BLOTCHICamouflage in nature
Hiding is one of the oldest survival tricks on the planet. Long before there were games about it, animals were perfecting the art of not being seen. When you paint a creature to vanish in Blotchi, you are, in a small way, repeating millions of years of evolution. Here is a quick tour of how nature does it.
Background matching
The simplest form of camouflage is to be the same colour as your surroundings. A green grasshopper on a green leaf, a sandy-coloured lizard on a desert floor. This is exactly what you do first in Blotchi: cover your creature in the dominant colour of the spot behind it. It gets you most of the way there, but rarely all the way.
Disruptive patterns
Many animals go further and wear bold patches and stripes. It seems backwards: surely a loud pattern stands out? In fact, high-contrast markings break up the outline of the body so a predator's eye cannot find its familiar shape. A zebra in a herd is a famous example. In Blotchi, continuing a scene's stripes or grout lines straight across your creature does the same job, hiding the edge where his body ends and the background begins.
Counter-shading
Look closely at a fish or a deer and you will often see a darker back and a lighter belly. Sunlight falls from above, so this gradient cancels out the shadow that would normally give away a rounded body, flattening it into the background. It is a subtle trick, and it is why edges and shading matter so much when you are trying to make a shape truly disappear.
The masters: cuttlefish and octopus
The champions of camouflage are the cephalopods. A cuttlefish can change its colour and even its skin texture in under a second to match rock, sand or coral, despite, remarkably, being colour-blind. They read the brightness and pattern of their surroundings and paint themselves to match on the fly. That live, adaptive painting is the closest thing in nature to what you do by hand in a level of Blotchi.
Camouflage that evolves
One of the most famous stories in biology is the peppered moth. During the industrial revolution in Britain, soot darkened the tree bark where the pale moths rested, and suddenly they stood out to birds. Within decades a darker form became common, because the moths that matched the new background survived to breed. Camouflage, in other words, is never fixed. It tracks the scenery, just like the changing scenes you face level after level.
What the game takes from all this
Blotchi is a playful version of these real ideas. Background matching is your base coat. Disruptive patterns are the lines you carry across your creature. Counter-shading is why a clean, well-shaded edge scores higher. You do not need to know any of the science to enjoy the game, but once you do, you start to see why some hides work and others do not.