A lot of Survival Horror games these days test to see if players can beat their game in under 2 hours, which is pretty doable once you understand the layout of the game and how to progress in each section. Heartworm goes the extra mile though by asking you to do it in under one, which demands the player to be as efficient as possible every step of the way.

But it is doable, and since nobody else made a guide for this I figured I might as well. And while I'll cover my optimized pathing through the game in just a bit, your moment-to-moment gameplay is just as important to getting that sub-1 hour run.

• CHEAT YOUR PUZZLES. You don't have time to lollygag and find the in-game solutions to puzzles like the clock puzzle in the old house. Exploit that pre-established knowledge of the puzzle solutions so you can blitz through them.
  
• Fight as little as possible. Time spent killing enemies is time not spent moving forward. You can pretty comfortably run past a lot of enemies, though the blue static-ghosts and the stone statues can cost you time by slowing you down/locking you into the area around them. Keeping your distance from the former and avoiding looking at the latter helps minimize your problems with them.
  
• Get the Burst Mod and the Camera Pack. The Burst Mod essentially triples the damage output of your camera, which is important for killing the enemies you do need to kill, as well as bosses, as quickly as you can. The Camera Pack's extra two inventory spaces gives you a lot more leeway in inventory management, which means less runs to an item box.
  
• Visit save rooms as little as possible. Assuming you're avoiding most enemies and only picking up what you need to progress, you don't really have major need of saving/storing items. I'll point out some good times to visit a save room in the guide, but otherwise don't waste time.
  
• Don't bother with any other achievements for this run. You don't have time to stop and photograph possums, or alternatively get the photographs necessary for the Leaves+ ending. You're here to get the Dash Achievement. Nothing more or less.
  
• Unless you're more comfortable with tank controls, use modern controls and modern aiming. While they have their own issues whenever the camera perspective changes, on-demand running in any direction you want, and precise aiming to quickly deal with things is a big help.
  
• If you've gotten slowed down by one of the blue static-ghosts, snapping a photo of them breaks the effect immediately. Could make the difference for you if you're down to the wire.

Par time: about 6 minutes


Can be kept short and sweet.

As soon as you gain control of Sam, grab your camera, skip through the tutorial messages, and run to the house. Unlock the letter combination lock with ROSE to gain access to the basement. Run through it, push the shelves out of the way, grab the first half of the heart emblem, then leave.
Enter the Family Room next, exit into the dining room and grab the bandages and antiseptic for a medkit and combine them together. Go up the stairs to the 2nd floor.

Solve the clock puzzle by setting it to 12:15, run into the Clock Closet for the other Heart Emblem piece and combine it with the first to free up inventory space.

Run back out and go through the Hallway room to get to the Master Bedroom. Nab the attic key, then run back the way you came, unlock the Foyer and progress through to the attic. Slot that Emblem into the door, enter it, and proceed down the path to the locked door and run back to trigger the Tape Keeper's arrival... and then just run right into them! That's right, no need to waste precious time running back to the door from before that's now unlocked, the game automatically assumed you did exactly that if you were caught!

Once you're in the Archives, toss your cigs and the medkit in the inventory chest before running off to the Neighborhood. Inventory space is gonna be cramped for quite a bit.

Par time: About 22 minutes

The Neighborhood is mostly a straight shot. It also is home to two of the most important items for us: the camera bag and the burst mod.


The start is simple enough. Run in the direction of Water House, the store, and the baseball field. Swing into Water House and run upstairs to light the candle inside, then run back out and repeat the in-and-out in the Corner Store for the key. Then run to the baseball field and run the bases to free the candle and let you light it as well.

Then it's time to retrace your steps, heading back into Sam's home with the key you found to get into her bedroom, solving the chess puzzle for the burst mod before heading back out. Swing by the garage and solve the fusebox puzzle for the camera bag on the second floor and then it's time to get through the Snowy Hall so you can get into the Apartments area, juke past the two red static-ghosts, and light the final candle. This frees you up to enter the house, move past the chairs, and get into the coffin to move to the second half of the Neighborhood.


From here it's mostly a straight shot. Swing by the save room to drop off the lighter, which now is useless, and also SAVE YOUR GAME. The Spider boss is coming up and you can lose big time on the boss fights if RNG doesn't favor you.

It's otherwise a linear path through the rest of the Neighborhood. Run into the warehouse, and then through it to grab the crowbar, and use the shortcut door on the second floor to get out closer to the bus. Use the crowbar on it to initiate the boss fight against the Spider.

Spider Boss

Try not to be greedy vs. the Spider. When it comes charging at you, you might be able to get a burst shot off, but even though you can sorta stunlock it, it'll eventually retliate with a web blast. It's better to get that one shot off and then maneuver around so that its own attack misses, and then spam camera shots on it again. Repeat as necessary until it runs off and spawns its babies, which you can deal with by letting them get close before running away. The more that are dead by the time the big Spider returns, the sooner you can focus on killing it.

Assuming you don't get too greedy and get punished for it, you should be able to melt the Spider in short order. If you're doing badly, just quit out and reload your save to try again. But with its death you're whisked back to the Archives, with the pages necessary to open up the next region.

Par time: about 38 minutes


The Wilderness is, annoyingly, nonlinear and no matter how you go about flipping all the switches, you're going to need to do at least a little backtracking. What's important though, is minimizing that backtracking and especially minimizing time lost because you're stuck in a steel cage deathmatch vs. a stone statue. It is the part of the game I'm least confident about my pathing through so feel free to experiment with this chunk of the game. But in general, we want to be making more-or-less a clockwise circuit through the area, just with a few liberties along the way.

Start by heading down the path you're on to the fork in the road by the river. There's the Watermill Key on the ground at the pier, and a save room you can go into if you got a very good killtime on the Spider and don't know how easily you can get a repeat performance.

From there, you are going to head back up, but rather that go on the main trail, head to the parking garage area. Flip the switch there and continue on up to the area with the watermill. Use your key to unlock the door, and once inside interact with the piano keys in the order C, D, E flat, G, F, D, E flat, F to open up the waterfall outside. Run in there, avoiding looking at the statue along the way, flip the switch inside, and then go down the ladder to pick up the boltcutters. If you hug the left wall on the way to the cutters, you can avoid waking the statues up and can safely leave. Be mindful of the statue on your way out, then once you're out in the open flip the switch in the area while avoiding the dogs and continue on your circuit.

Move past the two statues in the next area to reach the northwest-most area, the Overlook, and use the telescope to look at the statues of Andromeda, Cassiopeia, and Cetus. This lets you get the blood kit, though it's currently unusable.

Go to the Electric Poles and kill the dog without triggering the statues. On your return trip here coming from the trian the dog's position can be sub-optimal, so it's better to just kill him. Use the boltcutters on the fence and flip the switch, then go to the trains and solve the basic sliding block puzzle, flip the switch, and then head back to the Electric Poles and continue your circuit.

Go into the Clearing and deal with the dogs along the way. Use the blood kit on the deer to drain its blood and then head into the library.

It is possible to thread the needle of the two statues waiting for you out in the front and not look at either of them, but it is very hard to do. It might help to switch to tank controls for this, pick an angle of movement, and then just run in a straight line, but either way you might still have to deal with waking up one or even both of them. Just try to play as evasive as you can. No shame in using a medkit here either if you need to. But use the blood kit at the center of the library and then run back. In the intersection in the road form here, head south and flip the second-to-last switch.

From here, take a left and run to the room with the Heart Tree. Flip the switch while beind mindful of the statue and that's all eight switches. Now you just need to start the pumps.

I'm not certain, but I think the fastest way back to the Electric Poles from there is to run back to the Fork area, then back up to the Overlook, and then lastly the Electric Poles. Press the button to restart the pumps, then retrace your steps to return back to the Heart Tree. This time, switch to tank controls so you can backwards walk up the steps to the pump and avoid looking at the statue, and then afterwards you're safe to run back down with the crank.

At long last you can complete your circuit by heading to the southwest section of the Wilderness, use the crank to drain the water, and head down into the caves. From there it's just a quick run over to the save point, and I would STRONGLY recommend saving your progress here as well since fast killtimes on the Deer are very RNG-dependent.

Deer Boss

The first thing you want to do at the start of the fight is to try to pull out your camera and take some shots of the Deer before it runs away. If you're lucky, the Deer won't run away in a direction you can't quickly turn towards and you can get two bursts of shots inflicted. From there, if you wait a few seconds from the starting location, the Deer will settle into its hiding spot, but you might still see its head poking out of the forest. This lets you have a good sense of where he's hiding.

Follow after him, avoiding the dogs as best you can. When you trigger one of the Deer's ambushes by getting too close, just keep moving in whever direction you need to in order to get out of his way. Then turn and snap photos. You can usually snap two or three bursts on the Deer before he starts to mount a counterattack, more if you managed to get behind him when he tried to jump you. There's no real science to this fight (that I know), you just want to hammer him with as many photos as you can while he's turning towards you, or whiffed an attack on you, or running away from you to try to set up another ambush. Provided you stay aggressive, you can still get him down in a short span of time, completing the Wilderness, and provided you're not too far behind 38 minutes you're in great shape for the home stretch!

Par time: about 58 minutes

After the backtrack-tastic Wilderness, the Clock Tower is fortunately very straightforward once you know what you need to do. A large chunk of the Clock Tower's areas exist mostly just to give you the solutions to the puzzles you need to get to the four items that unlock the elevator's rooftop floor, but fortunately that also means you can just skip out on all of that. No, all we need are the locks to the doors that hold those four items.




Grab the Delta Key off the desk and head up into the Dining Room. Take the northern exit to the Hallway but DON'T use the Delta Key to open up the corresponding door and go into the hospital yet. We can actually get the second lock right now.

Proceed to the end of the hallway to enter the Hole room and walk on the invisible platforms to pick up the Gamma Key.



With the second key procured, go back through the Delta door into the Hospital, run up the stairs, and solve the room puzzle by pressing the buttons in the order of Center Right, Center Left, Far Right, Far Left. Then you can run up the stairs and pick up the Cross, which whisks you back to the start of the Clock Tower. You can either place the Cross in the offerings section now, or wait until after we get the item from the Gamma door.

Go back into the Dining Room and use the Gamma Key to open the corresponding door. From here it's mostly a straight shot. Run past the mannequins in the subway, get the key to unlock the door, go through said door, and go to the "Office". Deliver the colored sheets to the corresponding folders while avoiding more mannequins, and then collect your ID card after delivering all four sheets. You'll be stuck in the Yellow Room with some mannequins after delivering the yellow paperwork, but if you wait a little while the door will rise back up.

Two down, two to go! Place an item on the offering section now if you haven't done so before to unlock the third floor, and then take the elevator up to it and take the rightside door into the Hallway, and then head north to enter the Library. The Gallery to the east contains the Omega door, and can be acquired by selecting the words Dwell, Desire, Deprive, and lastly Dread. We passed the door leading to the Omega door but before we return to it, take the western exit out of the third floor Library area to reach the left-side Hallway. Head north into the Cages area, run down the path to the ladder, and use it to get to the second floor area. Run around to the box and push onto the lift and then head retrace your steps back to the doorway leading to the Omega door. We'll pick up the Beta key later, so don't worry. Go through the next room, use the Omega key, and now it's onto the old house and the sliding tile puzzle.



The sliding tile puzzle is scarier than it actually looks, and it takes just a few moves to complete it provided you don't mess up.

1. Select Earth. This slides it down to spot 10, its intended home and frees up spot 6.
2. Select Water. This slides it left to spot 6, its intended home and frees up spot 7.
3. Select Devil. This slides it left to spot 7, and frees up spot 8.
4. Select Candle. This slides it up to spot 8, and frees up spot 12.
5. Select Time. This slides it right to spot 12, and frees up spot 11.
6. Select Devil again. This slides it down to spot 11, its intended home and frees up spot 7.
7. Select Widow. This slides it down to spot 7, its intended home and frees up spot 3.
8. Select Ship. This slides it down to spot 3, its intended home and frees up spot 4.
9. Select Candle. This slides it up to spot 4, its intended home and frees up spot 8.
10. Select Time. This slides it up to spot 8, its intended home, and completes the puzzle.

Finish running through the the second floor to pick up the Eulogy to go back to the start of the Clock Tower. Only one key item left!

Ride the elevator up to the second floor, and take a left to enter the western Hallway. Run to the top of it to unlock the door into the Cages, and from there you can nab the Beta Key that was raised up earlier when you pushed the crate onto the lift. Return to the hallway and use the upper-right door to enter the Library again, with the Beta door on the other side of the room. With the Beta Key in hand, you can open it and enter the School.

And the School is just a straight-shot through. You can run through the whole thing and not engage the enemies at all until you reach the classroom with the VHS "Quiz Time". Just mash through the "Are you a bad person?" questions, it doesn't actually impact the game at all, and run back to the tv every time you get warped back to the back of the class. After the seventh question, you can finally get the VHS tape, which is the last of the four key items you need.

Once all four are placed, you can access the rooftop, where you'll find the last pages for the book in the Archives, along with a convenient door that leads back to it. Return to it, place the pages, grab whatever heals and camera film you might have stowed in the inventory box earlier, grab the key that was revealed when you placed the pages in the book, and return to fight the Tape Keeper and hopefully finish this run in under an hour.

IMPORTANT NOTE There's not really much you can do to save time when you finally get to the Tape Keeper, and assuming you have the Burst mod for the camera, the fight is going to take about four minutes to complete. If you're falling behind, I would suggest loading your pre-Spider or Deer fight saves and trying to shave more time off of them, or get a more optimized run through the Wilderness.

Tape Keeper Boss

The Tape Keeper is... look, she tries. She tries really hard. And to her credit, while you can quickly kill both the Spider and the Deer if you're playing well, the Tape Keeper makes you have to wait your turn to actually hurt her.

Both phases involve her slamming the ground a few times and cause either objects to fall from the sky or burst from the ground. Then she does a sweeping attack that covers most of the arena, and then lastly she'll call down lanterns (four in phase 1, five in phase 2) and try to shoot you with fireballs from her eyes. Fortunately the strategy for dealing with her is simple.


This spot in the arena can't be reached by any of the Tape Keeper's attacks except for the falling debris or the film reel bursts that come out of the ground. Just stay there, move out of the way whenever either of those attakcs might hit you, and then wait for the Keeper's sweeping attack to end.

When she's turned her back on you, run out into the middle of the arena and get your camera ready for when the lanterns fall down into view. You can comfortably get two photos off before needing to move to avoid the fireballs from the Tape Keeper. Then snap the photos of the remaining lanterns to make the Tape Keeper lower her head. Photograph her then, and then repeat the process as many times as necessary to win. Assuming you're using the Burst Mod, you'll need to do this four titles total to beat her, the game immediately ending afterwards.

But there you have it! If you did everything right you should have beaten Heartworm in under an hour, or if not an hour then fairly close!