does. Night levels take the map away and hand it back only where you have walked, so you know where the walls are and have no idea where the patrols went. Later on come searchlights, security cameras, rotating sprinklers and sudden downpours that rinse a careful coat straight off you - plus three hunters a perfect coat does nothing against. The Tracker is a hound that follows your wet footprints. The Profiler is color-blind and reads your outline instead. The Listener has no eyes at all and simply hears you cross gravel. Even the pigeons are against you: sprint too close to a flock and it flushes, loudly, announcing exactly where you are. Although a clumsy guard will set them off the same way, and give itself away.

You're not helpless. Throw a rock to pull a guard somewhere else, or knock it out cold. Hose paint across the floor to build a hiding place that wasn't there a second ago. Drop a plush decoy knitted out of your own coat and let a guard waste twenty seconds confiscating it. Or disappear underground into the Understreet - the drains and vents a fluid blob can squeeze along, unseen, paying for the distance in rust and floodwater.

Twenty-two handcrafted levels, each introducing one new idea before it starts combining them, plus a guided tutorial, a wall of achievement medals, and a full level editor with Steam Workshop publishing so you can build and share your own.

And there's no level select. There's a gallery, and you walk through it. Every level hangs there framed behind a little red curtain, and clearing one pulls the drapes open on the next while you watch. Walk up to a painting, step into it, and you're playing the map you were just looking at. The doors deeper into the building open on the stars you have banked.

Every run records itself, and beating your best replaces the one you keep. Watch it back whenever you like: pause, rewind, drag the timeline, zoom in on the coat you painted, or lock the camera onto a guard and find out what it was doing while you crept past it.

And when you want company, take the hiding online, across big purpose-built arenas and in three flavours. Hide and Seek hands one player an eyepatch, an eraser and no paint at all, and sends them sweeping a fog-locked map while everybody else paints themselves into the scenery and holds their nerve - throwing rocks to stun, hosing out fake cover, whistling to taunt. Infection changes what getting caught means: you come back hunting, the pack grows around you, and the last player still hidden wins. Head to Head splits the room into two teams, gives each its own secret objectives, and shows neither side where the other one is.

The paint job is the whole game. Pick a color up off the ground and wear it. Every surface in the level is a shade you can steal, and how well you copied it is exactly how well you are hidden.

Outsmart, never outfight. Read the patrols, watch the warning arcs fill on whichever side you're being looked at from, and go through the gap. A countdown makes every guard on the map sharper the longer you take about it.

Fog of war. Night levels take the map away and hand it back only where you have walked. You'll know where the walls are and have no idea where the patrols went - until a lamp, a crystal or a glowing mushroom pools enough light to show you.

Things that ruin an afternoon. Searchlights, security cameras, rotating sprinklers, downpours that rinse your coat off, ground that changes color under you - plus a hunter for every sense: a Tracker that follows footprints, a Profiler that reads outlines, a Listener that just hears you.

The wildlife is a tripwire. Pigeon flocks, koi ponds, moth swarms, scurrying rats. Sprint too close and they bolt, loudly, and everyone in the room knows where you are. The good news is guards set them off too.

Improvised tools. Throw a rock to pull a guard away, or knock it out cold. Hose paint across the floor and make a hiding place that wasn't there a second ago. Drop a plush decoy knitted from your own coat and watch a guard solemnly confiscate it.

The Understreet. The drains and vents a fluid blob can squeeze along. Nothing up there can see you down here, and you pay for the distance in rust and floodwater.

Twenty-two levels, and a gallery to hang them in. No level select - a building you walk through, with every level framed on a wall behind a little red curtain. Clear one and watch the drapes pull back on the next. One clean new idea per level, sunlit gardens through to a crystal-cavern finale, each with a secret spot hidden in it and three stars to chase.

Build & share. A full in-game level editor with a tile-design studio (paint your own ground materials, or import artwork), and Steam Workshop publish/subscribe.

Three ways to play it online. Big purpose-built arenas and your friends in them. Hide and Seek: one seeker gets an eyepatch, an eraser and no paint, and has to sweep a fog-locked map while everyone else holds very still. Infection: get caught and you come back hunting, so the room fills up around the last player still hidden. Head to Head: two teams, two sets of secret targets, and neither side shown where the other one is.

Play your way. Full keyboard-and-mouse or gamepad support everywhere, with remappable controls and a scheme that adapts on the fly. And since this is a game about telling colors apart: the arcs that warn you change shape as well as color, so you can read them without seeing the difference, and you can switch on a tone that rises as your coat closes on the ground.