Hide-and-seek on your own · in your real garden
Gooblies — hide-and-seek on your own, in your own garden
Grubby little monsters have gone and hidden in your garden. Head out and find them.
The phone turns into a radar. It shows no map and points in no direction: it warms up as you get closer and cools down as you move away. To find them you have to walk, listen, double back. It all happens outdoors, in the garden you know by heart — and without needing anybody else.
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The full cast
80 grubby little monsters
Slimy, hairy, muddy, with one eye or three. Each has a name, a rarity and a story. You know 4 of them to begin with; the other 76 are under crates, and the only way to open one is to go and find whoever is inside.
And they fart. Every now and then, with no warning and nobody having asked for it, a Gooblies on the shelf lets out a fart or a burp: a little green cloud, a noise, the picture jumping. It’s the one thing in the game that doesn’t wait for a button. It earns nothing, unlocks nothing, it’s just very funny when you’re seven.
One game, start to finish
They hide,
you find them
A game lasts ten minutes and always ends well. 4 Gooblies go off and hide while you count, and the sixth step leads back to the first.
01 · The shelf
Gablok12
Boonzy4
Dirtzy7
Puddy3One button, that’s allYour Gooblies are waiting on the shelf. They wriggle about a bit.
02 · Count to 5
They’re hiding…
Count to 5, no peeking!
looking for the garden…
They go on aheadWhile they find their hiding places, you close your eyes.
03 · The radar
No map, no arrowThe radar only says whether you’re getting warm. The searching is yours.
04 · Found!
The screen doesn’t stopA rude noise, a shockwave, and his crate flips into a card up at the top.
05 · All found
All of
them found!
No scoreThree silly statistics, and the gauge moves up a notch.
06 · A new Gooblies
All of
them found!
He doesn’t drop out of a menuGauge full: a stranger goes off to hide with the others. You meet him by finding him.
The one game you can’t play alone
Hide-and-seek takes at least two.
Except here.
It’s the one childhood game that becomes impossible the moment there’s only one child: somebody has to go and hide. Here it’s the Gooblies who hide, and the phone that says whether you’re getting warm. A wet Wednesday with nobody about, a holiday far from friends, a little sister having her nap — he can still go out and play.
It doesn’t replace a friend, and it doesn’t claim to. It replaces not being able to play at all — and it happens outdoors, on your feet, walking. With other people it works too: you hand the phone over at every find.
The heart of the game
Warm, cold,
you’re burning
Everybody knows the rule, and a parent can explain it in one sentence. Here the phone plays it: the disc grows, the colour climbs, the beeps close in. Stay 2 seconds in the right spot and out he comes.
more than 4.5 m
3 to 4.5 m
1.5 to 3 m
less than 1.5 m
stay 2 s
| Level | Distance | Colour | Sweep | Sound | Vibration |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| COLD | more than 4.5 m | Midnight indigo | 2.4 s | — | — |
| WARM | 3 to 4.5 m | Turquoise | 1.6 s | one beep every 2.5 s | Light |
| HOT | 1.5 to 3 m | Amber | 1 s | one beep a second, higher | Clear |
| YOU’RE BURNING | less than 1.5 m | Red | 0.4 s | two beeps a second, high | Firm, continuous |
| FOUND | stay 2 s | White | 0.3 s | whoosh, fart, whoop of joy | Three taps |
Four signals say the same thing at the same time: the colour, the size of the disc, the rate of the beeps and the speed of the sweep. Each one is enough on its own — which is what makes the game work for a colour-blind child, for a phone left in a pocket, and for an iPhone on silent.
These distances are starting values, and they adapt to the size of your garden: in 60 m² everything would be “warm” for ever, so the levels tighten up.
Between games
Your gang
grows
There are 80 Gooblies to discover. You start with 4, the rest turn up as you play — one every two or three games at first. Each has a name, a rarity and a story.
My gang
MARLY1
MIMI1Strangers stay in their cratesNo silhouette: the surprise is part of the game.
His card
Nothing like a battle gameHis portrait full page, his name, and how many times he's been caught. No levels, no attacks, no rarity.
Cupcakes
Dirtzy3Puddy2My cupcakes
4 cupcakes = 1 game.Enough to play 2 times.
Get more
Feed them to go againOn an empty tummy a Gooblies stays home. One cupcake gives him one outing back.
A tummy is counted in games, never in hours. A Gooblies gets 3 outings before he’s hungry, and nothing decays while nobody is playing. Come back in three months: everything is exactly as you left it. A children’s game has no business making anyone feel guilty for having had a busy week.
Cupcakes are what gets the Gooblies out. One cupcake gives a Gooblies one outing, and a full tummy is worth 3. A game takes 4 Gooblies out, so it costs 4 cupcakes — and that is the whole price list. The game gives you 5 to begin with; after that, the account tops you back up to 5 every morning — one game a day, paying nothing, forever.
For parents · once, right at the start
Draw round your garden
with your finger
Before the first game, a grown-up shows the app where the child is allowed to go. It takes ten seconds: you draw round the lawn with your finger on the view from above, the way you’d ring it in pencil.
Draw round your garden
Tap ✏️ then trace the outline with your finger
Nice garden!
Safety margin and hiding places worked out
What the app does when you lift your finger
- It closes the loop. A finger-drawn outline never is closed.
- It smooths out the wobble. Three hundred captured points become about ten corners. A finger shakes; the garden must not.
- It pulls in a safety margin. The dotted line. No Gooblies will ever be placed between that dotted line and the fence — not next door, not at the roadside.
- It places the hiding spots. The 4 orange dots, spread far enough apart that a single step won’t reveal two of them.
You need at least 60 m² to hide anything, and the app caps out at 4,000 m²: beyond that, a game would turn into a long wander. A smaller garden simply takes fewer Gooblies at a time, and the app says so kindly.
Parents ask
What people ask
us first
The short answers. The documents at the foot of the page give the whole of it.
What age is it for?
Ages 6 to 11. A child needs to read a few words, spot a colour changing, and be allowed out in the garden on their own. Younger works too — with a grown-up tagging along.
Do you need a signal?
No. A game plays entirely offline. It installs once from the browser, then everything lives on the phone. It is built for the bottom of the garden, where 4G gives up.
Does it cost anything?
The trial is free and asks for no account. After that there are three tiers, on the parent’s side and behind a parental code: fifteen euros for a hundred cupcakes, thirty for two hundred and forty, or forty to be done with it — unlimited cupcakes, for good. The child sees no price and no shop.
Is there anything to install?
Nothing to download. It opens in the browser and installs from it, on iPhone as on Android. No app store to go through, and nothing to update afterwards.
Where does my child's location go?
With no account, neither the location nor the garden leaves the phone. With an account, the garden outline and the hiding spots from each game are hosted in the European Union, and for you alone: nothing is shared, nothing appears on a public map, nothing is sold. The privacy policy sets it out point by point.
Can it really be played alone?
Yes, and that is the whole reason the game exists. Hide-and-seek is the one childhood game that becomes impossible the moment there is only one child: somebody has to go and hide. Here, the Gooblies do it.
They’re already outside
4 Gooblies are waiting for you. The weather’s good. The radar is ready.
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