How to play
The whole game fits in four keys. The rest is knowing when to use each one — and the answer is almost always “sooner than you think”.
Controls
- Arrows or WASD move the capybara. There is no run button: she bolts on her own when danger is near and you move.
- Space barks. The bark is the alarm: it freezes everyone within earshot and makes the jaguar give up its ambush.
- Shift freezes. Standing still in the grass, she is spotted from much further away — meaning from much closer.
- Shift in the water dives. Submerged, nobody sees her at all, but her breath runs out.
- Esc (or P) pauses. While paused, any key returns to the game and Esc again leaves the level.
- On a phone the buttons appear below the game, away from the ads.
The bark is the game
Real capybaras bark when they see danger, and the whole group reacts to it. Here it works the same: everyone within earshot freezes, barks too and passes the warning along, in a cascade that crosses the field. It is the most important sound in the game, which is why it has its own audio channel — it never sits under anything else.
What scores is the timing. Barking while the predator is stalking ruins the ambush and pays a fat bonus, because an ambush only works by surprise. Bark too early and you warn the group about nothing; bark mid-pounce and it is already too late.
Playing as a predator
On the select screen you can be a jaguar, a caiman, an anaconda or a harpy eagle. The controls are the same with a different meaning: shift hides and space is the strike. Now the bark cascade works against you — get close in the open and a sentry wakes, the alarm spreads and the herd vanishes into the water. Each animal closes in its own way: the jaguar crouches in the brush, the caiman disappears underwater, the anaconda is nearly invisible but has almost no reach, and the eagle comes from above — though it can only carry a youngster.
Four things that help
- Water is both the hiding place and the way out. When things get tight, that is where you run — no capybara tries to outrun a jaguar on land.
- Eating grass scores points and is the goal of several levels, but you eat in the open. Food is what forces you to expose yourself.
- The herd is an ally. One well-timed bark saves five capybaras at once, and that counts at the end of the level.
- The albino capybara shows up hidden in the grass now and then. Reaching her is rescuing her, and she joins the cast: no camouflage at all, worth double points.