Your Computer Is Now Haunted

IMSCARED: A Pixelated Nightmare is a pixelated horror game with some interesting mechanics that break the fourth wall. Its monster, White Face, will do everything he can to mess with you, including creating files in the game folder and opening YouTube videos while you’re playing. This guide will help you progress through the 2022 Steam edition, including how to get the achievements and where to find the files that are created during the game. Start off by completing the short tutorial that teaches you the controls.

Entering the Basement

After completing the tutorial, you should find yourself in a room with a bed, a desk, and a wardrobe. Crouch and take the small key from under the desk, earning an achievement (The First Key), then open the wardrobe. A new path should’ve opened on the other side of the room. Climb down the ladder to proceed.

Walk down the hallway and open the sixth door. Look through the bars for a scare, then open the last door beside a painting and walk in for another one.

Next, leave and open the third door in the hallway. There are some bookshelves and a chair, but other than that, the room seems eerily empty. Look behind the bookshelves for a rusty key. Before you leave this room, look through the hole in the wall for the Peek-A-Boo achievement.

Now go back to the second door and open it to reveal a weird fleshy hallway. Go in to find the Pulsating Heart. Turn around to receive a jumpscare and a fake shutdown of the game. Notice the instructions next to the QR code: check the game’s folder for further instructions. The game should’ve created a folder on your desktop. Open it and read the files inside.

The Car Park

Now that you’ve read the files, boot the game back up. You will see a message: “Hello! Do you know my name?”. Enter “White Face”. You will load into a car park, and there is a message scrawled on the wall: “Let’s Play Tag”.

Start running. White Face will begin chasing you. Touch all the arrows on the ground for an achievement. When you’re ready to leave, you should look around for an arrow drawn in red, pointing to the exit. Hop in the elevator quickly.

In this new area, go forward until you get to a gate. Touch it and a trail of blood will lead you to where you need to go. Take the key and unlock the gate.

You are back in the basement. Go through the doors to reach a familiar hallway. All of the doors are locked here, so head up the ladder to end up back in the first room. Use the exit door and see the “end” of the game.

Note: after this when you reboot the game you have a chance to spawn into a strange fleshy room. Look around to get the “Not to See” achievement. You may need to play through this section several times to get the achievement, but there’s also the opportunity to get it near the end of the game, so don’t worry too much if you’re unlucky.

The House

When you reboot the game, you’ll be in a brightly lit house with a bunch of numbered doors. Look around, and you should find a drawer low to the ground. Open it to get some tongs, then open the unmarked door next to the drawer to get key number 1. Naturally, key 1 opens door 1.

In this room, look behind the cabinet for key 8. Now everything’s gone dark. Look in room 8 and open all the drawers. A new room should have opened. Walk in, and then walk through the glass doors outside the house. Grab the key to door 7 and the lights should come back on. Open door 7 to see something spooky.

After this, go back outside and run to the next door. Pick key number 2 up from the floor. Before you do anything else, look around the main area for a trail of blood that seems to lead into a wall. Interact with it for an achievement. Open door 2 to grab key 6. Find this door and open it. Follow the path to the exit door for another fake ending.

Bury HER

When you reboot the game, you’ll start in the basement. First, go to the third door in the hallway, on the right side. Look in the hole again to get the “Peek-A-Two” achievement. Then go to the second door and grab the pulsating heart. This time, when you’re asked for a name, type HER. It will take you back to the menu, but you can press continue to keep playing.

This time, the game takes you to the parlor, which looks just like the menu screen. There are two doors here at the end of the hallway. Attempt to enter the left door, which is locked. Turn around to see an arm reaching out of the darkness.

Ignore it and grab a key from the piano, then go through the door on your right instead. Don’t run, you’ll get jumpscared, and if you do it twice, you’ll die and the game will crash.

Just keep walking forward through a series of identical hallways until HER appears and draws an arrow pointing to a spot on the right wall. Walk through the wall and press a hidden button in the painting.

Now go into the room in the left hallway, which is now unlocked, and go through the passage behind the bookshelf to reach the balcony. You’ll see HER. Approach her and then the game will pretend to crash.

BEHIND YOU

Restart the game again and you should find the key to the cellar on the balcony. Go back to the secret passage in the hallway with the painting of HER and use the key to open the door there.

Down in the cellar you will see a pool table with many different colored balls on the table. Go down the hallway to the left to find a locked cage with 4 keypads, each with a different colored ball above it. Count the number of each color on the pool table for the solution. There’s one yellow, 3 blues, 4 greens, and 5 reds. Once you’ve got the right amounts, the cage will unlock, and you can get a rope inside.

Be ready to run after this, because you will see a message saying, “BEHIND YOU”, and HER will chase you back into the parlor. Oh my god, run for your life! Run back into the green room near the balcony and quickly close the game once you land on the carpet.

Into the Labyrinth

Restart the game and you’ll find yourself where you left off. Take the rope to the balcony and climb down to enter the labyrinth. Follow the path until a message pops up in a picture frame to your left as you walk. It tells you to check here.txt in the folder, which gives you a video of a hidden passage and a map.

Go to the end of the hidden passage to find out you’ve been punked. Look in the game folder for realone.html, which gives you the real hidden passage location. It’s to the left of the gate. Go back into the game and enter the real hidden passage and turn left first. Interact with the corpse to turn the game dark and stay still for a minute to get the “Thanks for staying” achievement. Then touch the corpse again to go back to normal.

Now on the right side, grab the key. You will also need to get rid of the lock on the gate. Delete lock.txt from the game’s folder. Now you can enter through the gate to find mirror pieces in a maze. Remember the corpse from before? Using these to turn the map dark can remove some gates.

Once you get all the shards, you can put the mirror together near the entrance. Now there should be some code words appearing inside the mirror. Use the realone.html file and scroll to the correct phrase to find the code for the next gate, which is at the end of the path behind you as you look in the mirror. For example, I had “Please laugh more”, which gives the code 51947. Enter the code and then you can enter the basement… again.

The Station

You will need to go to the last room on the right side of the basement hallway. On the left side of this room, open the second drawer to get a key. Use this key on the door three doors down from the room where you got the key. Enter the elevator to go to the station.

You’ll start in a hallway. Go down it to hit a dead end, then go back and you should see a door appear. Go through it, and you will find yourself in a maze of hallways with music playing. You must find the sources of the music, gramophones, and destroy them, without getting caught by HER.

When all of the gramophones are destroyed, HER disappears and the area becomes brighter. Then arrows will take you to the key to your next destination, the metro.

The Metro

Here in the metro, you will notice a sign to your right as you exit the hallway with several times on it: 7:45 AM for work, 8:23 PM for home, and 0:00 AM for truth. Set your system clock on your computer to 7:45 AM and go to the ticket printer to the other side of the hallway. Interact with it to get a lucky ticket, then repeat with 8:23 PM to get an achievement, “Lucky Tickets”. Then, to continue the game, set your clock to midnight and see the truth. The train will arrive.

To HER Grave

On the train, you must go from one end to another, and push a button on each end. Keep going until half of the train falls off. You can then walk out of the train and walk to HER to come see the truth.

She will take you to her grave, and you will need to shoot her at least 6 times to progress. To load your gun with bullets, you’ll need to edit a new file in the game folder, revolver.ini. Change the bullets variable to a number higher than 6 (I recommend more if you think you’ll miss).

Now you’re sent back to the parlor, with a new room to enter. Go down the hallway and the screen will turn white, and you will get the “Game HEnded” achievement.

The Market

Did you think it was over? Of course it isn’t over yet. When the game boots up, you’ll be back in the begin level. Go find the heart as usual and enter “Ivan Zanotti” as the name. You will load into a supermarket. The game will alternate between putting you inside and outside of the store every time you load, so if you had to quit and reload for some reason, reboot it once if you’re not where you left off.

Let’s start off by checking the to-do list, which is not actually in the game, but the folder. We’ll need to check the refrigerator room, but we’ll need the key. Go left when you see the “check the to-do list” sign, and then go back behind some shelves to find the refrigerator room key on the shelf.

The refrigerator room is to the left of the white double door. Open it to find a letter on the floor. Take it, then slide it under the white double door. Now restart your game to go outside. Go around the back and pick up the letter, then find the mailbox on the other side of the store and send it. The first two tasks are now done.

Reboot the game again, and this time we’ll turn the power on so we can order things with the computer. Pick up the key next to the computer at the entrance of the store. Now we can get into the office, which is this room with a blue door in between the shelves shown in the picture below.

Pick up the box cutter on the ground and toss it into the trash can next to the computer by the entrance. Then reboot to put yourself outside the store. Examine the trash can outside to get the box cutter, then use it to cut the wires on the power box at the back of the building.

Restart one more time, and you’ll be inside the store, which is dark now since you cut the power. Look around the refrigerator area for the auxiliary generator box and turn it on. Now you’ve done four out of the five tasks.

Now you will only need to send the data on the computer in the office. This will put two folders in your IMSCARED game folder. Read the text file in “layer”, then look inside “Enter a great place”. There are a lot of text files, but there’s one labeled “Instructions”. Read it and watch the linked YouTube video. A bunch of numbers are going to flash at you, but to make it easier, here they are: 17 7 4 9 15 9 17 13 17 20 9 2 13 1. This corresponds to the text file numbers, and the final decoded message reads “TAKE ME TO THE DOOR”.

When you reboot again, you’re back in the begin level again. Go into the basement and get the heart, and type TAKE ME TO THE DOOR when asked for a name to enter the pipes.

The Pipes

This level involves looking for three missing valves to fix a pipe so you can open a door. There are three paths branching off from the main room, each with a valve to find.

The first room you have access to has the valve behind some steam, so walk down to the end of the other hallway to turn the machine on and clear the steam. You can now grab the valve, but a wall will block your exit. Look into the fan for a scare. After this, the wall will disappear, and you can bring the first valve back to the main room. Place it in one of the holes on the pipe.

Now one of the two locked gates will be unlocked. For the second valve, you’ll have to move on a series of conveyor belts and hit two switches along the way. Look closely at the map at the start, and where the arrows are pointing. Also, be careful with the pictures of White Face, because one of them can jumpscare you. Retrieve the valve at the end and return to the main room, placing it into the pipe.

The final valve involves a chase scene, so be ready to run. However, White Face will break your shift key, and you’ll have to solve some puzzles while you go. At the end of the path, grab the key on the ground by the bookshelf, then open the door. There’s another key on the ground along the path, take it and open the next door.

You’ll see a familiar puzzle like the car park and your shift key will be fixed, just run over all the arrows to continue. Grab the next key on the ground and open door 4. Walk onto the holey scaffolding to fall to the level below, then grab the final valve on the ground and run for it. In the main room, place the final valve, and then turn the machine on.

You can only enter the door that rises from the ground if you’ve earned all achievements in the game. If you did, continue to the next section of this guide, but if not, you may need to replay some sections of the game to get them. At least when you reboot the game all areas are accessible if you give the right name after taking the heart.

The Final Door

Inside this door, there is a simple choice. If you give White Face the flower, he’ll restart the game from the beginning, and you can play again to your heart’s content. However, if you leave through the exit door, you’ll be able to get the true ending and the “Loneliness” achievement.

Going through the final door, you’ll be in a black and white version of the begin level. Walk to the ladder and White Face will jumpscare you and crash the game.

Keep restarting and trying to leave through the exit door, and eventually, a file called heart.txt will appear in the game folder. Delete this, and White Face will be gone. Reboot the game one more time to see what’s changed. Congratulations, you’ve finally, really beaten the game!