Puzzle games can always have you scratching your head, but it gets worse when you're getting hunted by the puppets that you created. Hello Puppets: Midnight Show is a horror puzzle game that begins with the main character using a magic book to give consciousness to his handeemen, but it didn't turn out so well.

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Mortimer, the main puppet who was closest to Owen's heart, turns evil and captures the main character inside a realm that is controlled by them. It's your job to solve different puzzles multiple times and get the pages of the magic book back to escape this horrific nightmare.

Lookout For Extra Lives

After the starting cutscene and a small puzzle in Hello Pullets: Midnight Show, you'll have three puzzle rooms involving Nick Nack, Daisy Danger, and Riley Ruckus. For the first three times, you'll have to solve the puzzles in these realms in the order of the names mentioned, making it quite tedious.

Moreover, you get three lives each time you enter a realm. There is no upgrade system in the game to increase the number of base lives you can have. So, the only way to get an extra life is by finding the "Get Out Of Jail Free" card and solving the required puzzle to get it.

There is a map in your spawn area that marks the puzzles you're required to solve, but you can go around the place to find an optional puzzle with this ticket inside. Once you claim it, one of your hearts will have a plus sign on it.

These extra lives don't work like normal lives. For normal ones, you'd lose all the batteries, coins, and other items you get throughout the run and spawn back in the main area. On the other hand, when you have the plus sign from this card, it will completely negate a puppet capturing you one time.

When the puppet gets close enough to get you, there'll be an animation of the ticket getting split in half, and the puppet will be immobilized for a little while. This gives you a chance to run away and stay with all the items you've picked up.

Getting caught without the extra life only takes away the items that are temporary and stay with you until you're in the realm. They don't take away collectibles and different cassettes that you get during the run.

Open All The Locker Doors

In the world of hard puzzles and deadly puppets, there are only a few things you can use to escape. These things include lockers, closets, and some fridges. As soon as you get into a realm, the first order of business is to open all the lockers and closets in the spawn area so you have a place to run and hide if the puppet shows up.

As you go along different rooms to find puzzles, keep opening every locker you see. When you're getting chased, there might be times when you don't have the time to open the lockers, get in, and close them behind you. This strategy will always leave you with an escape point.

Beware Of Quick Time Events

Talking about lockers, you're not completely safe inside them either. If the puppet sees you go inside a locker in the early difficulties, they'll have a chance to give you a quick-time event that you have to pass. If you fail this event, they'll open the locker door and capture you.

There are quite a few types of events that you can get inside these lockers:

  • The simplest one will have you smash a certain key to bring the bar to the green side of the circle. The green bar gets shorter as you get to higher difficulties.
  • Another simple one will ask you to hold your breath for as long as possible. In this one, you can't allow the character to breathe for too long, but you also can't hold your breath forever. You need to hold your breath until the circle goes red and then leave it for a second.
  • One of the puzzles will show you a colorful bar with a key beside it, as shown in the picture above. This event starts with only one bar, but it goes up to three as your difficulty raises. You have to hit these keys at the correct time to survive.
  • The final event possible will display four keys on the edges of a rectangle, and these keys will have a timer on them. You can only press two of these keys at a time, but you have to prevent them from running out of time.

As you get to higher difficulties, the chances of getting quick-time events when a puppet is nearby also go higher. At the highest difficulty, the puppets might check your locker even when they're not suspicious of your position.

Stop Sprinting When Bar Is Gone

Just like many other games, you can't sprint indefinitely in Hello Puppets: Midnight Show. At the bottom right of your screen, you'll see the sprint bar alongside the amount of hearts you have and the puppet you're up against. This bar depletes quickly when you're holding the sprint button.

Your speed is the same as the puppet's speed when you're holding the sprint button. While they don't get extra speed if they chase you for too long, you'll get slowed down because of the lack of stamina.

If you keep pressing the sprint button after the bar runs out, there is a little part where you'll get slowed but your stamina won't go back up. On the other hand, if you stop pressing the button when your stamina runs out, it'll start increasing instantly.

They Can Get You Through Objects

This might be a little counter-intuitive, but you need to be careful while you're looping these puppets around a certain obstacle. There are certain scenarios where the puppet comes from the side the lockers are on, and you have to loop them all the way around to get in and save yourself.

In these situations, you might not want to stay too close to the object that is separating you and the puppet. The puppets have a radius where they can capture Owen, and they can go over some of these objects. It's never a good feeling if they get you through them.

Look Out For Hidden Puzzles

Even at the highest difficulty, you'll only have a maximum of eight main puzzles to solve in Nick Nack's room. Other than that, there are a bunch of optional puzzles scattered across the area. Some common hidden puzzles include:

  • The most common chests you'll acquire are the ones with a rotating lock. You have to rotate it in a certain direction until you hear the click and start rotating it in the opposite direction once you do. You have to do this thrice to unlock the chest.
  • Another type of chest requires a code if you want to unlock them. This code is written on a random wall near the chest. This code can be extremely easy to spot at times, and hard at times as well.
  • Some chests will have a coin slot with a number written beside them. You can get Bronze Coins when you go around the area and slot them in this chest to unlock it.
  • The final type of chests you can get are the ones that require a 9V battery. These chests usually have a good item in them, but it can be hard to come by this battery.
  • On certain difficulties, you can have a booth with a puppet inside that will ask you to get three random items from the area to give you a collectible.
  • There are some other area-specific hidden puzzles. Every time you enter a room, there will be one big hidden puzzle that will give you one of the cassettes after you solve them.

These hidden puzzles are a major part of the fun of exploration in these realms, and you can also get various useful items from them that can increase your chances of survival.

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