A storm puts you ashore on somebody else's island. It was an old painter's estate until he died; then the bank took it, and now there are guards on every gate turning the residents out of their homes. You're a small blob of wet paint with two enormous eyes, and the only thing you can do about any of it is disappear. Hold the eyedropper over the ground until it magnifies, pick the exact shade under your feet, paint it onto yourself, then stand very still and watch a guard look straight at you and keep walking - straight over the top of you, if that is where its beat goes, while you hold your breath and sweat one bead.

Every color in the game is one you can steal. Grass tufts, road grit, the grout between cobbles, the pool of light under a lamp, the brushwork on a picture hanging in a gallery. Get the greens of one particular bush right and a guard walks past close enough to touch you. Miss by a shade and it stops, turns round, and comes over to look at the smudge on its floor.

You don't glide about, either. The blob hauls itself along like a slug - reaching out with its nose, planting it, dragging its tail up after - so crossing a room is a string of little surges with the effort visible in them. And the paint stays wet on you for a couple of seconds after it goes on, which is long enough to leave a mark: a wet blob drags a stripe of its own coat along the floor behind it, thick where it planted and thin where it reached, drying into the boards as it dries on you. When the stripe runs out, so has your coat.

Then it gets harder. A clock ticks down, and the guards get sharper as it does. Night levels take the map away and hand it back only where you have walked, so you know where the walls are and have no idea where the patrols went. Later on come searchlights, security cameras, rotating sprinklers and sudden downpours that rinse a careful coat straight off you - plus three hunters a perfect coat does nothing against. The Tracker is a hound that follows your wet footprints. The Profiler is color-blind and reads your outline instead. The Listener has no eyes at all and simply hears you cross gravel. Even the pigeons are against you: sprint too close to a flock and it flushes, loudly, announcing exactly where you are. Although a clumsy guard will set them off the same way, and give itself away.

You're not helpless. Throw a rock to pull a guard somewhere else, or knock it out cold. Lob a paint bomb to lay a whole patch of cover in one go, or hose paint across the floor to build a hiding place that wasn't there a second ago - and either one works just as well pointed at a guard, because the paint lands on the guard: cover one properly and it shuts its eye and stands there getting the stuff off while you walk past it. Drop a plush decoy knitted out of your own coat and let a guard waste twenty seconds confiscating it. Or disappear underground into the Understreet - the drains and vents a fluid blob can squeeze along, unseen, paying for the distance in rust and floodwater.

Thirty-two handcrafted levels - one introduces an idea, the next is where you actually use it - plus a guided tutorial, a wall of achievement medals, and a full level editor with Steam Workshop publishing so you can build and share your own.

And there's no level select. There's an island, and you walk it. A mansion in the middle, a guest house across the east lawn, a great wood down the west side and a beacon on the headland above. The old owner painted every corner of the place, and his pictures are still hanging where he left them - in a chapel, a burner's hut, a bay off the great hall - each behind a little red curtain until you have earned it. Clear one and the drapes pull back on the next while you watch. Walk up to a picture, step into it, and you're standing in the place it's a picture of. It's broad daylight out there, and the only dark on the island is the parts you haven't opened yet. Doors priced in stars open them as you go, and there are secrets hidden about the place that open more. You can pull out a chart wherever you're standing - a tattered sheet with the island printed on it, blank where you haven't walked and filling in as you do - then pick a place off it and go down the plumbing to come up there. And it ends where the land does: a beach, a few steps of sea you can wade out into, and then water that won't have you.

The crossing is the game's opening and you play it rather than watch it: an open boat a long way out, the weather turning, a skipper at the oars and a radio telling every boat to make for land. There isn't any land out here. Then there is, on no chart of his. He rows you in through the squall, ties up, and says somebody up there must know where you are. Somebody does. The caretaker has lived on the island his whole life, watched the bank take it, and is extremely glad to see a new face.

That last stretch of water is worth walking into once. The sea strips the paint off whatever goes under, straight away and along the exact line it touches - wade in a third of the way and a third of your coat is gone before you've finished the step - while the half of you still on dry sand comes out untouched. Then it shoves you back at the beach and leaves you to paint the rest of yourself on again.

Every run records itself, and beating your best replaces the one you keep. Watch it back whenever you like: pause, rewind, drag the timeline, zoom in on the coat you painted, or lock the camera onto a guard and find out what it was doing while you crept past it.

And when you want company, take the hiding online, across big purpose-built arenas and in five flavours. Hide and Seek hands one player an eyepatch, a paint gun and no paint at all, and sends them sweeping a fog-locked map while everybody else paints themselves into the scenery and holds their nerve - throwing rocks to stun, hosing out fake cover, whistling to taunt. Infection changes what getting caught means: you come back hunting, the pack grows around you, and the last player still hidden wins. Head to Head splits the room into two teams, gives each its own secret objectives, and shows neither side where the other one is.

Two of those five take the blob away from you altogether. In Hide and Seek (Prop Hunt) and Infection (Prop Hunt) you are a crate, a barrel, a market stall, a suit of armor - a real piece of that map's furniture, at the size that map draws it, blank white and yours to paint. You pick what to be out of a library of everything standing in the room, and then you have to sell it: stand where that kind of thing stands, and hold still while a hunter walks the row deciding which of you arrived this round. Your paint comes with you when you swap. A big prop is a better hiding place and a worse body, because it collides at its own size and will not fit back out through the door you came in by. And there is one move that is not allowed: painting yourself the color of the floor. Do that and you light up for the whole arena to see.

The paint job is the whole game. Pick a color up off the ground and wear it. Every surface in the level is a shade you can steal, and how well you copied it is exactly how well you are hidden.

Outsmart, never outfight. Read the patrols, watch the warning arcs fill on whichever side you're being looked at from, and go through the gap. A countdown makes every guard on the map sharper the longer you take about it.

Fog of war. Night levels take the map away and hand it back only where you have walked. You'll know where the walls are and have no idea where the patrols went - until a lamp, a crystal or a glowing mushroom pools enough light to show you.

Things that ruin an afternoon. Searchlights, security cameras, rotating sprinklers, downpours that rinse your coat off, ground that changes color under you - plus a hunter for every sense: a Tracker that follows footprints, a Profiler that reads outlines, a Listener that just hears you.

The wildlife is a tripwire. Pigeon flocks, koi ponds, moth swarms, scurrying rats. Sprint too close and they bolt, loudly, and everyone in the room knows where you are. The good news is guards set them off too.

Improvised tools. Throw a rock to pull a guard away, or knock it out cold. Lob a paint bomb to lay a patch of cover in one go, or hose paint across the floor and make a hiding place that wasn't there a second ago - then try either of them on a guard instead, because paint that lands on a body stays on the body: cover one properly and it shuts its eye and stands there scrubbing until it is clean. Drop a plush decoy knitted from your own coat and watch a guard solemnly confiscate it.

The Understreet. The drains and vents a fluid blob can squeeze along. Nothing up there can see you down here, and you pay for the distance in rust and floodwater.

Water takes your coat, and how much depends on how deep it is. The island runs out into a beach, a few steps of wadeable sea, and then open water that will not have you. Walk in and the paint comes off whatever goes under, along the exact line the water touches, while the half of you still on dry sand comes out untouched. The same water runs through the levels: a creek you ford and come out the far side of soaking, a koi pond too deep in the middle to cross at all. Nothing says which is which - it is how wide the water is.

Thirty-two levels, and an island to hang them on. No level select - you arrive by boat, and the old owner's pictures are still hanging where he left them, each in a little place of its own behind a red curtain. Clear one and watch the drapes pull back on the next. Doors priced in stars open the rest, the parts you haven't paid for stay blacked out until they do, and there are secrets that open more. Open the chart anywhere to see how much of the place you've walked, and travel back to any of it. One level teaches an idea, the next is where you use it, sunlit gardens through to a crystal-cavern finale, each with a secret spot hidden in it and three stars to chase.

Build & share. A full in-game level editor with a tile-design studio (paint your own ground materials, or import artwork), and Steam Workshop publish/subscribe.

Five ways to play it online. Big purpose-built arenas and your friends in them. Hide and Seek: one seeker gets an eyepatch, a paint gun and no paint, and has to sweep a fog-locked map while everyone else holds very still. Infection: get caught and you come back hunting, so the room fills up around the last player still hidden. Head to Head: two teams, two sets of secret targets, and neither side shown where the other one is. And both of the first two again as Prop Hunt, where the hiders are the map's own furniture.

Be the furniture. Two of the online modes swap your blob for a piece of the map: a crate, a barrel, a market stall, a suit of armor, at the size the map draws it and blank white until you paint it. Stand among the real ones and the hunter's job is telling the thing that moved from the things that were always there. Swap prop mid-round and your paint comes with you; a big one hides better and fits through fewer doors. Painting yourself the color of the floor is the one thing that is not allowed.

Play your way. Full keyboard-and-mouse or gamepad support everywhere, with remappable controls and a scheme that adapts on the fly. And since this is a game about telling colors apart: the arcs that warn you change shape as well as color, so you can read them without seeing the difference, and you can switch on a tone that rises as your coat closes on the ground.