Hiding

As the hider, it is your job to stay hidden for as long as possible, stay hidden for longer than anyone else, and the game is yours. At the start of each run, you’ll be given a certain amount of time to choose — and travel to — a hiding zone somewhere on your map. While the seekers close in, you’ll have to juggle the tasks of answering questions, scoping out a perfect final hiding spot, and assembling the perfect hand using cards from the hider deck.

Hiding Zones

Your hiding zone is a circle located somewhere within the game map — once the seekers start seeking, this zone is your new home.

Depending on the game size, you’ll have a certain amount of time — the hiding period — to get from wherever the round starts to your hiding zone. Much like any other part of the game, you’ll only be able to use your pre-established transit system to get to your hiding zone during this time, so make sure you plan on going somewhere you know you can get to. If the hiding period ends and you’re somewhere else, then that’s where your hiding zone is.

Choosing the right hiding zone is the single most impactful decision you’ll make during your run, but there’s rarely a “right” answer for where to hide. Out-of-the-way locations on the edges of your transit network can be harder to identify and travel to during the long game, but that sparseness is a double-edged sword; once the seekers have narrowed down the map, the relative lack of possible transit stations near your location can make it much easier to identify your exact hiding zone. Likewise, the densest parts of your map offer the protection of complexity, but offer the seekers easier transit opportunities and leave you exposed to a potentially devastating tentacle question.

Every hiding zone must be centered on a transit station. There may be other transit stations within your zone, but you’ll have to choose a particular transit station to be “your” transit station. Many of the seekers’ questions will reference this station or force you to take pictures around it, so it’s important that you know which station this is. The rest of your zone extends a certain distance outwards from this stations — in small and medium games — this zone is drawn as a ¼-mile (400 meter) radius. You must stay in this circle for your entire round.

When in your hiding zone, you’re free to do whatever you like — go shopping, have a meal, see the sights — but don’t get too distracted! Many photo questions will involve going somewhere else in your zone to take a photo of something in a fairly shot window of time. If you’d like, you can take these photos ahead of time to give you more flexibility to freely wander your zone. We would also recommend spending some time scoping out a final hiding spot, which we detail below.

Hiding Spots

Once the seekers have entered your hiding zone and the end game has begun, you must stay put in a single hiding spot until they’ve found you — this is your final hiding spot.

Hiding spots can be anywhere within your hiding zone, but they must be somewhere that is publicly accessible during all game hours (all hours you will be playing, excluding rest periods.) You cannot, for example, hide in a bathroom stall or someone’s house. This does not mean that your hiding spot has to be on literal public property, but rather that the seekers must be able to access it at any point during the game. You should also make sure that staying in your spot for an extended period of time will not raise any suspicions or create the potential for you to get kicked out — for this reason we’d suggest avoiding stores or other businesses, even if they are open during all game hours.

Your hiding spot must also be within 10 feet (3 meters) of a marked path or road on the map app(s) that you are using for your game — no wandering off into the wilderness or swimming out to sea. Viable paths and roads should be easy to discern on any map, but if there’s any question as to whether one counts, the test is whether or not your map app will use them for walking directions. In other words, the seekers should be able to theoretically follow a route generated by the app to within 10 feet (3 meters) of your hiding spot.

Your hiding spot is considered final the moment that the end game starts. If you aren’t where you want to be when the seekers enter your hiding zone, too bad — wherever you’re standing at that moment is your hiding spot. (If, for whatever reason, you aren’t somewhere publicly accessible when the game end starts, you must immediately go to the nearest publicly accessible spot and stay there instead.)

We recommend spending some time scoping out your zone and looking for the perfect hiding spot — a clever enough spot can buy you an hour or more even after the seekers have found your station.