Don't take down sleepers/lucids if you can help it. Unlike a lot of stealth games, our main character is a kid, not a super secret supernatural spy. You are meant to sneak past adults, not fight them or put them down. You can disable an adult with your bare hands and you can pin them down, you cannot put an adult out of play without tools. Also, the more people you fight, the more likely it is for the Shape to enter into play, making the game much harder. Therefore, stealth is your best friend. Stay low, stay quiet and move fast when you are in a non-favorable location (such as in the open or in the light).

You will be aided in your missions by a variety of gadgets, you should learn them well and know how to best utilize them. In each mission, you can start with a choice of 3 hero when you start off, a stun gun, a grappling hook or a crossbow with a sleeping dart.

Hero items:
These are items you can start off with in a mission
1. The Stun gun: The stun gun is essentially a escape item with a cooldown timer. You can use it to disable a regular enemy for a while. The battery will recharge itself in a while allowing you to reuse it after some time. Remember, the stun gun is an inherently sinful item, with each use bringing the appearance of the Shape closer.
2. The Grappling Hook: The Grappling Hook allows you to deploy a length of rope from a high point which you can use to climb to high points. It can also be used as a short range throwing distraction to distract an enemy when the hook hits the enemy.
3. The Crossbow + The Sleeping Dart: The Sleeping Dart is one of the two items that can permanently remove an enemy from play by putting them to sleep and the Crossbow allows you to use the Sleeping Dart from a longer range. Of course, you can use this to shoot acoustic mines or speed traps in a pinch.

The Other Gadgets:
You will encounter supply chests in the game where you can pickup more gadgets to help you with your mission
1. The Foam Grenade: The Foam Grenade will create a foam patch on the ground that can soften your fall if you are dropping off from a higher spot, the foam patch can also soak up your footstep noises, allowing you to move around quietly. It will make a noise when thrown on the floor. Last but not least, you can throw it at the Shape to force him to reveal his shape temporarily.
2. The Tripwire Trap: The Tripwire Trap is the Sleeping Dart in trap form. You can deploy the trap on the patrol route of an enemy and remove the enemy from play. Unlike what you might be led to believe, the trap is actually an AoE item that can potentially knock out multiple enemies upon usage.
3. The Flashbang: The Flashbang is a gadget that will stun enemies when deployed, allowing you to "sneak" by them.
4. The Noisemaker: The Noisemaker is a small string of firecrackers that will make a large noise when used. It will attract a group of enemies to a spot. It can be combined with the tripwire trap mentioned above to knock enemies out.
5. The Lockpick: Allows you to open a lock silently so you don't have to kick the lock, which will make a lot of noise, potentially attracting enemies to your location.
6. The Energy Bar: Replenishes your stamina and makes it full for 8 seconds. Very useful when you have to run away from the Shape or a group of enemies.
7. The Bandage: After getting damaged whether through a bad fall or an enemy, you can use the bandage to restore the maximum health of either you or one of your teammates by half the maximum.

The Drone:
The Drone is the only gadget that is exclusive to a power deck. You can upgrade it multiple times by upgrading the power deck.

Note that all ranged gadgets will allow you to distract the Shape if a teammate has been grabbed by throwing/launching it directly at the Shape. This will buy your teammate a few precious seconds to get away.

There are 4 major enemy types in The Blackout Club:

1. The Townie Sleeper
Sleepers are enemies that can hear you very well but cannot see that well. They wear PJs and a black eye cover. They mope around like zombies. It is fairly easy to avoid them, just sneak around and stay at distance from them. Try to stay away from certain ground types such as gravel roads since they seem to generate noise enough to alert sleepers even when crouched.

2. The Orderly Sleeper
Orderly Sleepers are sleepers that wears a monitoring device and some kind of orderly gown. They seem to behave similarly to your Townie sleepers.

3. The Lucid
Lucids wear some kind of robe and have a blurred face with no distinguishable features. Lucids are more dangerous enemies, since they can see as well as hear. While their hearing is worse than the sleepers, they are still able to hear you if you make too much noise. So it is generally advised to crouch near them. They have a flashlight, make sure you stay out of their flashlight.

4. The Shape
Once you have done enough naughty deeds in town, the Shape will appear and have the naughtiest player (the one that has been making the most noise and taking down the most enemies) as their target. Once it enters into play, it cannot be removed from play. You get an indicator if the Shape is near you and you can always close your eyes to see the shape. Once the Shape grabs somebody, unless a teammate uses a gadget to distract the Shape, the grabbed teammate will be knocked out and would have to be rescued.

If you don't know what type an enemy belongs to, you can use your MMB (mouse wheel) to mark the enemy. This will cause your character to call it out for being either a Sleeper or a Lucid.

The enemies are also known to set up two types of traps, the speed traps and the acoustic mines.

1. The speed traps
These are most likely find these traps on the surface. They look like a miniature tesla coil with red beams emanating around it. You can disarm these speed traps by either getting close and disabling them with your bare hands or throwing a projectile at them (ones that are tested and proven are foam grenades, humble rocks and tranq darts from crossbows).

2. The acoustic mines
You will most likely find these mines in the maze, they look like some polyhedron with yellow ripple "waves" around them" When you step into one of these, they will emanate a warning noise and if you don't get out in time, they will start shrieking and alerting all nearby enemies. They cannot be disabled with your bare hands but all the previously mentioned projectiles works fine.

The enemy also deploy two types of surveillance: The drones and the CCTV cameras. The drones are essentially mobile versions of CCTV cameras. They have a green visual cone when not alerted, if you happen to be in their visual cone, the cone turns yellow and if you don't get out in time, they turn red and start blasting an alert, causing nearby enemies and the Shape to come to your location. Both can be disabled temporarily with either foam grenades or the hacker skill deck's third upgrade. They are very easy to avoid, but if you are discovered, quickly dash around a corner or behind cover before they can sound the alert.

So you just had a run in with bad luck, your teammate threw a firecracker in your direction, you used your stun gun on one too many adults, now the Shape is coming after you, what do you do?

To know what to do, we should first understand how the Shape works:
The Shape appears only after your gang have committed enough crimes (sins), they would then come out of one of the red doors/hatches scattered around the map. They will try to head for the last seen location of the naughtiest kid. They will try to get to the kid using the network of red doors (so if you are the target, stay far away from red doors). It appears to have visual and audio senses and will use these to track said kid until they catch up to him/her and possess the kid.

There are three key words to hiding from the Shape: Distance, barrier and elevation.

If the Shape is close to you, start running like there is no tomorrow. If you have to use a bandage to heal the wounds/eat a energy bar/use the Unstoppable perk, do it. If you are on the surface, run to the backyards of those houses and start vaulting over the fences. If you are in the Maze, try go vertically, so climbing ladders and jumping beams would help, This will help put some distance between you and the Shape. Once you lose sight of the Shape (and they lose sight of you), try to be sneaky now and the Shape will have a hard time finding you again. If they somehow managed to find you, repeat the process until you shake them off again or one of your teammates takes the heat off of you. A good idea is to hide behind gardens if you are on the surface. It will not be populated by many sleepers/lucids unless they followed you there, but it will also grant you enough space to see the Shape and run off if you need.

If you are not the current target of the Shape, you can still see it (when you close your eyes) and feel it (your borders will have a special effect) when it is close to you. While you are safe for the moment, do not approach the Shape, you will get stunned and damaged if you get too close to the Shape. If the target of the Shape is close to you, get away from them, especially if you feel like you might be the second naughtiest kid. Sure you can try to sneak in a rescue once the kid gets possessed, but what is more likely to happen is either the Shape possess you while you are trying to rescue the other kid or the other kid quickly gets repossessed by the Shape. instead, make sure you are safe before going back to save your friend.

Redacre has many houses that you can enter to look for bonus evidence (which translates into extra snacks upon mission completion) or extra supplies. Keep these tips in mind when you go home invading with your fellow club members.

1. Look for alternative entrances. Most houses have doors, a front door and a back door. However, they will most likely be locked. Unless you brought a lockpick along, you will have to kick the door down, which will inevitably make a lot of noise and attract unwanted attention. Therefore it is imperative to look for alternative entries to houses. Look for climbable ledges and open windows.

2. Turn the lights off. The townies of Redacre appears to be climate change deniers as they never seem to turn their lights off when they go to sleep(walking)! Help them turn the lights off and prevent global warming one step at the time! The gameplay benefits of this is you can sneak around easier without having to worry about getting spotted accidentally by a lucid during your little house invasion. It will also help you spotting Lucids as they walk around with flashlights.

3. Unlock the doors and windows while you are inside, for you and your fellow club members! While you never know what will happen 2 minutes down the line, it would always be good to have an escape route handy! Enemies are very slow at vaulting over obstacles so if you have a door/window unlocked previously, you can easily just waltz past them and have your enemies eat your dust instead of having to look for an alternative route or kick the door down, alerting more enemies to your presence!

4. Tag enemies in the immediate proximity of the house. You never know if one of them decided to waltz into the house or heard your teammate make one too many noises inside. This way you can know if an enemy has blocked your original exit route and you can easily look for an alternative route out of the house!

Oh no, one of your teammates got possessed by the Shape and lost it!
Not all is lost and the team has to work together to get the teammate back. The possessed teammate will be walking around Town, you just have to find the opportune time to get them back into the game!

There are several ways to get them back:
1. Wait until they have wandered to a less populated area and get them back there.
2. Utilize noisemakers or the UFO gadget of the Drone to attract enemies away from the teammate you intend to rescue.

Before getting them back, always ensure the Shape is not after you or near the teammate in question! If you try to rescue them right after them getting possessed, you are just giving the Shape an easy possession.

Also do note that mission completion should come before having a full team exit. For example, if somebody gets possessed when the mission is on the go to the exit stage and there are already players at the exit, unless it is very safe or someone is very confident to get the teammate back, it is highly advised to just complete the mission by getting all surviving team members to the exit instead of risking a rescue and potentially causing a team wipe. This goes double if the team is low on supplies and the Shape is on the prowl for naughty children.

Snacks are the currency of Blackout Club. There are several ways for you to spend snacks and gain snacks to spend.

Spending Snacks
-You can exchange snacks at the wardrobe to get new cosmetics
-You can also use snacks to get supplies at either firework stations (on the surface) or counterfeit lockers (when you are underground aka in the Maze).

Getting Snacks
-Completing mission objectives
-Completing bonus objectives
-Recording bonus evidence

A good habit when you do a mission is to invade every single house you come across and go through every single room. If you are new to the game, you don't have to bother with bonus evidence in the Maze. The Maze is really confusing (hence the name), while it hold bonus evidence as well, it might be easier and safer to just go for the ones on the surface.

Remember when I said earlier to open all the windows and doors and turn off all the lights? These will help you remember which houses have been ransacked. Bonus evidence will glimmer when you are near, they generally take the form of posters or bags. Just pull out your phone (RMB) and aim it at said item to record the evidence.

Again, remember no completion = no snacks. So completion should always be your top priority.

Remember to be decent to your fellow teammates and always be polite. If the mission fails, try to figure out why it went wrong and get better the next time around!