How to play Spot Evil: a guide to hunting the evil in 360°

Spot Evil is easy to start and hard to be calm about. The whole game fits in one sentence: you stand inside a piece of 360° footage, something hidden in it is wrong, and you have to find the evil and tap it before the tape runs out. Everything below is detail on that one sentence.

The core loop

A round begins in the dark. The footage loads — a full 360° panorama you are standing inside, not a flat picture you are looking at. You can turn in any direction: left, right, up, down, and all the way around behind you.

Somewhere in that sphere is the evil. It might be a figure in a doorway, a face where there should be none, a shape in the dark that does not belong. It is hidden, not invisible — look slowly and it resolves. When you find it, you tap it. If you are right, the round ends and your time is scored. If you are wrong, you lose a little time but the round keeps going, so a panicked tap costs you without ending the hunt.

The only thing scored is speed. There is no accuracy percentage to chase, no combo meter. Find it fast, score high. That is the entire economy.

The controls

• On a computer: click and drag to look around. Drag to spin the view in any direction; the scene is fully spherical, so do not forget to turn around.
• On a phone: drag with your thumb to pan, or turn on gyroscope controls and physically turn your phone to look — point it at the ceiling and you look up, turn on the spot and the room turns with you. Gyro is the more immersive way to play, and once you switch it on it stays on.
• To commit a guess: tap the evil. On solo play a single tap drops a marker so you can aim; a fast double-tap commits the guess. This stops a stray tap from ending a round you were not ready to end.

The modes

Daily Challenge. Five hand-picked pieces of footage, the same five for everyone that day, one attempt. Your total time lands on the leaderboard. Come back tomorrow for five new ones — there is a streak counter to keep you honest.

Solo. Footage after footage, alone, for as long as your nerve holds. This is the mode for getting good: the catalogue is deep, the difficulty varies, and nothing is at stake but your own composure.

Party. Create a room, get a six-digit code, and share it with friends. Everyone hunts the same footage on the same timer, round by round, and the highest score wins. On phones there is a gyroscope-only party mode built for people in the same room — everyone turning their phones, nobody able to cheat by dragging, all of you making the same noise at the same time when the figure finally resolves.

Honest tips for finding the evil faster

• Turn all the way around first. New players scan the wall in front of them and forget the scene is a full sphere. The evil is often behind you, exactly where you have not looked.
• Sweep wide before you focus. Let your peripheral vision flag anything that feels off across the whole frame before you commit to inspecting one spot. You will often sense the wrongness before you can name it.
• Distrust the comfortable corners. The evil hides where your eye wants to glide past — deep shadow, the far distance, the floor, the bright spot you assume is safe because it is lit.
• Do not stare. Re-sweep. A fixed stare fatigues your eyes and starts inventing shapes. A fresh pass catches what the first one walked over.
• A wrong tap is cheaper than freezing. Misses cost a little time but do not end the round. Hesitation costs more. If you have a real candidate, commit.

What you will not find here

No advertising. No trackers. No data sold. Spot Evil is made by a small, self-funded studio, and the whole experience is built to disappear so the footage can be the only loud thing in the room. You do not need an account to play a round, and you never need to spend a cent to find the evil.

Load a piece of footage. Turn around slowly. Something in there is already looking at you — the only question is how long it takes you to look back.