Meccha Chameleon

Meccha Chameleon is a hide-and-seek video game where players play as a white bipedal characters who are split into two groups, hunters and chameleons. Hunters need to find chameleons, while chameleons hide and blend themselves into surroundings by painting their characters, either as a blobby or cube character, and either as a petite size (half of the normal character size), normal size, or plump size, which is larger than normal player. Player can use different coloring tools, such as a color picker and an eyedropper, and choose different poses, such as curling up or lying down. The chameleons can also create clones or select different sizes of the chosen character shape to help them hide. The hunters must find the chameleons before the timer runs out.

The game features three modes: Infection, where a chameleon becomes a hunter upon being caught; Double, where everyone hides in the beginning, then everyone hunts, so whoever finds the most people, or finds everyone first, wins; and Reverse Chicken Race, where each player was given time to paint themselves. After the timer ends, each player's paint job will be displayed on a pedestal, where other players will try to find the player after the observation time ends. Chameleons can taunt the hunter by producing a whistling sound, which helps the hunter locate the hiders. There is a setting called forced taunting that forces a taunt after a certain period. The chameleons can use a free camera mode to explore the map or spectate the hunter.

The game has both public and private lobbies, which support up to 24 players. The number of players in a lobby is based on the internet connection of the host. The recommended number of players is 2 to 12. The official map list includes Hide-and-Seek Mansion, Indoor Country, Sewer, Backrooms, Penguin Hotel, Sugarland, and Osaka. Moreover, the game can be modded by adding custom maps available at Steam Workshop, such as Art Gallery, The Market, Swimming pool!, and Viking Market.

Meccha Chameleon was developed by Japanese indie game developer Lemorion_1224 with the help of Haganeiro. The two previously developed games for Fortnite using Epic Games' Unreal Editor for Fortnite (UEFN) before moving to Steam. Lemorion previously released games such as the Penguin Hotel series and Link Penguins.

The game was conceived after the two developers played various Fortnite-based games with hide-and-seek style mechanics. The game was Lemorion's idea after he remembered an artist on television painting themselves to blend into their surroundings. He handled the development of graphics, planning, background music, models, and maps, while Haganeiro handled system management and effects. It uses components and assets, including the back-end systems, from their previous games such as Penguin Hotel and Link Penguins.

The game was created in two months, but counting the development of the reused assets, the total development period lasted four to five months. It was developed on Unreal Engine, and uses Epic Games' Epic Online Services, a free multiplayer networking tool, for matchmaking purposes. According to Lemorion, the Hide-and-Seek Mansion map took the most time in development, while the entire development of modeling and designing the locale lasted one month.

According to Lemorion, they focused on "avoiding complex controls for the user" and "ensuring the system itself did not become overly complicated". A two-hour play test was performed by 100 randomly selected users from various countries. Following the feedback from the play test, the two added three more maps two weeks before release.

The game was announced on May 15, 2026, and released on Windows via Steam on June 10, 2026. It was made available on the cloud gaming service GeForce Now on June 27. Meccha Chameleon was released for Nintendo Switch 2 on September 9, following a Nintendo Direct announcement.

Malware incident

On July 23, an independent researcher named Feint posted a report on Medium about a Steam Workshop map named "Laser Tag Neon", which contained a Remote Access Trojan. According to Feint, the investigation started because a friend of theirs had briefly seen a command prompt window open while downloading the map. The map was quickly removed, although there were others, such as "Chroma Grid Arena", which were uploaded to replace it. The game itself contained no malware; only a few of the maps contained within the Steam Workshop were malicious.

On July 25, Lemorion made a Steam Community post confirming that the official Meccha Chameleon Discord server had been hacked. He later clarified, stating that it had happened because the malware contained within the malicious Steam Workshop maps had infected the computer of a system engineer who was trying to patch the vulnerability. This let the hackers bypass two-factor authentication and ban all of the server staff. The server was restored less than a day later.

On July 26, the 3.1.0 update was released to fix bugs and patch out the aforementioned vulnerability. According to the development team, the patch removed the ability for maps to execute unrelated files, such as the malware that the malicious Steam Workshop maps had contained.

On July 11, 2026, the map "HIKAKIN Museum" was added to the game as a collaboration with the Japanese YouTuber Hikakin. It features various games decoration related to Hikakin and Seikin. The map "Banban's Kindergarten" was added on July 25 as a collaboration with the video game Garten of Banban. On July 28, Lemorion announced on X a collaboration with the 2023 video game The Exit 8, adding the "Exit 8" map on August 1 based on the underpass from The Exit 8.

The first official event called "Real Meccha Chameleon in One Fukuoka Building." is set to be held on September 28, 2026 in One Fukuoka Building in Fukuoka. It is an event in which participants paint white figures and hide them in the venue, and search for hidden figures.

The game was described by Sam Woods of TheGamer as "2026's Biggest Viral Sensation", while Elie Gould of PC Gamer praised its gameplay that gave the game the potential to "become one of the giants in the friendslop genre". Edwin Evans-Thirlwell of Rock Paper Shotgun said that "one of the game's loveliest qualities is that, strictly speaking, you don't need to play it to play it." Seungjin Kang of Inven Global, commending the game, attribuited its popularity to "high-quality, novel art and camouflage Mecchanics have resonated with live-streaming audiences".

It was described as the fastest and best-selling game of 2026, outselling games like Resident Evil Requiem, Forza Horizon 6, and Crimson Desert. It debuted in first place on the Japanese Steam sales charts, beating Forza Horizon 6 and Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade. It reached second place on the global Steam sales chart. By August 11, the game was estimated by InvenGlobal to have earned around US$119 million. On its release day, the game received 20,000 concurrent players on Steam and by June 15, it had over 90,000 concurrent players. Its all-time peak was over 340,535 players on June 22, making it the 44th most concurrently played game in Steam's history. Despite not spending on marketing, the game gained significant traction on social media due to various viral short-form videos and content from streamers, as well as the low base price of the game and word-of-mouth marketing. As of August 14, the game had a "Very Positive" rating on Steam from over 73,000 reviews. Fans of the game also recreated the character in the game by 3D printing and placing it in random public places in real life.

Due to the game's popularity, it spawns various clone games such as Scribble Hunt, whose Korean name (메챠 카멜레온; mecha kamelleon) translates to "Meccha Chameleon". Another one is Chameleon Kakurenbo - chameleon online (カメレオンかくれんぼ - chameleon online), which is a 2D clone of Meccha Chameleon developed by Taishi Nakai and launched in App Store. It also spawned various Roblox clones such as [BACKROOMS] Chameleon and Paint Or Seek, which received nearly 50,000 and 37,000 concurrent players, respectively. Additionally, its popularity led to various conspiracy theories, such as claims that the developers paid streamers before the game was released to boost popularity and claims that the developers are funded by wealthy backers, pointing out the cost of running servers for more than 200 thousand simultaneous players. Haganeiro dismissed the rumors, adding that the game uses Epic Games' Epic Online Services for its hosting needs.

Sales

Meccha Chameleon sold 500,000 copies two days since its release. On August 12, it reached 20 million copies sold. Game producer Taira Nakamura of Sega, commenting on the game selling two million copies in five days despite having no promotion, called it an "unthinkable achievement for the game industry and game companies". The Nintendo Switch 2 port of the game sold over 100,000 copies on its release date. It sold 300,000 copies on September 16.