PANICORE Beginner Strategy Guide PANICORE Game Walkthrough Wiki

1 What you are actually doing

You are an urban explorer inside an abandoned building, and the objective is simply to get out. Getting out means finding the specific items that a given exit demands, working through the puzzles and coded doors between you and them, and doing all of it while something is walking the corridors looking for you.

Death is permanent for that run, which changes the maths on every decision. There is no health bar to spend and no second chance to sprint for a door. That single rule is what turns an ordinary scavenger hunt into a horror game, and it is why patience beats speed almost every time.

2 Sound is the whole game

The monster hears your footsteps. It also hears your voice. That second part is the mechanic that catches out every group of new players, because a co-op horror game normally lets you shout about where the key is without consequence. Here, shouting is a location broadcast.

There is one important exception worth knowing. On certain levels the monster is blind and close to deaf, and as long as you do not run it will barely register you. Working out which kind of threat a map has is the first thing to establish, because it decides whether you can move freely or have to creep.

3 Two exits, two different runs

Every map has two ways out, and they are not interchangeable. Each exit needs its own set of items, and the monster you have to deal with differs depending on which one you commit to. Choosing an exit is therefore a strategic decision made at the start rather than whichever door you happen to reach.

For a first run on an unfamiliar map, pick the exit whose items you have already stumbled across. Hunting for a second set because the other route sounded easier is how a run that was going fine ends. Item locations vary, so the exit you can actually supply is the correct one.

4 The brick, and what to do when it sees you

You are not defenceless. Every monster in the game can be countered with a brick, and on the hospital map a fire extinguisher does the same job. That is not a weapon in the sense of winning a fight, it is a way to buy the seconds you need to break line of sight and get to cover.

Carrying one costs you nothing and changes what a bad encounter means. A player with a brick who gets caught in a corridor has an out. A player without one has a chase they will probably lose, and permadeath means losing it once is the whole run.

5 A search order that works

Door codes deserve a specific warning. They run from three to seven digits and the game expects you to hold them in your head, so write them down or say them once, quietly, to whoever is nearest. Walking back across a hostile map because nobody remembered a seven digit code is a self-inflicted loss.

6 Playing as a group

Up to five players can be in a run. More people means the map gets searched faster and it also means five sources of noise, so the benefit is not automatic. Groups that do well tend to split into pairs rather than moving as one block or scattering entirely.

Agree the exit before you spread out. Two pairs collecting items for different exits is the most common way a group wastes a run, and it is entirely avoidable with one sentence at the start.

7 Money, documents and difficulty

Money found on the maps buys new maps and costumes, so escaping successfully is what unlocks more of the game. Documents scattered around unlock achievements and nothing more, which makes them a nice-to-have rather than a reason to take a risk.

On difficulty, work upward rather than starting at the top. The easy setting is genuinely easy and normal is a reasonable place to learn a map, while hard is a serious step up. Above that sits PANICORE+, which keeps the hardest difficulty and adds another enemy on top of it. That is a mode for maps you already know cold.