A prop hunt in a Victorian palm house — two hundred and seventy pots, crates, urns and potted palms under a glazed roof, and one of them is a person.
Hiders take the shape of anything in the building. The trick is not the disguise, it is the ARRANGEMENT: a lone barrel in the middle of a floor is a person, and nine pots in a row are nine pots. Find your own kind, join them, and stop moving — movement is the only thing that gives you away.
The warden is the one role with real agency, so it goes to a person whenever there is more than one in the room. It drives a brass spraying machine with a limited magazine and must find every last hider before the bell. A hit gives the charge back, so being right is free; being wrong smashes a real piece of the room, costs two seconds and slows you.
Nobody hides for long. Every so often the house stirs and leaks a smudge on the floor for each of you — roughly where, never exactly what — so standing perfectly still stops being a strategy on its own.
The glasshouse, its rooms and the arrangements inside it are generated fresh each round, so no two houses hide the same way. Fills with bots so a room of one or two still plays.
How to play Hide & Seed
GOAL
· Hiders — be standing when the bell goes. One survivor wins it for the hiders.
· Warden — find every last one of them before the bell.
IF YOU HIDE
1. Look at anything in the room and press E to become it.
2. Go and stand with the others of its kind. A lone barrel is a person.
3. Stop moving. Movement is the only thing that gives you away.
4. Every so often the house stirs and gives away roughly where you are. Move then — and move while the warden is looking elsewhere.
Your card tells you how you are placed: green among your own kind, clay when you are the only one of you in the room. The gauge tells you whether you currently read as furniture. The shape list (B) shows how many copies of each disguise the house holds — a wheelbarrow is a gamble because there are three; a flowerpot is safe because there are ninety.
Size is not a rules exception. One hit finds you whatever you are wearing. What a big shape costs you is speed, and what it buys is a different silhouette and a different set of places you belong.
IF YOU ARE THE WARDEN
1. You are held in the porch while the others hide.
2. Shoot anything that looks wrong — left click, or F.
3. Every shot spends a charge whether it lands or not. A hit gives it back.
4. Smashing real scenery costs you two seconds of clock and slows you.
CONTROLS
· W A S D — move
· Mouse — look (click to grab the cursor)
· SPACE — jump
· E — become the thing you are looking at
· B — the full shape list
· Left click or F — shoot (warden)
· On a phone: left thumb to walk, drag anywhere else to look, buttons for the rest.
