Meccha Chameleon: 10 Tips and Tricks We Wish We Knew Sooner

I was a bona-fide hide-and-seek champ when I was a kid. It’s not really that hard; you just have to be good at making yourself really small and quiet, though having an affinity for camouflage certainly helps as well. My efforts at camouflage didn’t usually go further than covering myself in a blanket, but if hide-and-seek was a game like Meccha Chamelon, where you can paint yourself freely, I would’ve been unstoppable.

Even with that ability, though, there’s an art to staying hidden. It’s not just about crouching down in a dark corner, it’s about truly and wholly blending into your environment, taking advantage of both natural blind spots and the Seekers’ own preconceived notions of where it’s possible to hide. By being thorough with your painting, mixing up your positions, and getting creative with your poses and textures, you’ll be a veritable phantom. If you’re trying to find good hiding spots in Meccha Chameleon, consider these tips. And if you’re a Seeker, well, consider the same tips, but in reverse.

10 Mix it Up

A Good Hiding Spot is Only Good Once

The first rule of any good hide-and-seeker is to never hide in the same place twice. No matter how good of a spot you found the first time around, if you’re still playing with the same people, they will definitely get wise to you if you try to hide there more than once. In fact, if you play on the same map multiple times in a row, there’s a good chance your previous hiding spot will be one of the first places they look, so do yourself a favor and don’t be there.

Mixing up hiding spots is all about location, location, location. Was your last spot under a bed? Go in the opposite direction and hide somewhere high up. Were you disguised as something soft like a plushie? Switch to something sturdy like a wall or a metal pipe. Basically, you just don’t want to fall into certain hiding habits, because the longer you play with a group of friends, the more they’ll start to recognize those habits and begin pinning you down.

9 Whistles Don’t Reveal Exact Position

Don’t be Afraid to Get Gutsy

While you’re hiding, you can press the Taunt button to deliver a little whistle that’s audible to nearby Seekers. Ostensibly, the purpose of this is to get a Seeker to look in your general direction without actually revealing you, which can help to increase your round score if you care about that. However, whistling can also work as a surprisingly effective little disorientation tactic if you use it right.

The quirk with whistling is that, while the whistle is audible to nearby Seekers, it doesn’t emanate from your actual, physical position. The whistle is just softer or louder based on how far away you are from the one who heard it. In this way, you can mislead a Seeker into searching for you in the wrong place. For example, if you’re hiding next to a door frame and whistle at a passing Seeker, they may assume that you’re hiding in the room the door leads to, then rush inside and waste precious time trying to uncover you when you’re not actually nearby.

8 Get Wedged

But Not Too Wedged

Another classic hide-and-seek tactic is to wedge yourself in a small space like a gap between a wall and a large object. This tactic works just as well in Meccha Chameleon, but there is a catch: when you wedge yourself somewhere or attempt to bury yourself in scenery, the game may give you a warning that you’re too covered for your hiding place to be fair. If you remain in this particular spot for too long, the game will reveal you to the Seekers automatically, and the whole thing’s a wash.

The trick to getting wedged is to find the wiggle room. If you get a cover warning, try moving around in small increments and readjusting your position and pose. With a little bit of experimentation, you may be able to find a position that’s still sufficiently wedged and hidden, but technically not covered enough to trigger the game’s warning. It won’t work with every possible hiding place, but it does work more than you may expect.

7 Experiment with Poses

Get Flexible

While you’re hiding, you can freely assume and swap between five distinct poses, in addition to your normal neutral standing pose. Second only to painting your body, your arsenal of poses is one of your chief weapons in staying hidden, as they allow you to better mesh yourself with your surroundings, wedge into tight spaces, and even mimic certain objects.

It’s that mimicry bit where the true power of poses shines forth. With the right pose, position, and some paint, you can make yourself look like all kinds of assorted objects and environmental details. For example, curling into a ball can make you look like a balloon or a hunk of meat, while the leaning pose can make you look like a large hanging hook or a leg on a horse statue. The lounging and splayed-out poses are also generally the best options if you’re trying to mesh with flat surfaces like walls and ceilings, the reason for which should be obvious.

6 Remember Your Textures

The Right Texture can Make a Big Difference

While you have the painting menu open, you may notice that, in addition to the regular color swatches, you can also adjust the texture of your paint, including how metallic and/or rough it is. Your first inclination when painting a disguise may be to just use the eyedropper and copy whatever the dominant nearby color is, but if you don’t match the textures as well, you’ll stick out like a sore thumb. Texture can make all the difference, that's why people install Minecraft texture packs.

Take a couple of matches to practice recognizing and matching different textures. If you’re trying to hide next to a smooth, brightly-colored object like a balloon, for example, you’d want to dial down the roughness, while slightly increasing the metallic to give you a light sheen. Or, if you’re trying to blend in with featureless, solid-colored wallpaper, turn both the metallic and roughness sliders all the way down to become completely generic. It takes some trial and error to get good at this; try quickly using your body as a paint palette and experimenting with a couple of different texture combinations before you completely coat yourself, just so you don’t accidentally apply the wrong one.

5 Get Granular with Details

Blend into the Finer Points

Barring the aforementioned featureless wall, there aren’t many objects or environments in Meccha Chameleon that consist of nothing but a single, solid color. Most bits of set dressing have various finer details like scuffs and ridges, to say nothing of more elaborate objects like paintings. If you really want to blend in, you’re going to have to go the extra mile and paint in all those fine details.

To give a few examples, let’s say you want to blend in with a brick wall. Even if both the bricks and mortar gluing them together are all painted one color, you can still see the distinctive outline of the mortar recessed into the wall. To blend in there, you have to match not just the color and texture of the wall, but also draw in those mortar lines to match the pattern. Or, if you’re trying to disguise yourself as a hunk of meat, you can’t just be all red. You also need to add a layer of reddish-white on top for the marbling. You can add as many layers of color as you like, so really get in on those details.

4 There’s Always Time to Paint

Keep Painting til it’s Perfect

Let’s say it takes you a while to find the ideal hiding spot, and by the time you’ve gotten around the painting, the setup period has already ended, and the Seekers are on the prowl. You might worry that you can’t paint anymore out of fear of being discovered, but what’s a good game of hide-and-seek without a little risk?

Even when the Seekers are out and about, you can keep on painting to continue refining your camouflage. If you can find a good out-of-the-way spot, you should have a little buffer before the Seekers zero in on you, so don’t be afraid to keep painting well into the actual round timer. Maybe refrain from painting when there’s a Seeker right next to you, but if you’re lucky enough to avoid their gaze during an initial cursory check, perfecting your camouflage while they search elsewhere will help to ensure they don’t get close a second time.

3 Become the Set Dressing

Stickbug Style

The concept of “camouflage” comes with an implication that you’re going to be hiding on top of something, matching your coloration to it, or otherwise trying to blend in with a bunch of objects that are already present. However, if you’re feeling both creative and gutsy, it is possible to transform yourself into an entirely new piece of set dressing, something that wouldn’t look out of place wherever you set up shop that wouldn’t draw attention from anyone but those who know a map inside and out.

To give you an example, try attaching yourself to a wall right above a large door or entryway like the one in the mansion, matching the color of the wall, then writing either “Enter” or “Exit” on your body. Just like that, you’ve become a delightful decorative sign. Or, if you want to hide on top of a statue, try positioning yourself as a piece of the statue that wouldn’t normally be there, like a lock of hair or an extra toe. It’s the kind of thing you’d normally see in one of those spot-the-difference puzzles.

2 Nobody Looks Up

It’s a Bizarre Consistency

There’s an old adage in the gaming sphere, and no matter what game it is, it’s almost always true: “gamers don’t look up.” Both in games and in real life, many people just don’t make a habit of looking directly upwards, which is how Spider-Man and Batman are always able to get the drop on them. The same applies to Meccha Chameleon, which means you’ve got an entire sub-category of hiding places you can generally rely upon in a pinch.

High-up spots are a great baseline for quality hiding places. These include ceilings, room corners, pillars, overhangs, and other tall objects or surfaces. From a purely psychological standpoint, the majority of Seekers will probably check spaces either right in front of them or below them before they think to look up. It’s not a guarantee you won’t be found, and you will still need to put in the work to camouflage yourself, but it’s definitely a solid start.

1 Find a Good Perch

Up and Over

The adage of “gamers don’t look up” is a bit of a double-edged sword, as the concept of “gamers don’t look up” has prompted many gamers to start looking up in direct defiance. This is why, while high spots are a good baseline hiding place, they’re not perfect ones. However, there is an extra layer to this trick you can utilize to make yourself even harder to detect: perches.

You can automatically adhere to any surface or object, but if you use your adhesion to move around, you can climb up to more out-of-the-way perches that may not seem as obvious to a Seeker. For example, rather than just sticking yourself to a random part of the ceiling, hide next to a decorative cloud or a lighting fixture. Or, instead of attaching yourself to the side of a balcony, hide under it and paint yourself like something decorative, such as a balloon or a streamer.