Dark Room functions just like most point-and-click games, so if you've played any before, you should have no trouble picking it up. There are only a few interfaces to deal with.

Navigating
Navigation through the game is done by clicking on the area you want to visit next. In some cases you can do this to backtrack too; for example, if the door you came through is visible on the screen, click on it to go back. In other cases, you can click on the BACK button in the lower right-hand corner of the screen. This will return you to the previous area.

A few puzzles will also require you to click and drag, usually to move puzzle pieces or draw lines.

Main Menu
The main menu is accessed by clicking the book icon in the upper left-hand corner of the screen. You can exit the game here, or re-read any LETTER items you've picked up while playing.

Inventory
Your inventory is where the items you pick up (excluding LETTERS) will be. It appears as a box in the lower left-hand corner of the screen, containing either the item you're currently holding, or an ! if you have nothing equipped. Clicking on it will open the full inventory, showing all items in your possession and the options for their use.

To use an item in your inventory, simply click on it and hit the USE option, then click wherever you want to apply the item. For example, to unlock a door with a KEY: open your inventory, click the KEY, click USE, then click on the door you want to open.

In a few cases you'll need to combine items. To do this, click on both items in the inventory and hit COMBINE. The two items will become one. One example of this is the FLASHLIGHT, which will need to be combined with a BATTERY to work.

This should cover the basic operations of the game. If I missed anything, please let me know in the comments below and I'll do my best to answer!

The player begins in a locked BASEMENT room. On the wall by the door is an old hat and coat. Examine the coat to find the SCREWDRIVER in its pocket. Close by, there is a metal cabinet with a skull on top. Use the SCREWDRIVER to pry it open, revealing a LETTER and a KEY. This KEY unlocks the room's door.

There is nothing else useful in the BASEMENT right now, but feel free to explore it before leaving. There are several clues here that will come in handy later.

You should now be in a carpeted FOYER with a stairway leading up. The door to your right is where you just came out of the basement. Between this door and the stairs, there is a small desk with an unlocked drawer. Grab the BATTERY inside.

Now click on the stairs, and you'll stand on them, facing three paintings. One of the paintings has a KEY attached to it. Take it and use the back button to return to the FOYER.

Head down the hall beneath the stairs, past the barrels with the candle on top. There is a LETTER on top of the barrels, and a clue on the wall for later. For now, keep going down the hall and unlock the door there with your new key.

In this room is a fireplace, a sink with a mirror above it, and a hatch in the floor that needs to be pried open. Your SCREWDRIVER is too small so you'll have to wait. There is also a locked electrical panel with a glowing green light on the wall, and a small locked box by the candles on the floor. Begin by searching the room for items: a DIRTY NAPKIN on the shelf above the mantlepiece, plus a LETTER and another KEY on the mantle itself. The KEY doesn't fit anything in this room, so go back out to the FOYER.

Directly to your left is an open room featuring a few chairs, a desk, and a painting of an old ape and a number of small animals, all dressed in Edwardian clothing. We'll call this the PAINTING ROOM. Your KEY opens the desk drawer. Grab the LETTER and FLASHLIGHT from inside.

Now, you'll need to combine the FLASHLIGHT and BATTERY. Open your inventory and highlight both items, then use the combine button. You now have a functioning FLASHLIGHT.

Go back to the FOYER and down the hall under the stairs, but don't go into the FIREPLACE ROOM yet. Instead, use your FLASHLIGHT to investigate the dark opening at the very end of the hall, by the two trashbags. You'll find a KEY. Now head into the FIREPLACE ROOM and use the new KEY on the electrical panel with the green light. It will open, revealing a panel that says FLOOR 02, which you'll need to pry off with your SCREWDRIVER to get your first real puzzle.

Behind the panel are an assortment of colored buttons: two of each color. Click and drag from one button to the other and a line of the same color will appear, connecting the two. The goal of the puzzle is to connect each pair of buttons without crossing the path of any other pair. Remember to make use of the panel's outer perimeter while drawing your lines.

Hover here for the puzzle solution:

Solving this puzzle will turn on the upstairs lights, so you can explore further. Backtrack and head upstairs.

There is no room at the top of the stairs, so head to the end of the hall. Here you'll see a mounted stag's head with bleeding eyes, a desk and chair, and two locked doors. Search the desk to find another LETTER and a lockbox with a four-digit combination.

If you've been collecting the letters so far, you should already have the combination for this. Open your menu with the book icon at the top-left corner of the screen and choose the Letters tab. One mentions a four-digit number that may have meaning. If you don't have this one, go back through the house until you find it, or hover here. 6352

Once you have the number you can input it, hit enter, and the box will open, giving you another KEY and LETTER.

This key belongs to the small box on the floor in the FIREPLACE ROOM, so go back downstairs and open it. You will get yet another KEY and LETTER.

Trek upstairs again, because this key opens the left-hand door in the upstairs hall. The main feature here is the old desktop computer and the four numbered portraits on the wall above it, but be sure to examine the lit candles too to find a green-tinted CAMERA LENS and a CROWBAR.

Examining the desk will get you a LETTER, and the computer will ask for a four-digit password. The password hint it gives is ABCD. Here is where the portraits come in. As you might guess, they relate to the other fancy-dress animal painting downstairs, but we don't have everything necessary for this puzzle yet. Instead, take your new CROWBAR, go back down to the FIREPLACE ROOM, and open the hatch in the floor.

Upon entering the hatch, you'll find yourself in a room with a big metal locker, a locked door, and a ladder going up. There are a number of documents pinned to the locker front, including a LETTER to take, but it doesn't open. The door doesn't open right now either; if you interact with the panel to its left, you'll find that it seems to be controlled from elsewhere in the building. For now, all we need is the last item for the computer password puzzle. Look in the right-hand corner between the ladder and the locker, and you'll find a can of THINNER. Take it, climb back upstairs, and head to the PAINTING ROOM.

Combine your THINNER and the DIRTY NAPKIN, and use the resulting NAPKIN STAINED BY THINNER on the painting of the ape and other animals. There's a 4x4 grid drawn under the paint, with letters written along the sides. We'll use this grid and the numbered portraits upstairs to solve the computer password puzzle. It will require some visualization, so if you struggle with that, you may want to grab some paper and sketch as you go.

At one side of the grid is written A, B, C, and D. Along the bottom are letters D, C, H, and M. Inside the grid are three X'd out boxes.


The bottom letters stand for the different types of creatures shown in the portraits upstairs: a Dog, a Cat, a Human, and a Mouse. As we recall, each portrait has a number: 1 for the Mouse, 3 for the Human, 5 for the Dog, and 7 for the Cat. Imagine putting each of these numbers into the X'd box in the corresponding column. For example, the M column is the Mouse's, so put 1 in the X'd box in that column. (Ignore the Cat for now.)

Now read those boxes from top to bottom, in order with the A, B, C, D rows. The Cat's column doesn't have a box, so just put its number in the empty row, which is D. If I explained this right, and you understood, these numbers in ABCD order should be the computer password 3517.

Use the password to open the computer. You'll find a document and a file labeled DARK ROOM, which is a slider puzzle. You'll have to solve this one on your own, unless someone better than me can do a video solving it. I found it helpful to move the pieces in circular motions, but I mostly just messed around until I got it right.

You can find the completed picture on the locker under the hatch, for reference.


Pay attention to the code on the right-hand edge of the picture, as this has to be lined up correctly.

When you have the picture assembled, you'll get a message that the DARK ROOM is now unlocked, meaning the door at the bottom of the hatch where the locker is located. Go there.

After going through the door at the bottom of the ladder, you will be in a sterile facility-style hallway lined with five doors. The only room open now is the one with the red light above it, directly to your right. Notice that the other doors along the sides of the hall also have lights above them, each one a different color. This will be important later.

Inside the room with the red light is a television, but it won't work yet. Go toward the door labeled DR. KANDINSKY, which is locked via keycard, and you'll find a blood-covered gurney and a desk. On the gurney is a KEY. This opens the right-hand door at the end of the second-floor hallway, across from the COMPUTER ROOM. Go and unlock it.

Upon entering the room, there are some metal filing cabinets to your left. On top of these is a CONTROLLER for the television in the DARK ROOM. Under the filthy sofa bed is a briefcase with another combination lock. This one needs a series of four letters. Lastly, on the desk at the back of the room is a multi-colored wooden puzzle.

This puzzle is also a slider, but with a difference: the pieces will only move lengthwise. The goal is to get the green "key" piece across the board and into the notch, which will require some creative rearranging. Upon solving it, the green piece will slide out and open a drawer containing a KEYCARD.

Again, I'm not the best at solving these, but have a GIF if it helps.


None of the other items here are useful now, but feel free to look them over for later. Then take the KEYCARD downstairs and use it on the door to DR. KANDINSKY'S OFFICE.

Annoyingly, the office is well protected and will also need a password, five letters long. Finding it will first require you to open the briefcase, so let's work on that.

If you return to the BASEMENT room and look on top of the barrels, there is a book with several diagrams inside. One of these is a Z-shape with an arrow included to indicate direction. Remember I said the colored lights over the doors in the DARK ROOM would be important later?

Go back to the DARK ROOM hallway and look at the door lights, with the Z-shape in mind. Imagine drawing the Z over the lights in the indicated direction, starting at the green one. This should get you the pattern Green, Blue, Yellow, Red, or GBYR. Now, using the CONTROLLER, turn on the television in the red-light room. Replace "Red" in the pattern with the word on the screen. Now you have GBYH.

Go back upstairs to the SOFA BED ROOM and use your code on the briefcase. (The code won't work unless you've actually turned the television on, so don't skip that step!)

Inside the briefcase are a pair of BINOCULARS and another LETTER. Combine the BINOCULARS with the CAMERA LENS you already have, which will essentially make night-vision binoculars. Now go back to the BASEMENT.

Apart from the lantern on top of the barrels, the main source of light in here is from a small window. Inspect the window twice to look through it. Outside you'll see several areas of note, but the one we want right now is on the brick wall above the discarded boxes and wood. Using your BINOCULARS, look directly at that area. You'll see the radiation symbol with three letters below it. PWH

Now back out and look at the BASEMENT again. There's a gas mask printed on the left-hand wall over the barrels, with the letters "NC???" printed beneath. Replace the three question marks with the three letters you just discovered outside. You'll get NCPWH.

You're almost done, but there's one more step. Leave the BASEMENT and stand in the FOYER. Now look near the candle on the barrels out here. There's another radiation symbol, and printed below is another message: "Look reverse at the goal!" Notice that there's a mirror version under the word "reverse". To get your final password for DR. KANDINSKY'S OFFICE, you'll need to mirror your current code in the exact same way that "reverse" is mirrored here.

By that I mean upside-down. If you turn NCPWH upside-down in this way, you'll get NCbMH (NCBMH), which is the final code.

Go down to the DARK ROOM, input this password, and go into DR. KANDINSKY'S OFFICE.

There's not much to say here. The door to your left is the one you came through. Poke around if you like and then go to the other door.

We're close to the end of the level now. Choose the laptop and it will give you another puzzle; this one's fairly simple but I found it one of the most annoying personally. A white grid will appear. On it is a white dot, which you control with the direction keys. Green dots will appear one by one on the grid, while red dots fly across it. You (the white dot) have to catch the green dots while avoiding being hit by the red ones.

If you can hold out long enough without getting hit, the screen will go white and you will unlock the first ending.

In this level, everything is the same as in Purgatory except for the puzzle solutions. You'll also need to find the green stone before leaving for the ending.

Computer Password Puzzle
The paintings now show 1 for the Mouse, 2 for the Human, 9 for the Dog, and 6 for the Cat. Use these with the grid as before to gain the password. 2916

SECRET FILES in the computer is now unlocked. It contains number sequences associated with a variety of classic composers, authors, and artists. These will be used for several of the puzzles going forward.

Briefcase Password Puzzle
There is a new word on the television, SCARE. Substitute it into the password as before to get GBYS.

DR. KANDINSKY'S OFFICE Puzzle
You'll need the keycard from the slide puzzle as before. I don't have a GIF of this one.

For the password, there is a new code PWZ written on the brick wall outside the BASEMENT window, same place as before. There's no note on the FOYER wall to reverse/mirror it, so don't! This makes the password NCPWZ.

Getting the Green Stone
After opening DR. KANDINSKY'S OFFICE, grab the RAKE off the floor by the chair and use it to open the ATTIC door in the 2nd floor hallway ceiling. Inside the ATTIC is a 4-digit lockbox. The hint for this password is the artist of the paintings in the 2nd floor hallway. A quick Google search will show that it's Edvard Munch, whose SECRET FILES entry is 3101013.

Now look at the book in the BASEMENT again--the one that helped us out with the Z-shape and the briefcase password before. There's a number here starting with 1012, which happens to be Dostoyevsky's from the SECRET FILES. Look at the way it's split up. I.e., the 4 first numbers, then the latter 3. Do the same with your other SECRET FILES number, and you'll get the lockbox code 3101. Inside is the green stone, mounted on a gold ring.

Take this to DR. KANDINSKY'S OFFICE and proceed as you did last time to see the second ending.

Again, everything is the same as in Purgatory except for most puzzles/passwords. You also need to find a floppy disk before leaving the level.

Lockbox Password in 2ND FLOOR HALLWAY
The note written on the wall in the 1ST FLOOR HALLWAY now says "6352 - August = ?!" "August" refers to the date on the letter mentioning 6352. There are a couple ways we could take this, but it actually means to subtract the year on the letter from 6352. That is, 6352-1995. Doing this gets us the code for the lockbox in the 2ND FLOOR HALLWAY, 4357.

Computer Password Puzzle
Numbers on the animal paintings are back to 1, 3, 5, 7, so the code from the first level 3517 works again.

This time, SECRET FILES includes a string of letter substitutions: A = G, B = K, C = N, R = Y, S = Z, T = P. The rest of the computer's contents are the same as before.

Briefcase Password Puzzle
The television word is SCARE the same as last time, so the starting code is also the same GBYS. Remember though that the SECRET FILES gave us some letter substitutions. Use those now to get the new password for the briefcase. Note that the substitution works both ways: for example, A = G means that G also equals A. Therefore the password is now AKRZ.

DR. KANDINSKY'S OFFICE Password Puzzle
Do the slide puzzle in the SOFA BED ROOM to get the KEYCARD as always. Here's how I did it:


The code on the brick wall outside the basement window has changed again. It now says P81. There's still no note to mirror anything, so use the message "NC???" and input the letters as normal. Then count from the starting letter for each of the last two, with A as 1, so that 8 = the 8th letter in sequence and 1 = the first. This gets us NCPSA.

Getting the Floppy Disk
Before you leave the level, you need to find a floppy disk to fulfill hard mode. I might never have found this myself, so many thanks to 19821103, whose posts in the Discussions let me know where to look.

Go to the locker room just under the hatch (where the ladder is), and look on top of the locker. There's another lockbox here, which needs another four-digit code. Ironically I had already figured out the code, I just couldn't find the box XD

As you may already have seen, there are a new KEY and LETTER on top of the wooden crate under the window in the BASEMENT. This KEY unlocks the cupboard in the SOFA BED ROOM. Here you'll find another LETTER and a switch, which unlocks the rooms in the DARK ROOM with the green, blue, and red lights over them. In the GREEN ROOM you'll find a LETTER; in the BLUE ROOM is a puzzle clue consisting of an H-shaped music player. Clicking on it causes white stick figures to appear and disappear. Keep clicking on the figures until all are gone, and a bar of music will appear instead, with some notes shown in black and some in white.

Listen to the music. It's "Swan Lake" by Pyotr Tchaikovsky. You'll need to figure out the composer and find their number in the SECRET FILES. There are seven musical notes, just as there are seven numbers in the composer's sequence 0882652. Three notes are in black and four in white. We need four numbers, so match the white notes with their corresponding numbers in the sequence. This leaves us with the 2nd, 4th, 5th, and 7th or 8262.

Enter this password into the lockbox to get a CUTTER and a LETTER. Then take the CUTTER upstairs, into the SOFA BED ROOM, and use it on the LEATHER BAG on top of the file cabinets. Inside you'll find the FLOPPY.

Exit through DR. KANDINSKY'S OFFICE as usual, and when you get to the laptop, there will be a new file open to read. You will then get the third and final ending for this chapter.

Thanks for reading my walkthrough! I hope this helps players who have been struggling with this game. Thanks again to 19821103, whose posts in Discussions helped me to finish Hard mode.

All of the screenshots are mine, as are the descriptions and explanations. If anything is unclear or you have concerns/questions, leave a comment and I'll do my best to reply.

Happy playing!