Retro-style horror title Heartworm takes place across three acts, each featuring distinct areas to explore and puzzles to solve before capping things off with a challenging boss encounter. The first of these acts takes place within the Abandoned House and Neighborhood areas. Whether you need help with a single puzzle, or would like to follow a step-by-step walkthrough of the critical path in Heartworm’s opening act, we’ve got you covered below.
Abandoned House
When you first gain control, grab the Camera sitting on top of the car.
Make your way down the road until you reach an abandoned house. Enter it through a door on the far left side.
Inside, walk forward and enter the door on the left to find a Safe Room. While you’re here, drop the Cigarettes from your inventory into the storage box, as they’re not necessary for progression and take up a slot unnecessarily.
Leave the Safe Room and enter the other door beside it on the back wall.
In this large room, enter the door on the wall right before you reach the kitchen.
This is the dining room. Walk forward here and through a door on your left to find a staircase. Head upstairs.
At the top of the staircase, wrap all the way around the loft until you reach a door on another screen. Enter this door.
Read the paper here and take note of the number 12:15.
Go back into the last room, then walk up and enter the open door on the back wall.
Grandfather clock puzzle solution
Inside this next room, move the hands of the clock to match the time from the paper you read in the other room. The correct time is 12:15.
When the closet to your left opens, enter inside and walk through the room to find an Emblem Piece. While you’re here, take note of the word ROSE.
Leave this room. Before you return downstairs, first head over to the room to the right of the open door you just came through. Navigate through the bedroom and pick up the Attic Key.
Return to the first room of the house.
Abandoned house locked door solution
There’s a door here with a lock on it. Enter the letters R-O-S-E to unlock the door.
In the basement, push a sequence of shelves out of your way until you reach a back room. In here, you’ll find another Emblem Piece.
With two of these pieces found, go into your inventory and combine them to create the Heart Emblem.
Return to the first room of the house again.
Go up the stairs, then wrap around and enter the door on the far end of the loft.
Walk through the room and up another set of stairs, then use the Attic Key to unlock the door here. Discard the Attic Key.
Walk through this room until you reach the end, then use the Heart Emblem on the red door.
Go through the door.
Follow the path down the stairs here, then onward down a very long and winding staircase.
At the end of the winding staircase, you’ll find a locked door. Return up the stairs.
Near the top, you’ll be attacked. Run back down to the door again to finally get through.
Archive
When you have control again, you’ll be in the Archive, which is Heartworm’s hub of sorts.
Head forward into a room with a giant book.
There’s a computer behind the book, just like the ones in Safe Rooms, so use that if you want to save.
To the left of the book is a machine. Throughout the game, you can collect up to three photos to put inside this machine.
The next part influences the ending, so we’ve placed it inside a spoiler block. If you don’t wish to know how your actions may change the ending, skip the below section hidden behind the spoiler block.
When you’re ready to move on to the next area, go down the hallway left of the book until you reach static blocking your path. Take a picture of the static to remove it.
Interact with the red static a bit further inside this area.
Neighborhood
When you gain control again, don’t bother wasting your ammo on the ghost here.
If you want to save, there’s a Safe Room in the first house on the left (past some chainlink fence). Otherwise, head to the right toward a store.
Go inside the store and pick up the House Key on the counter in the back.
Go back to the house you started in front of. Use the House Key to open the front door, then go inside.
Head into the living room. There’s a door here, so enter it and walk down the long and winding path to Sam’s bedroom.
Chess puzzle solution
In Sam’s bedroom is a chessboard. Sit down at the table and move the Bishop from E3 to G5.
Correctly solving this puzzle will earn you the Burst Mod for your camera. Open the inventory and click the camera, then add the mod to it. This will allow you to take three pictures at a time, which is helpful for dealing quicker damage to enemies.
When you’ve finished the chess puzzle, go back outside and wrap around the house to the garage, then open the door there. Discard the House Key.
Head around the hole in the floor to find a shelf you can push out of the way to reveal a fuse box.
Garage fuse box solution
Move the first, third, and fifth switches to the right to turn the fuse box green and drop a set of stairs.
Go up the stairs to find the Camera Bag. Open your inventory and use it to increase your inventory space to eight slots. Excellent!
Leave the garage, then head back in the direction of the store where you got the House Key. This time, take a right at the intersection, then follow the street down to an opening on the right that will lead you to a baseball field.
Take the Baseball Bat from the bleachers here, then leave.
Return to Sam’s bedroom. Place the Baseball Bat on a plaque on the wall here to receive the Model Train.
Go back to the garage. Head back upstairs where you got the Camera Bag and look on the opposite side of the room for a model train set. Use the Model Train here to the Padlock Key.
Leave the garage and approach the chainlink fence behind the house. Use the Padlock Key on the door here to unlock it. Discard the Padlock Key.
Enter the door. Shoot the static here to gain access to the Garden Photo, which is the first of the three photos needed for the true ending of the game.
Leave this area and return to the street. Head all the way to the end and enter the last house on the right by interacting with the static-filled window.
Inside, walk straight and enter the door ahead of you. You’ll exit onto a snowy street.
Directly across the street is a funeral parlor, so head there and take note that there are three unlit candles in the window. A note beside the candles will indicate that you need to find and light three candles in the neighborhood, so let’s get on that.
Funeral parlor candles puzzle solution
Leave the funeral parlor and walk all the way down the street until you see a stop sign. Take a right, then go up some stairs to enter an apartment.
Kill the enemy (or just keep your distance from it) and make your way through the apartment’s various rooms until you find the first candle. Use the Lighter from your inventory to light it.
Backtrack to the street, then return to the house across from the funeral parlor and go back to the main street.
Go all the way down the street and into the house to the left of the store.
The inside of this house is flooded. Be careful of the enemy here and head up the stairs, then enter the door at the top.
At the end of the hallway is a door on the right, and inside is the second candle. Use the Lighter from your inventory to light it.
Return to the baseball field.
On the field, you’ll notice a candle in a cage on the pitcher’s mound. To unlock this cage, you need to start from home base and run the bases quickly before the lights go out. Do that, and you’ll have access to the third candle. Use the Lighter from your inventory to light it.
Return to the house at the end of the street with the static window and make your way back to the funeral parlor.
Go inside the funeral parlor. Inside a room in this building is a casket you can interact with to be taken downtown.
Head out into the downtown area and take the street around to the right. Follow it for a while until you finally reach a door on the right leading to a Safe Room.
Enter the Safe Room and save, as there’s a boss coming up shortly. While you’re there, toss the Lighter in the storage box, as it has no further use.
Leave the Safe Room and walk straight down the street until you reach a right turn. Go down this street until you reach an alleyway with a bunch of lights, then follow it all the way through until you reach a fork.
Go up toward the warehouse door with a red light above it. Interact with this door to enter.
Walk into the next room and go up the stairs in the back right corner. Follow the walkway all the way around until you reach a blue door. Unlock the door to create a shortcut back to the Safe Room.
Inside the warehouse, head down the stairs in front of the blue door, then wrap around and enter the space between the two giant shelves.
An enemy will spawn here that will chase you through a series of screens filled with dimly-lit shelves. Weave in and out through here until you reach the end, and some boxes fall behind you to end the chase. If this enemy catches you, you’ll die, so here’s to hoping you saved recently.
Head down a few screens to reach a door in a fence. Enter it, then take the Crowbar in this area.
Return to where you first emerged from the chase through the shelves and use the Crowbar to remove the wood on the door nearby to reveal a path back to the beginning of the warehouse.
Leave the warehouse the way you originally entered, then go back through the alleyway until you reach the street again.
Go north here to see a bus.
Use the Crowbar on the bus to begin the game’s first boss encounter.
Spider Boss
The game’s first boss is a large spider. Make sure you have your Burst Mod equipped, as it’ll take about 40 hits with your camera to kill this beastly arachnid. The fight itself is pretty straightforward, but it can be a bit frustrating due to having limited mobility.
The spider can do a basic melee attack when it’s close by you, which can be difficult to avoid due to how quickly it attacks. And it can shoot webs at you, which doesn’t do much damage but will still knock you down. Again, this can be dodged if you move fast enough.
Sometimes, it will charge at you for a big attack. This can be interrupted by taking a picture when it gets close.
After doing some damage to the spider, it will sometimes leave the arena briefly and spawn a lot of smaller spiders that chase you down and explode. Just stay mobile and try not to get stuck in any corners. The explosions won’t do a ton of damage individually, but getting hit multiple times adds up.
There are multiple rolls of film and a healing item in the arena, so make sure to pick those up if and when you need them.
You’ll receive the Neighborhood Page for defeating the spider.
Archive
You’ll awaken in the Archive. Head to the left to a machine and enter the Garden Photo into it if you choose.
Now, use the Neighborhood Page on the giant book in the center of the Archive to open a huge gate to the north.
Go through the gate and follow the path to a door. Open the door to enter the second act of Heartworm.
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