This game DISAPPEARS if you pause it!
Branta GamesCited 4× on HN, 2025-2026
687K views · 1 year ago · demo · evergreen
A game-dev video demonstrating a noise shader in Godot where shapes are visible only in motion against animated noise and vanish when the game is paused or screenshotted. The demo is available on GitHub.
HN people cite it as the origin of the vanishing-in-a-screenshot effect, used in ideas for captchas and AI-resistant text.
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4 comments from Hacker News
There was a pretty popular video showing this exact concept (hiding shapes/text in high frequency noise ) about a year ago, for those interested: ▶ this video
Related work (all involve noise and flickering images, photosensitive eyes/brains beware): - "This game disappears if you pause it": ▶ this video - "Illusion: If You Pause, The Image Will Disappear": link
I first saw this effect in a video from Branta Games. ▶ this video The effect is disrupted by introducing rendering artifacts, by watching the video in 144p or in this case by zooming out. I'd love to know the name of this effect, so I can read more about the fMRI studies that make use of it. What I've found so far: Random Dot Kinematogram Perceptual Organization from Motion (video of Flounder camouflage) link
For no js solution, I think some sort of using optical illusion as captcha could works, especially link or something like ▶ this video which could cleverly hide captcha answer within animated noise mess. However these methods are not really accessibility-friendly tho.