The objective
Collect fireflies and stay unseen. That is the whole game. You are a small coral creature in a mottled garden, the Seekers sweep it with cones of light, and the only thing standing between those two facts is whether your colour currently matches the ground.
A run is not a race. There is no clock to beat and no distance to cover — only an Alert meter that fills when you are seen, and a handful of lives to lose before the run ends.
Four rules decide everything
1. Moving exposes you
While your pointer or finger is down, you are vivid coral against a muted garden. That contrast is precisely what a light cone is looking for, so every metre travelled is a metre of risk.
2. Stillness blends you
Release, and your colour copies the patch of ground beneath you. Camo fills in under a second — fast, but not instant. A stop that begins as the light arrives is already too late.
3. Light finds you
Detection is line of sight through a moving cone, not proximity. Standing beside a Seeker is survivable if you are blended and outside the beam; crossing an open lit patch while coral is not.
4. Exposure costs lives
Alert rises only while a cone can actually see you, and drains once you break that line of sight. Fill it and you lose one life; the round restarts.
What the two meters are telling you
| Meter | Rises when | Falls when |
|---|---|---|
| Camo | You stand still | You start moving |
| Alert | A cone can see you | You break line of sight |
Scoring, lives and rounds
Firefly collected
Fixed value per pickup — the only score on the board
Round cleared
A bonus on top of everything you collected
Life lost
A full Alert meter ends the round, not the run
Best score
Stored in this browser, not on an account
Fireflies are the score and clearing a round adds a bonus, so the two ways to a higher number are the same two ways to a longer run: collect, then survive long enough to do it again.
Each new round arrives faster and busier, with another firefly in play. You start a run with a small number of lives — three is the figure the current build and the creator listing use. Values are set by the creator and can change; where this guide and the game disagree, the game is right.
What the rules do not include
There is no inventory, no upgrade tree, no currency and no shop. You cannot buy a better camouflage or a faster creature. There is also no timer and no objective beyond surviving, so a slow round is not a failed round.
Edge cases worth knowing
- Pausing — Esc, P or the in-game pause button stops the round. Pausing does not hide you.
- Lifting your finger — on touch, a resting finger still counts as held down. Stop cleanly or you will stay coral while believing you are hidden.
- Switching tabs — the round keeps its state, so come back before a cone closes in.
- Losing your score — the best score lives in browser storage. Clearing site data removes it.
Rules read, run next
If you have not played yet, the control table is the faster start. If you have played and keep dying in the same place, the problem is almost always timing — the tactics notes cover that, and the FAQ handles the short questions.