Walkthrough

A day-by-day guide through a full 7-night run on Normal difficulty (the default). Nothing here is a fixed script — the school, loot, and night modifiers are all seeded randomly — but every number and rule below is real, and the priorities hold for any seed.

Day 1 — the fixed list

The list is always the same three jobs: Get the lights working, Lunch time, Round them up. A fuel can and a spare part are pre-placed near the boiler-room generator specifically so day 1 always has a guaranteed way to get power on — use them there rather than carrying them off. Pull the starter (88% chance to catch first try at the generator's starting 74% condition; if it coughs, just keep pulling — the 4th pull in a row always succeeds). Eat something for the food job, carry one toddler home for the rescue job, and search a few containers along the way for anything useful. You have a full 4 minutes (Normal) — there's no need to rush.

Night 1 — learning Bob

Bob is active from night 1 on every difficulty, at his slowest patrol/chase speeds of the run. Get to your classroom, keep the lights on, and treat any hum or torch beam as a reason to go quiet. If he spots you, running for the nearest lit room ends the chase (unless he's already adjacent). Grump only stalks at this point — he can't hurt you yet and can't even enter a lit room.

Days 2–3 — the Big Boys Club, and building a buffer

Somewhere in one of these two days (50/50 which), three big kids corner you in a hallway — a scripted cutscene you can't avoid or fail. Just let it play; it costs you nothing and actually lowers Grump's resentment by 20. See The Big Boys Club. Otherwise: keep stacking fuel and spare parts (repair before refuelling — wear adds up to 0.12/s to the burn rate), clean messes as you find them (the only reliable way to lower Grump's resentment during play, at −1.5 each), and talk to Grump at least once each day even if you don't love the cost — skipping him entirely adds +6 resentment at nightfall, more than most single answers.

Day 4 — he turns

Grump stops asking questions and starts hunting, in daylight as well as at night, no later than today — regardless of how carefully you've played. If your resentment management has been bad, this can happen earlier; it can never happen later. From this point on, avoid engaging him at all: no more answers to manage, just distance and light. Once turned, ceiling lights only slow him (not stop him) at night, and don't slow him in daylight at all.

Nights 5+ — modifiers begin

From night 5, every night rolls one twist (two from night 10) — Storm, Overtime, Echoes, the Long Night, He Is Closer, or Cold Night. Read the toast at the start of the night; it tells you exactly which modifier(s) are active and what they do. See Nights & Difficulty for the full table. Bob is meaningfully faster and better at finding hiding spots by now (up to 42% find chance investigating a noise, versus 18% on night 1), so treat every hide as a real risk, not a guaranteed save.

Night 7 — the last required night

Survive it the same way as every other night: light, distance, hiding when it's actually safer than running. The morning after, the front doors' chains come off.

Day 8 — the doors are open

Walk to the front doors and hold E for 2 seconds to leave and end the run as a win (everyone still alive shares the escape in co-op). Or keep playing past the required nights for more score — the run only continues getting harder, since Bob, Grump, loot scarcity, and modifiers all keep scaling with the night number past this point.

The loop that repeats every day

1. Check Mrs. Honeywell's list (Tab) and the map (M) for today's job rooms.
2. Fuel and repair the generator if it needs it.
3. Search containers on your way between jobs — don't make dedicated searching trips, since search yield craters after night 8 anyway (see Loot Tables).
4. Rescue toddlers as you find them, rather than saving it for later — every one still "lost" at dusk is gone. If one shows red on the map, swing by the nurse's office before your classroom, or your classroom will just refuse them.
5. Clean messes on sight.
6. Talk to Grump once, take the cheapest answer, move on.
7. Eat before you're below 25% food, not after.
8. Head for your classroom with time to spare before "IT IS GETTING DARK."