How to play

A round, start to finish

A board of empty cells fills the screen. In the middle, a reel scrolls pictures vertically, like a slot machine. It slows down, it stops on a picture: that is the target — and at that exact moment the pictures appear on the board.

There is nothing to spot in advance: the hunt starts when the reel stops, not before. The target is present exactly once. The first person to touch it wins the round.

The screen freezes, greys out everything but the picture that was touched, and marks the exact contact point with a ring. A naming screen opens: you tap the winner, they take +1, the next round starts. There is no “next round” button.

The board

The board is redrawn every round: the cells are neither the same size nor in the same place twice. Three sizes, from single to triple. At least two are always there.

A dozen layouts alternate — rings, bands, diagonals, symmetries, weighted corners, a frame, clusters, a mosaic, a scatter — drawn so that none serves twice in a row nor comes back before all of them have been used. The number of cells changes with the layout.

The slots that stay free stay free: a board is not a mosaic, and it is the holes that make the sizes read as sizes. Only the central reel always keeps the same size.

The shuffle

While you are looking, three figures change cells at once, the target included. They swap in a ring: three and not two, because a swap between two reads as an accident, while three is the board reorganising itself.

One of the three may be a bench figure: drawn with the round but kept off the board. It comes in, another goes out. A round therefore ends up showing more figures than it has cells.

The target moves like the others, but never leaves the board: a round always stays winnable. And between two swaps, every figure moves inside its own cell — it turns, shakes, slides, swings or breathes, each at its own speed and phase.

No movement points at the target: a figure moving like nothing else around it would give the round away. Three settings — None, Gentle, Wild — and on None, nothing moves at all.

The false start

Any touch before the reel stops turns the whole screen red. The scrolling freezes while the finger stays down and restarts when it lifts — a 1200 ms ceiling restarts it by force, to prevent deliberate blocking.

Whoever did it is out for the round: their badge stays crossed out until the next one. The penalty is public by design. The phone does not know who it was: the top bar asks “WHO JUMPED?”, the table taps the culprit’s badge, and the culprit is holding a finger on the evidence. The window stays open five seconds, then the case is closed.

The wrong picture

The cell that was touched flashes red and whoever touched it can be out for the round — but the round carries on. Several cells can flash at once: two people can get it wrong in the same second, and one does not erase the other’s mistake.

The target has not moved, everyone is still looking: whoever was a tenth of a second behind a hasty finger still wins. That is what separates a mistake from a false start: the false start freezes the game because it cheats with time, a mistake only burns its author.

Rotation and pacing

Every picture is square and shown under a continuous random rotation between 0 and 360°, never a multiple of 90°, redrawn every round. Around a table, nobody has a “good” side.

The spin lasts a random 2 to 6 seconds, never a constant. The deceleration is long, with near-stops: the reel slows enough to look like it is stopping, then picks up again. That is what makes fingers leave too early.

Solo

The same board, but one person and a clock. Every round is worth a random time between 5.2 and 8.6 seconds, and the range tightens when you are fast.

There is nobody to name: the right picture scores its own point, with no naming screen, and a mistake only costs the time it takes. Time up ends the game.