Something wrong? Say so.

1. Reporting a bug

A good report is one somebody can reproduce. The five things that make the difference:

• What you expected, and what happened instead. One sentence each.
• Where. The level name, or the screen you were on. "The gallery, walking up to the third painting" beats "the menu".
• The steps. Even a rough sequence. If it happens every time, say so, and if it happened once, say that too.
• Your setup. Windows, macOS or Linux, and whether you were on a keyboard, a gamepad or a Steam Deck.
• The log. Open the save folder in the table below. If there is a logs folder inside it, attach the newest file in it.

A screenshot or a short clip is worth all of the above put together, especially for anything visual. Steam's built-in recorder is fine.

2. Where your files live

Everything Blotch remembers is plain JSON in one folder. Your progress, your settings, the levels and tile designs you have made, and your saved replays all live here:

Back it up by copying the folder. To start clean, use Reset all save data on the Settings screen, which is the safe version: it clears the same set of files the game manages and leaves everything else alone.

3. Startup and display

The game will not start

Verify the files first. In your Steam library, right-click Blotch, then Properties, Installed Files, Verify integrity of game files. That fixes a download that finished badly, which is the most common cause by a distance.

If it still will not launch, update your graphics drivers. Blotch is a 2D game but it renders through Vulkan, Direct3D 12 or Metal, so a GPU driver several years old can refuse to start it while everything else on the machine looks fine. If that does not help, send us the log file from section 2 and we will read it.

It opened at the wrong size, or on the wrong screen

Blotch launches fullscreen. Open Settings from the main menu to switch to windowed and pick a resolution; the choice is remembered. If the window opens on the wrong monitor, drag it across once in windowed mode and then switch back to fullscreen.

The text is too small on a Steam Deck or a small screen

The interface scales with the window, so the fullscreen native resolution is the largest the text will be. Everything is drawn to be legible at 1280 by 800.

4. Controllers and input

My controller does nothing

Blotch switches between keyboard and gamepad automatically: press a button on the pad and the on-screen prompts change to match. If nothing happens, check that Steam sees the controller at all under Steam, Settings, Controller. A pad that works in Big Picture but not in the game is nearly always a Steam Input layout doing the intercepting.

I want different keys

Settings, Key bindings. Every gameplay action can be rebound, on keyboard and on gamepad, and the bindings are saved with the rest of your settings.

Painting with a trackpad or a stick

The brush follows the mouse pointer, and on a gamepad the right stick drives a virtual cursor that does the same job. Both are supported everywhere the mouse is, menus included.

5. Saves, stars and replays

My progress did not follow me to another machine

Progress roams through Steam Cloud. Check it is enabled for Blotch (right-click the game, Properties, General, Steam Cloud), and let Steam finish syncing before you close it, which it does in the bottom-right of the library window. Scores merge rather than overwrite: the better of the two results for each level wins, so playing on two machines cannot lose you a star.

My replays did not come with me

That one is by design. A replay is far larger than a score, and cloud storage is not, so replays stay on the machine that recorded them.

Where do I watch a replay?

Every run records itself and the best clear is kept. For campaign levels, walk up to the level's painting in the gallery and the placard offers to play it back. For custom and Workshop maps, the entry on the Custom Maps screen carries a Watch your best run button. You can pause, rewind, scrub, zoom and lock the camera to any body.

A star target looks impossible

Every level's star thresholds are derived from a real clear of that level rather than guessed, so three stars is always achievable. If one feels wrong, tell us which level and what you were scoring, because that is exactly the kind of thing that gets retuned.

6. Multiplayer

I cannot join my friend

Matches are found through the in-game browser or a Steam invite, and they run over Steam's networking. If a lobby will not open or will not accept you: make sure Steam is not in offline mode, restart Steam rather than the game, and check that a firewall or a VPN is not blocking it. Both of you also need the same version of the game, so let Steam finish updating first.

Nobody can hear me

Voice chat defaults to push to talk, so you have to hold the key. In Settings you can switch it to open mic or turn it off, set the voice volume, and the microphone Steam uses is the one picked in Steam, Settings, Voice. Voice is proximity-based during a match and flat in the lobby, so a distant player really is quieter.

Someone is being abusive

Matches are peer to peer, so we cannot see or moderate what is said in them. Use Steam's report and block tools: blocking someone on Steam keeps you out of lobbies together.

7. Accessibility options

Blotch is a colour-matching game, and about one man in twelve cannot separate red from green, so the alert arcs around your blob step in shape as well as colour. Broken, then solid, then double-rimmed. That is always on, for everyone, with nothing to switch on.

In Settings you can also turn on:

• High contrast alerts, which pushes the detection arcs further apart still.
• Camouflage tone, which reads your match out loud as a pitch: it climbs as your coat closes on the ground, wobbles while you are short, and steadies the moment you are not. It has its own volume, on its own channel, so muting the game's sound effects cannot mute it.
• Vibration, with a strength slider, or off entirely.
• Full rebinding of every action, on either device.

The game ships translated into English and Simplified Chinese, picked automatically from your Steam language and changeable in Settings.

If an option you need is missing, tell us. This list has grown because people asked.

8. The editor and Workshop

My level uploaded but nobody can see it

Steam hides a Workshop item until its creator has accepted the Workshop legal agreement, once, at steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/workshoplegalagreement. The editor says so when it happens. The upload itself worked; accept the agreement and the item appears.

Published levels are public and attached to your Steam account until you remove them, which you can do from My Uploads in the in-game Workshop browser.

A subscribed level will not load

Let Steam finish downloading it, then restart the game so the Custom Maps screen re-reads what is installed. A level made in a newer version of the game than yours may also refuse to load, so update first.

I lost a level I was building

Levels are saved as individual files in the folder in section 2, under levels, and each save keeps the previous good version beside it as a .bak. If a file is damaged the game falls back to that copy by itself, so a level usually comes back on its own. If it does not, send us the pair and we will look.

9. System requirements

Blotch is light. The floor is a GPU that supports Vulkan, Direct3D 12 or Metal rather than raw speed:

The Steam store page carries the authoritative list, including the recommended column.

10. Refunds

Refunds are handled by Valve, not by us, through Steam Support. The standard policy is a refund for any reason within 14 days of purchase and under two hours of playtime, and Valve considers requests outside that too.

If you are refunding because something is broken, we would genuinely like to know what before you go. It is usually fixable.