I’ll admit that when I first saw gameplay of Meccha Chameleon, I didn’t think much of it. It seemed like yet one more janky prop hunt–inspired hide-and-seek multiplayer game. But anything that reached over 300,000 concurrent players on Steam in the middle of a random afternoon is worth checking out, and I’m happy I did because this odd painting game is far more exciting and clever than I expected, even if it is also very, very janky.
Meccha Chameleon is a new online multiplayer game (created, seemingly, by two developers) that pits a group of hunters with shotguns against a larger group of players tasked with hiding around different maps and using a painting tool to camouflage their bodies with the environment. The hunters have a limited amount of time to find and shoot all of the hiding players. And when I first heard this, I assumed that like prop hunt, Meccha Chamelon would be about hiding somewhere out of sight and not moving for a few minutes, which is boring and the main reason I rarely play prop hunt modes. But that’s not how Meccha Chamelon works at all.
Instead, hiding in this new popular Steam online game isn’t how you win. Instead, you need to hide in a spot where you will be visible to the hunters (though hopefully unnoticed by them), as you only get points for being in those players’ direct line of sight. Once I realized this, my goal in Meccha Chamelon was to hide in the most out in the open spots, like against a box in the middle of a room, and to use paint to mask my location. If nobody saw me for a bit, I’d use the taunt button to whistle and bring them over to where I was to get more points. Risky, but extremely exciting. Watching a group of players run by my hidden little guy, painted like a wall or something, over and over again never got dull.
And that’s the other big difference between Meccha Chameleon and other prop hunt games. In those games, you’re simply searching for a prop to turn into. In Meccha Chameleon, you have to take the time to actually paint your character to help them blend into the environment. The painting controls in the game are simple enough that within a few minutes, I understood what I could do, but to truly master it, you’ll need to work fast and carefully, as there is no undo. And brilliantly, once the hunters enter the map and start looking for hiding players, you can still keep painting and moving. I often would keep adding details and texture to my character to make them blend in even better with a woodgrain wall or brick floor.
The painting controls are a bit janky and wonky, like a lot of Meccha Chamelon. I frequently encountered matches that didn’t move forward because the game just got stuck in the lobby. I had a match in which players fell into a void, with one player typing in chat, “LOL again.” I also saw some players hiding inside of level geometry, which the game tries to stop, but no system is perfect. I also imagine there’s some cheating going on as I saw some hunters who seemed a bit too good at finding hidden players in seconds.
I’m not sure I’ll play 200 hours of Meccha Chamelon, but I’m happy to have it installed on my PC right now as it’s a cheap, fun, low-stakes multiplayer game that, despite some janky edges, offers up an exciting experience. Plus, it’s nice to finally have all my years of using MS Paint and Photoshop with a mouse finally pay off. And I mean, how many games let you become a set of horse testicles?
