South Hell Beginner Guide: What Happens When You First Start

Quick answer

Your round opens with four tutorial cards: page through them with NEXT, then press START. You wake in the school basement with LIVES 3 and the objective 'Find a way out of the basement'. Your first task is to pick up the crowbar and pry the five boards off the way up; clearing them changes the objective to 'Find the keys 0/4'.

South Hell opens with a short tutorial, then an even shorter basement task before the round widens into the school. The four cards explain the rules of the round, and the objective text in the basement names the crowbar and the boards you needed before the key search begins.

The four tutorial cards

Four cards appear in order before play begins. NEXT moves to the next card, and START begins the round. Each card covers one part of the opening loop:

• GET OUT. "Find the KEYS in the LOCKERS. Unlock the EXIT DOOR in the basement." The card splits the escape in two: keys come out of lockers, and the door they open is in the basement.
• HE HUNTS YOU. "Cartman is coming? HIDE in a locker. Running is LOUD." The card names the hunter, Cartman, and ties hiding to noise: running makes you loud, so a locker is where you go when he is coming.
• THE DARK. You carry a flashlight and batteries, and the card warns "DON'T SHINE YOUR LIGHT ON IKE." Light is part of your starting kit, and Ike is singled out as the thing not to point it at.
• SAFE ROOMS. "The BASEMENT and the SAFE ROOM are safe. Cartman can't come in." Two places in the school are off-limits to the hunter, and the basement is one of them.

The experience description is shorter still: you wake in the school basement, the doors are locked, and "HE" is hunting you. The "HE HUNTS YOU" card is where that threat gets a name: Cartman.

Waking up in the basement

After START you wake in the basement with LIVES 3 and the objective "Find a way out of the basement." Two lines of on-screen text set up the first task:

The way up is boarded shut. Go look at the BOARDS.

I need to find the crowbar. These nails won't come out by hand.

The two lines describe one problem in two parts. The way out is the boarded opening upward, but those boards are nailed down, and the second line explains why you cannot simply pull them off by hand. The crowbar comes first; the boards come second.

Your first actions in order

Checklist

• Pick up the crowbar

  It sits between a green electrical cabinet and the toilet in the starting area. Use the 'E Pick up crowbar' prompt.

• Pry the five boards

  With the crowbar held, the objective becomes 'Pry the boards off 0/5' and the game adds 'Now go to the BOARDS and press E to pull them off.'

• Read the new objective

  After the fifth board comes off, the game reports 'The way is open. I'll leave the crowbar here.' and the objective becomes 'Find the keys 0/4'.

The boards step starts only once you have the crowbar in hand. The counter tracks the boards as you remove them, running from 0 to 5, so each increase confirms that your press registered.

The message when the fifth board comes off tells you two things at once: the route up is clear, and the crowbar stays where you used it instead of traveling with you. The objective switching to "Find the keys 0/4" marks the end of the basement task.

What the key objective means

"Find the keys 0/4" is a running count of your keys out of four. The first tutorial card already put the keys in lockers and named the exit door in the basement as what they unlock, so this objective measures a search rather than pointing at a single object. The objective text stays the clearest signal of what the game expects next.

The dedicated pages continue from here: South Hell keys for the key objective, and the South Hell walkthrough for the route past the basement.

Lockers are not only key storage

A hallway locker can contain a trap. The pickup message reads "You found a trap! Take it out (5), aim at the floor and click to place it." The number in the message is the slot: switch to slot 5, aim at the floor, and click to place it. The trap turned up in a hallway locker after the basement boards had been opened, so lockers can still surprise you once the key search is under way.

Rules to lean on while you learn the school

The tutorial's rules still apply after the prompts change. Running is loud, so when Cartman is coming, a locker is the answer the game itself gives you. The basement and the safe room are the two places he cannot come in, which makes them the landmarks to recognize before you know the rest of the school.

The flashlight and batteries stay with you, and the light warning is specific: don't shine your light on Ike. The card singles out Ike as the one thing your beam should not touch.

Setup and BETA notes

South Hell [BETA] is still under development. The developer recommends headphones and voice chat on, and the experience description warns that you may still run into bugs while fixes are made. Both bugs and ideas go to the mailbox in the lobby, which is what the South Hell feedback mailbox page covers.

The server allows up to 24 players, so other players can share your server.