You let a doppelganger in. Here's how you survive until morning

Everyone writes about spotting fakes at the register. Almost nobody explains what actually happens when you fail. The post-shift hunt is where runs die — and it has rules you can learn before it ever starts.

The 60 seconds that decide everything

When your shift ends and a slipped-through doppelganger transforms, you get one minute before entities spawn in. Don't wander. Spend it like this:

• Grab your weapon first. Whatever you pre-bought through the computer — hold it now, not later.
• Nail planks on all three doors (press E). It buys time, not safety.
• Set traps at each entrance. Funneling an entity into a trap beats fighting most of them head-on.

If multiple fakes got through in one shift, this minute gets brutal. Prioritize doors and traps over looting.

Each entity plays by its own rule

Treating every monster the same is the fastest way to lose a co-op team. Six variants exist, but two are worth memorizing cold:

• The Demented works like SCP-173. Direct eye contact freezes it; look away and it closes distance terrifyingly fast. Use that — keep it visible while a teammate positions it toward a trap. Never try to outrun it.
• The Marionette is the one entity you can prevent entirely. There's a music box on the shop floor. Rewind it before the song finishes its third loop and the Marionette never spawns. Ignore it and you're dealing with a cloaked floater on top of everything else.

The others follow their own patterns — read the on-screen instruction the moment an entity appears during a Blood Moon hunt. That text is literally its rulebook.

The patience bar is the real health meter

During the hunt, a patience bar sits at the top of the screen with an eye icon. It fills when you're in the entity's line of sight, and turns red when you're being actively pursued. Break line of sight — duck behind cover the moment the eye starts filling — and the bar drains back down.

Sound counts too. Footsteps and open-mic chatter both register. Stay quiet, stay unseen, let the bar drain.

Vent shafts in the stockroom and shop floor are your hidey holes — but they're not camps. A mass descends through the shaft after a while and forces you out. Vents are for resetting line of sight, nothing more.

Buy guns before the shift, not during the apocalypse

Your starter firearm does almost nothing. The Weapons Arsenal unlocks once the patience bar hits halfway, and the Emergency Weapons Arsenal dispenses whatever stronger weapons you pre-purchased through the computer. That purchase happens during the day, when things are calm. If three entities spawn because you cleared three fakes badly, daytime shopping is the only reason you'll live through it.

The mistake that actually ends campaigns

Entities that survive a night come back stronger in future shifts. Every doppelganger you wave through doesn't just cost you one bad minute — it permanently raises the difficulty of every hunt after it. Killing fakes during the day keeps nights manageable. A run rarely dies to one monster; it dies to week-old mistakes accumulating in the roster.

Blood Moon nights guarantee entities spawn no matter how clean your shift was. Before clocking in, check the counter notes and emails — they tell you which threats are active so you can prep weapons and traps instead of improvising in the dark.