In Meccha Chameleon, you begin play as a featureless, white, blobby biped—but you don’t stay that way. Indeed, it’s a wacky hide-and-seek game where instead of morphing into a prop or smashing serial killers’ knees with a wood pallet, you paint your body on the fly using a color wheel to blend in with your surroundings. If that sounds fun to you, you’re not alone: the game just sold a million copies in four days.
That sales figure comes from a short and sweet Steam community blog post, where developer lemorion_1224 simply wrote “Thank you so much for playing!” It seems like the game has been big with streamers and YouTubers, which probably helped. The developer appears to be leaning in given that the game proudly “supports public matches and streaming,” as its description states.
It even has a “required” guideline on the Steam page urging streamers to include the game’s name in the title of their livestreams, which I’m not sure is enforceable. Still, search the game up on YouTube and you’ll be met with all sorts of thumbnails adorned with garish colors and shocked expressions.
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You’d be forgiven for thinking the game is friendslop like Peak or Lethal Company, and maybe it’s in an adjacent category, but it’s more a lobby-based PvP party game like Mage Arena. Regardless, it seems like part of a broader trend toward cheap, multiplayer-focused indie games that sell like gangbusters right as they hit the scene.
You split into seeker and hider teams, and the seekers win if they find everyone before time runs out. The trailer shows off some impressive techniques I think I’d struggle to convincingly pull off myself, like one player who disguises themself as the shadow on an exit sign, or another who clings to a brick wall as they attempt to replicate its coloring.
Meccha Chameleon is available on Steam for just under $5. Whether you consider that four bucks or five bucks, it’s basically five bucks either way.