Hidden Gradient

How to play

1. 1

   Hidden Gradient is a cooperative game for 4–12 players. One player is the Navigator each round: with 4–5 players everyone navigates twice, while with 6–12 everyone navigates once, and a complete cycle always finishes before any role repeats.

2. 2

   A card defines a safe scale from a gentle edge to a vivid one. Everyone except the Navigator receives a distinct hidden level from 1 to 99 on the ascending grid round((i+1)×100/(N+1)); the server randomly shuffles which responder receives each level and reveals that mapping to nobody.

3. 3

   The clue stage lasts 45 seconds. Every non-Navigator may submit exactly one clue containing 2–90 Unicode characters and no more than 16 words. Lines, URLs, email, control, bidi or zero-width characters, digits, %, #, and obvious number words from zero through one hundred in Russian, English, or Spanish are forbidden.

4. 4

   Case, spacing, accents, and punctuation do not make a clue new, so normalised duplicates within a round are rejected. An accepted clue locks. A responder who times out or disconnects receives no invented fallback and is excluded completely from that round’s line.

5. 5

   The Navigator gets 35 seconds for the draft. They see only confirmed clue cards without levels and sort them by the presumed rise in hidden strength. The order may change until a separate confirmation; observers and late joiners cannot submit clues or control the line.

6. 6

   After the draft, the server reveals exactly one calibration anchor: the confirmed player whose level is closest to 50. Equal distances resolve stably to the lower level and then player id; the Navigator then has 20 seconds for a final reorder.

7. 7

   The shared reveal lasts up to 18 seconds, and the host may continue no earlier than 5 seconds. Confirmed clues, their true levels, the final line, omissions, correctly ordered pair count, and the team’s round award all appear together.

8. 8

   Scoring uses the share of pairs placed in ascending order: a perfect order awards 500 points; a non-perfect result of at least 85% awards 400, at least 65% awards 300, at least 50% awards 150, and anything lower awards 0. Fewer than two confirmed clues means no pairs and 0 points.

9. 9

   Reconnection restores the role, stage, private level, and only that player’s accepted receipt. An identical retry cannot duplicate an action, a changed retry or stale token is rejected, and the Navigator never receives other players’ hidden levels before reveal.

10. 10

    The team result is the sum of every equal round, and its final level depends on the percentage of the attainable maximum: 100%, at least 85%, at least 65%, at least 50%, or below. There are no individual winners, and points are not money. Hidden Gradient is an original first-party Play Together! game and uses no outside work.