MECCHA CHAMELEON hunter strategy: How to play ghosts, identify disguises and missed capture rankings

First explain the rules clearly so that the subsequent techniques can be implemented easily. At the beginning of a round, players are divided into the hiding party and the hunting party. During the Preparation Phase, the hiding party can freely move around, select points, paint their bodies, and lock their postures. According to feedback from community players, the hunting party will be locked in the birth area during this period and cannot see where the other party is hiding. After preparation, you are released, and the time-limited manhunt officially begins.

In MECCHA As a hunter in CHAMELEON, you have three core constraints: first, scanning from a first-person perspective, without a flashlight, relying entirely on ambient light and naked eyes; second, after finding the target, you must hit it with a gun to be eliminated (Official original text is "见つけたプレイヤーは、铳で撃たれるとアウトになる"), seeing that you can't hit it doesn't count; thirdly, this is a race against the clock,You must find all the hiders before the countdown reaches zero to be considered a winner. As long as one hider lasts until it reaches zero, the hiding side wins the whole game.

It should be reminded that the number of seconds each in the preparation phase and the search phase is The official has not yet announced the specific number, and it is likely to change with the mode and the homeowner's settings. So don’t take “how many seconds left” as fixed common sense. It is more reliable to develop the habit of glancing at the timer at the beginning and determining the aggressiveness of the search based on the remaining time. The three modes (normal/massive ghost/ダブル) are selected by the host in the lobby together with the map. The gameplay rhythm is quite different, which will be discussed separately later on this page. If you want to learn the basics of gameplay first, you can read Game System, or you can go to Official Steam Store Page for the original introduction.

The most common mistake that newbies make as ghosts is to stare at "whether the color is right or not." The problem is that the hiding party spent the entire preparation stage, using the palette and eyedropper tools to adjust the color to almost perfection. If you want to catch people by color difference, you will often be dragged to zero. The truly efficient idea in "MECCHA CHAMELEON" is to look for shapes, not just colors: No matter how well-disguised a hider is, his body is still human-shaped, and the flaws are hidden in the outlines and details, not in the color blocks themselves.

According to the summary of many media and community players, when identifying disguises, focus on these types of flaws:

• Wrong spacing: Pictures on the wall and boxes on the shelves are usually arranged regularly. If the distance between the "props" in one place and their neighbors is obviously wider or narrower than elsewhere, it is probably the person who has stuffed it in.
• Symmetry is broken: Among objects that appear in pairs (two pillars, symmetrical decorations, a row of chairs of the same style), if there is an extra one or a certain size is different, it is worth shooting to verify.
• Incorrect gloss and shadow: A reflection appears on a matte wall, or the light-receiving surface of an object does not match the direction of the surrounding light source. These are the most difficult aspects of camouflage. Even if the color is correct, hiders often don't bother to adjust the reflective texture.
• Too central, too clean, too new: An extra object out of thin air in the middle of the room, a piece of wall graffiti that is newer than the surroundings, or a shape with unusually clear outline edges are all suspicious signs.

In actual combat, do not stand in the center of the room and spin in circles, but slowly advance along the edge of the wall in first person, allowing the outline of the object to move laterally in your field of vision. The human eye is particularly sensitive to "disjointed shapes when moving". Scanning slowly against the wall makes it easier to spot the extra shape than standing and staring. For the hiding side's color matching and posing ideas, you can read Hiding and Disguise Techniques in reverse. If you know what the other person is thinking, you will know where to be suspicious.

Many ghosts lose out on "running around blindly": jumping repeatedly between rooms, glancing at every corner, but not looking carefully anywhere, and running out of time. A more stable approach is to treat searching as cleaning, cut the scene into several sections, check each section, and go to the next section after checking one section, knowing clearly which areas have been cleared.

The advantage of partition search is that the coverage is controllable. It is recommended to follow this rhythm:

1. First go around quickly at the beginning and write down all the complex, messy, and visually information-intensive areas in the scene. These are the favorite places for hiders to hide, and save them for key inspections.
2. Start from an entrance and advance from room to room and wall to wall in a fixed clockwise or counterclockwise direction without looking back.
3. Every time you enter an area, focus on scanning four types of locations: shadowed corners (the search party does not have a flashlight, and dark places are extremely beneficial to hiders), piles of objects and shelves, rows of repeated props, and picture frames/graffiti/signs on the wall.
4. After checking an area, mentally tick it, and don’t turn back pointlessly unless you hear a sound clue.

In addition, an "opponent portrait" must be established. According to feedback from community players, hiders have many common habits: they prefer a few fixed safe corners, like to blend into rows of repeated props, and can’t help but make tiny last-minute moves when you are approaching. Keep these habits in mind. When searching in zones, pause for two seconds at high-frequency hiding spots and shoot decisively at objects that seem to have moved just now. The efficiency will be much higher than relying solely on luck. Different maps have different high-risk areas. The Scenes and Maps page has map-by-map hiding spots for reference.

At the end of each game of "MECCHA CHAMELEON", the Post-match hiding spot reveal screen will be displayed, where all the hiders were hiding at that time and what they were painted with. The media and the community generally believe that this is the funniest part of every game, but for the hunters who want to become stronger, it is also a free review report.

Don’t just laugh after reading it, develop two review habits:

• Remember the location: Write down the specific points that were hidden in this round but you didn’t find. The high-frequency hiding spots on the same map are highly repetitive. If you remember them once, you will know where to attack first in the next game.
• Remembering Techniques: Look at the strength of those disguises that have deceived you, whether it is the color, the silhouette of the pose, or the angle of flattening against the wall. The next time you encounter a similar prop on the field, you'll instinctively take a second look.

This review is matched with the "Missed Catch Ranking" to be discussed later: the reveal screen tells you where the answer is, and the Missed Catch Ranking tells you how many you missed and in what position. After comparing the two sides for a few games, your familiarity with a map will increase very quickly, and the speed of the search is directly reflected in whether you can clear the map before returning to zero.

Starting from v1.2.0, the game has added a Missed Catching Ranking system to the hunter, which will show you Missed Spots and Missed Enemies during settlement. To put it bluntly, it is a list of "what did you miss in this round", specially for ghost review.

Its iteration rhythm is worth remembering:

• v1.2.0: For the first time, a ranking based on the distance and duration of the hider staying within the sight of the hunter has been added, and missed capture information for the hunter has been introduced.
• v1.2.1: Added a "display or not" switch to the missed rankings. You can choose whether to see this list.
• v1.2.2: Added a button to hide the ranking.

How to use? When you want to improve, just turn it on. Combined with the post-match revelations in the previous section, focus on the types of positions that you miss repeatedly (such as always ignoring the overhead pipes, or always being fooled by wall graffiti), and change the search route accordingly. If you play several games in a row with your friends and don’t want the answer to spoil the fun of the next game, or simply feel that this list affects your mentality, use the switch of v1.2.1 or the button of v1.2.2 to turn it off or hide. It should be noted that the precise scoring formula for ranking within sight has not been officially announced yet, so there is no need to worry about how to calculate the specific scores, it is enough to use it as a directional leak detection tool.

Normal mode is a classic single ghost finding everyone in a limited time. The partition search and shape finding mentioned above are directly applicable. However, the hunting rhythms of the two modes of Masuki (Infection) and ダブル (Double) are completely different, and the ideas need to be changed.

Ghost/Infection Mode: Hiders who are caught will turn into ghosts, and the number of ghosts will increase like a snowball. You may be alone at the beginning, but as soon as you catch the first person, the situation begins to tilt towards the search party. The key to this mode is Teamwork to compress space: when there are too many ghosts, don’t crowd them together in one room, but spread out and outflank them, drive the still-living hiders into corners and dead ends, and gradually reduce the range within which they can move and re-hide. According to feedback from community players, this mode is most exciting when there are 6 to 10 people. With more people, the tension of snowballing and rounding up can only come out.

ダブル/Double mode: Everyone hides together first, and then all become ghosts at the same time. Compete with who can find them all the fastest. This is essentially a race to the bottom, where speed takes precedence over safety. There is no room for waiting for the opponent to make mistakes. Your systematic scanning efficiency and memory of hiding spots directly determine the outcome. The post-match review, missed capture rankings, and memory of high-frequency map points mentioned earlier have the highest returns in Double: whoever is more familiar with the map will clear the field first. So if you mainly play Double, it is strongly recommended to brush the same picture multiple times and memorize the hidden points. For the specific rule differences between the three modes, the Gameplay System page has a more complete comparison.

The official has not announced the precise values ​​related to finding people, but the Hide and Seek/Prop Hunt category has a very mature set of general search heuristics, which can be used equally well in "MECCHA CHAMELEON".

The first is to identify the position by listening to the sound. The game added Close Voice in v1.1.0 (can be heard if you are close, but cannot be heard if you are far away). This is actually a double-edged sword: hiding people talking to each other, shouting to you, or even suppressing laughter may reveal their general location. When ghosting, suppress the noise on your side and pay attention to the sudden appearance of human voices or environmental noises around you. Following the sound approach can often lock the area faster than relying solely on eye scanning.

The second is a few General trouble-finding lists, which are derived from the general knowledge of Hide and Seek/Prop Hunt. It is recommended to keep them in mind when you are a ghost:

• Extra props: How many chairs and boxes should be in this room? If there is one more out of thin air, shoot.
• Symmetrical objects with an incorrect number: Pairs or rows of objects suddenly become an odd number, or one of them is larger or a little crooked than its companion, which is suspicious.
• New stains or graffiti on the wall: In pictures with graffiti as a sign (such as sewers), hiders will paint their bodies as part of the graffiti. Pay attention to the graffiti that seems to have just appeared today, and the stain with particularly sharp edges.
• The position is too deliberate: Objects that are too centered, too clean, and too perfectly integrated with the environment are the most questionable.

Add the location identification by listening and these lists to the process of zone search, and you will have a search method that does not rely on luck: zone cleaning to ensure coverage, finding shapes and abnormal lists to ensure no leaks, and close-range voice to help you confirm the location. Play a few more games and cooperate with post-game reveals and missed capture ranking reviews, and you will become more and more stable as a ghost. For issues related to team connection and room settings, please see Online and Multiplayer.

Finding the person is only half the battle. Hitting the gun is the real victory. The elimination method of the search party is to shoot and hit the target, so aiming at this is as critical as finding the person. Specific settings such as ammunition, reloading or firing intervals have not been officially announced yet. However, judging from the general knowledge of the Hide and Seek/Prop Hunt category and community feedback, there are several habits that can help you avoid detours.

First, Confirm before shooting. When you suspect that an object is a person, instead of firing in a panic, it is better to take half a step closer, change the angle and see if its outline and reflection are revealing, and then pull the trigger if you are sure. Shooting a blank shot is not only a waste of time, but the sound and movement of the gun may also make the real hider next to you realize that you are in this area and adjust in advance.

Second, sort by degree of certainty. When there are several suspicious targets in your field of vision at the same time, hit the one you are most confident about first, and save the ambiguous ones until you get closer. Clear out the identifiable areas in an area first, and the remaining suspicious points will become more obvious due to comparison.

Third, Adjust the aggressiveness according to the countdown. There is plenty of time in the beginning, so you can play steadily and slowly clear the zones; the closer you get to zero, the more decisive you must be. You would rather fire one more shot to test every object that "doesn't seem right", rather than let the last hider steal the whole game by stalling for time. As mentioned before, as long as one person lasts until zero, the hiding side will win the whole game, so the rhythm management in the closing stage often determines the outcome. This idea is especially important in the ダブル/Double mode where winning or losing is determined by speed.