The idea
One of you hides in a room. The other kicks one door, looking for them. If the door is right, the hunt is over. If it is wrong, the hider scores, moves if they want to, and the seeker kicks another door.
Scoring, for the hider
- 3 if you stay in the room you were already in.
- 2 if you move to a room next to it, through a door.
- 1 if you move anywhere else.
- Your first hide of a hunt pays 1, whichever room you pick, because there is no previous room to compare it to.
Rooms that meet only at a corner have no door between them, so moving between those two counts as 1, not 2.
What each side knows
After each door, the hider's room is shown and added to the log. The seeker always knows which room you were in last, and can work out what staying there would pay you. Where you are now stays hidden until the next door is kicked.
The clock
You get two seconds a move by default. The host picks this when they open the house, anywhere from one second to ten, or off. The bar under the name shows what is left.
If it runs out on the seeker, that guess is lost and the hider scores anyway. If it runs out on the hider, they count as found and the hunt ends.
Premoves
While you are waiting on the other player, you can pick your next room early. It goes in the moment your turn starts, so the clock cannot catch you. To take it back, pick the same room again or press Esc.
Keys
The nine rooms sit under your right hand, in the same shape as the plan:
I O P
K L ;
, . /
Arrow keys move a marker around the plan, and enter picks whichever room it is on. Any key clears a "press any key" prompt.
A round
In each round, both players hide once. Five rounds by default, or three or seven. Whoever has the most points at the end wins.
A hunt is called after 16 doors, so one lucky hide cannot run all night. The hider keeps what they banked, and the roles swap. The host can set this to 8 or 12 for shorter games, or turn it off and let a hunt run until someone is caught.
Playing a stranger
There are four settings. Easy keeps the same habits all game and never adapts. Normal and Smarter also start with habits, but change them based on what you actually do, and Smarter reacts sooner and pushes harder. Gamble ignores you completely and plays the mathematically best odds, so there is no pattern in it to find.
A stranger remembers how you played, so a rematch starts with them already knowing something about you. The stats at the end of a game show what they worked out. With stranger tells switched on, they will show it during the game once they are confident.
Each stranger gets a name and a set of habits: how often they stay put, move next door, or cross the house. The name and the habits are picked separately, so the name tells you nothing about how they play. Their habits stay the same for the whole game and through a rematch. The next stranger will be different.
Playing on two devices
One of you opens a house and sends the other the link, or reads out the three-character code. The room you pick never leaves your own browser. Only a scrambled fingerprint of it is sent, and that is checked when the room is revealed, so neither player can peek or change their answer after seeing the guess.