Mochi Paper

About Mochi Paper

Mochi Paper is a 3D spin on the classic paper.io land grab, rendered entirely in raw WebGL - no game engine, no libraries, just a perspective camera and a paper-white board that fades into a soft grey fog at the horizon. You drive a small blue cube that begins on a three-by-three patch of home turf. The instant you roll off your own colour, a raised ridge of trail starts drawing behind you; steer the loop all the way back onto your land and a flood-fill sweeps the board, painting every cell you enclosed in your colour. It is a tight loop of push out, circle around, and bank - and the more land you hold, the more the camera eases back so you can read the whole arena.

You share that arena with seven AI cubes in eight different colours, each carving its own territory, racing home to bank it, and watching for a chance to strike. One rule sets the tension: stepping onto any trail pops the cube that owns it. That cuts both ways - drive across a rival's exposed line while it is far from home and you wipe it out, but turn a corner into your own ridge and your run ends instantly. Heads that collide directly, or swap places in a single tick, both pop. The walls around the rim are lethal too, so the board has a hard edge you can be pinned against.

There are no levels, no power-ups, and nothing to unlock or buy - Mochi Paper is one continuous open arena where the only score is the percentage of the board you control. A readout at the top tracks your live share to one decimal place, and the game quietly remembers the highest percentage you have ever reached. Cut a rival down to zero land and it is eliminated and respawns a moment later somewhere with breathing room; the goal is simply to claim more ground than anyone and survive longer than your best run.

Want to get better? Read our full A Beginner's Guide to .io Games guide.

How to play Mochi Paper

1. Tap the board or press Space to leave the slowly-orbiting title screen and drop your blue cube onto its home patch near the centre.
2. On a phone, press and drag anywhere on the board - a round thumb-stick appears under your finger and the cube turns toward whichever compass direction you flick. On a computer, steer with the arrow keys or WASD.
3. Roll off your coloured home turf. The moment you leave it a raised trail begins drawing behind you, marking the loop you are carving.
4. Swing out around the open or rival ground you want, then steer back onto any of your own land to close the loop. A flood-fill instantly captures every cell your line enclosed, including any rival turf trapped inside.
5. Keep your line safe: if anything touches it - a rival cube, or your own cube turning back into it - the trail's owner pops, so never cross your own ridge.
6. Hunt when you can. Cross a rival's trail while it is away from home to eliminate it, but give the lethal rim walls a wide berth.
7. Push your territory percentage as high as you can before you are popped, then tap or press Space on the game-over card to dive into a fresh arena and chase your best.

Controls

Tips & strategy

• Take small bites. A short out-and-back loop banks quickly; one giant excursion leaves a long ridge for any rival to cut.
• Watch the trail length, not just the map. Your line stays vulnerable the entire time it is open - the only way to make it safe is to step back onto your own colour and close it.
• Capture rival land for free. The flood-fill grabs everything inside your loop, so circling around an enemy's territory hands it straight to you.
• Pick off cubes that wander deep. The AI heads home once it has carved a medium-length run, so a rival stranded far from base is an easy line to cross.
• Re-enter at the nearest edge of your turf. You do not have to return to where you started - touching any of your own cells closes the loop and resets you to safe.
• Respect the rim. The four border walls kill on contact and the AI is tuned to avoid them, so hugging the edge mostly endangers you, not them.
• Let the zoom work for you. As your share of the board climbs, the camera pulls back automatically - use the wider view to spot incoming heads before they reach your line.
• Reduce a rival to nothing. If your capture leaves an enemy with zero cells it is eliminated outright, so a well-placed loop can clear a neighbour entirely.

Game features

• A 3D paper.io-style territory chase on a 110x110-cell board, drawn in raw WebGL with one batched mesh for trails and cubes - no engine or libraries.
• Flood-fill capture: close your loop on home turf and every enclosed cell, including trapped rival land, flips to your colour.
• Seven AI cubes that expand, race home to bank, hunt exposed trails, dodge the rim, and avoid sealing themselves into dead ends.
• Lethal trails for everyone - cross any line and its owner pops, including head-on cube collisions and same-tick position swaps.
• A live territory-percentage readout to one decimal and a personal best saved on your device.
• An auto-zooming camera that pulls back as your land grows so the whole arena stays readable.
• Mobile-first steering via a drag-to-place thumb-stick that snaps to four directions, plus arrow-key and WASD support on desktop.
• Synthesized claim, cut, turn, and death sounds plus looping background music with a one-tap mute, and a self-playing demo that orbits the board on the title screen.
• Loads instantly in any modern browser on phone, tablet, or desktop - no download, no sign-in, no purchases.

When Owning More Pulls The Camera Back

What sells Mochi Paper is how solid the territory feels for a game with no engine behind it. The board is a paper-cream plane painted from a single texture, gridded with a faint line at every cell edge and dissolving into the dark void as a soft fog swallows the far rim. Your trail is not a flat stripe but a raised ridge standing above the floor, every box face hand-shaded by compass direction so the south side toward the camera reads bright and the north side dim. The cube bobs on a sine wave with its own little shadow quad chasing the footprint, and closing a loop flips the flood-fill that washes your colour across everything you penned in.

The cleverest move is how the camera reads your standing. Zoom is wired straight to the fraction of the board you hold, so a thin early run keeps you tucked in tight and tense, while a dominant run quietly pulls the eye back until most of the arena fits the frame. Owning more literally widens your view, a reward and a difficulty release in one moving part. The synth voice backs it up: a tiny square click on every turn, a triangle chirp sliding up when you bank, a rough sawtooth pop when you cut a nearby rival, and a long sawtooth groan plunging from 320 down to 50 hertz the instant you die.

The seven rivals run a real scoring loop rather than a script. Each one weighs all four directions every cell, leaning on momentum for straighter lines, shedding points the closer it drifts to the lethal rim, and outright refusing a cell whose only exits are wall or its own ridge so it never seals itself in. It only lunges at your exposed line when it is shallow in its own excursion, fewer than four cells out, and once a run grows long it swings hard for home to bank. The board feels populated, and your cleanest kills come from catching one stranded deep before it can scurry back.

It fits short sittings and very young players with almost no friction. There is no menu maze, no levels, no currency, just tap to drop onto your three by three home patch and steer. If you trail too long without banking, a pointing hand quietly appears after about five seconds aimed at your nearest home cell, a come back here nudge for a six year old who forgot the loop. Your only number is the live percentage held to one decimal, and the game keeps the highest you have ever reached, so the whole curve is whatever greed and caution you bring to it.