Survivor characters are the human players in the game. Their goal is to make it out of the hotel alive.

If you're a first time player, it's a good idea to take a look at the controls in the game. As a survivor you use the wasd keys to move, shift to sprint, ctrl to crouch, alt to move slowly, right click to operate your flashlight, and left click to interact with your environment.



As you begin your adventure, you find yourself locked in a room (whether alone or with other survivors). As you might already know, your objective is to make out of this hotel alive. To do so, you need to find keys.


These keys are scattered in various areas of different rooms. You'll have to look in sinks, open drawers, poke around counters, and possibly even fish in toilets to find this glimmering rays of hope.

You'll also need to open drawers, cabinets, and ovens to find keys stashed away. If an object gets outlined in yellow when you mouse over it, you can interact with it.

Keys come in several different types, and for the most part, you won't know which key opens which door. Requiring you to tromp up and down the halls until you find the right one.


This continues for quite some time. Using keys to open doors to find more keys to open more doors. You might feel like you're going in circles, but each new room brings new possibilities, and you're that much closer to finding the key to exiting this little nightmare. Occassionally you'll run crowbars or codex's, used to pry boards off of doors and open safes respectively.

Eventually you'll come across the key you need to open the exit. And the game will end once every surviving member has made it to that room.




Easy enough, right?

It's not as simple as finding keys and opening doors however. You'll also have to be on the lookout for the monster.



This monster's only objective is to kill every last human in the hotel.

The monster spends most of it's time as a ghost unable to see or harm the survivors. It wanders the halls, setting traps for the unwary. These traps consist of objects throughout the hotel: clocks, tables, timers, lights, ladders, etc. Coming too close or interacting with the object will cause loud noises, alerting the monster to your presense.

The monster can appear in physical form for up to 30 seconds or so. It is during this time it can kill players.




The first step to surviving is avoiding the traps. This makes it much harder for the monster to find you. Give anything that could potentially be a trap a wide berth.

Once you're pretty confident you can avoid tripping over every trap when going up and down the halls, be aware that the monster doesn't need a trap going off to appear in physical form. So you have to be ready at any moment.

Always have an exit strategy. Not as in finding the exit, but ensuring you're not stuck in the corner with the monster bearing down on you. When sprinting, the survivors are much faster than the monster. But you can't run forever. Your character will become tired, and forced to walk. It will take a while for your stamina to get back to full, so your sprinting duration will be less if you keep using it in a short period of time.

Since you're only able to outrun the monster for a short time, you then need to find a place to hide. Ideally you want this place to have a door you can hold closed, keeping the monster from getting in. You can hold any door closed, but doors that open towards you are the easiest to block off. Doors that open towards the monster are more difficult to keep a grip on.

If you can't find a door to hide behind, your best bet is to turn off your flashlight and hunker down in any dark space you can find, out of the line of sight of the monster.


Remember that the monster is a human player. They may be slow, but they are not stupid. Closets and cabinets tend to be the worst place to hide, as you have nowhere to run when the monster takes a peek inside.



When the monster appears in physical form, the music will change. This is your que to get as far as possible and keep the monster from getting to you until it returns to it's ghostly form. From that point, the monster has a cooldown before it can appear again. Giving you a brief period to safely set off traps or thouroughly search for those keys.


When in ghost form, you can still be aware of the monsters presense, Pay attention to the sounds, and you might pick up on their ghostly aura passing through the room you're in, or even passing through you.

Finding the keys and running from the monster can be daunting and difficult task. As long as you play it safe and smart, your chances of survival increase dramatically (but even then there is no guarantee).

• When looking for keys, pay attention to their glow/flash. It might help to turn your flashlight off and look around slowly; as they're more likely to draw your attention that way.
  
  
• Work together with your team. Make sure you communicate with them what doors you've opened, what doors you want opened, what areas you've checked, and of course keeping them in the loop of when the monster appears and vanishes.
  
  
• Ther monster has more trouble seeing in the dark than you do. When it appears, turn off your flashlight and get out of there. Conversely, you can also flick your flashlight on to taunt the monster towards you, keeping it away from a hidden team mate it's about to find.
  
  
• Don't hog all the keys. Try to keep everyone having a handful, it will make searching and finding the remaining faster if you divide up the labor.
  
  
• Looting corpses is a necessary evil. When a comrade falls, you may need those keys they still have on them. If the monster is still on cooldown, hurry to the body to get the keys, otherwise you may want to wait a while, as the monster may be waiting for you to come.
  
  
• Double doors are your enemy. Try to only unlock one side of them, making it easier to block the doors from being opened when the monster appears.
  
  
• Playing it super safe can be a double edged sword. Hiding in a room and blocking the door while waiting for the monster to appear so you can then move while it's on cooldown is a good idea... until the monster catches on and starts appearing inside those rooms instead.
  
  
• **Try to close doors behind you, this can keep the monster guessing as to where you are, and where you have been. It can also make it reveal it's position as it tries to open locked doors.
  
  
• **Don't group up. While you feel safe in numbers, you're more likely to force each other to stumble into traps and draw the monster. Then stumble over each other as you try to get away, leading to multiple deaths.
  
  
• **Stop being noisy. While in ghost form, the monster can only hear the trap noises. However, in physical form it can hear all the noises you can. Including the sounds of click on locked doors and the clicking of the flashlight as you turn it on and off. When the monster is physical, stop playing with your flashlight and checking locked doors; as this will give away your location.