How to Play Skulk
Skulk is a top-down heist puzzle where every move counts. You play a master thief working through four secured locations, and the guard roster grows as you go: The Vault is walked by human guards alone, their flashlights throwing a warm 60° beam; The Warehouse brings in tracked robots whose red scanner fans are almost twice as wide; and from The Rooftop on, swivelling security cameras watch the floor as well. Your job is to cross the floor from your entry point to the glowing treasure — the gold chest under the beacon of light with the bobbing marker above it — and steal it without ever stepping inside a vision beam.
Guards and robots march back and forth along fixed patrol routes, while cameras stay bolted in place and swing a quarter-turn every other tick. Every enemy acts on the same 600-millisecond clock, giving you time to watch the pattern and find gaps. The key skill in Skulk is patience — moving too quickly into a corridor before a guard has turned away is the most common mistake. Wait for the cone to sweep past, then advance.
Six levels make up each location, scaling from a gentle introduction with a single patroller and wide corridors to dense multi-guard gauntlets, serpentine wall mazes, and split-corridor depots where patrol routes overlap. Each level gives you a countdown timer: finishing quickly earns a time bonus of ten points per second left on the clock, so speed is rewarded — but not at the cost of racking up alert penalties. Every layout in the game has been balance-tested to be clearable with zero alerts and no gadget use, so a perfect ghost run is always on the table.
The Rock gadget is your primary tool. Select it with Q (or the Rock button on mobile), then tap any tile on the grid to throw the stone there. If an enemy is within about five tiles of where it lands, the nearest one abandons its route, walks over to investigate, waits three steps and then goes back — enough of a window to slip past. Throw outside that radius and the rock is spent for nothing, so aim near the enemy rather than at the corridor you want. Rocks are limited per level, so save them for genuine chokepoints.
Getting caught does not end the level — it sets you back to the starting tile with the timer still running and docks 150 points from your run total. With skill, a player who gets spotted once can still post a competitive score if they finish quickly enough. The goal on the leaderboard is to clear all twenty-four floors with zero alerts and maximum time bonuses — and to finish the last floor of each location clean, which pays a further 500 points.
Skulk spans four heist locations of six levels each — twenty-four floors in all — and every one has its own look: The Vault (sandstone brick and torch-gold light), The Warehouse (timber crates and amber lamps), The Rooftop (steel panels under a night sky), and The Server Room (neon teal racks with blinking status lights). Each location escalates the security stack — more guards, more robots, more cameras — and from the second Rooftop floor onward, corridors are crossed by timed laser grids that pulse on and off. An amber dotted line telegraphs that a beam is about to fire; while it burns red, stepping through it raises the alarm just like a guard spotting you. Lasers can't be smoked, frozen, or diverted — you beat them by reading the rhythm and crossing in the off window. The Server Room is the only location that puts all three gadgets on the same floor, and its later levels run three separate beams at once.
The Smoke gadget (E + click target tile) deploys a cloud that blocks every guard's vision cone within two tiles of the smoke for eight seconds. It does not move or follow you — place it between yourself and the guard before crossing a corridor, then move quickly while the cloud is active. The cloud renders as a translucent blue haze on the grid.
The Freeze gadget (R + click target tile) temporarily stops the guard nearest to your target tile for six seconds — roughly ten guard steps. A frozen guard's cone remains in the direction they were facing when frozen, so the cone does not disappear, it simply stops rotating. Use Freeze to lock a Sweeper or Sentinel at a safe angle while you pass behind them.
Strategy Tips
Watch the guard's patrol turn-around points before making any move. Patrollers reverse direction at their path endpoints, and the brief moment of reversal is your safest window to cross a corridor — the cone swings away from you as the guard turns. Count the guard's steps: the lone patroller on the first Vault floor runs from row 1 down to row 10 and straight back, nine steps each way, so its beam returns to any given spot every 10.8 seconds. Memorize that rhythm and you can predict exactly when the cone clears your crossing point.
Use the "wait" action (Space) liberally. Skulk rewards patience over speed. Waiting for a guard to reach the far end of their patrol before advancing costs you a few seconds on the timer but saves you a 150-point alert penalty, which is worth 15 seconds of bonus. Unless you are a few seconds from the level time limit, waiting is almost always the correct play.
Pick up Rock gadgets from the floor even if you don't plan to use them immediately. Rocks carried from one level carry no benefit to the next — each level resets your supply — but picking up a floor rock mid-level gives you a backup option for a chokepoint you haven't reached yet. Plan your rock throws to pull guards away from corridors that intersect with your exit path, not corridors you've already passed through.
The third Vault floor is where you learn to read walls, not just guards. Its three patrollers are all off-centre: one paces three tiles in the top-left pocket, one runs the top row between columns 9 and 13, and the third walks column 12 from row 4 down to row 9. The walls decide the route. Column 4 is solid from row 0 to row 5, so you leave the start along the bottom; column 8 is solid from row 4 to row 11, so the only way into the right half is the corridor of rows 0–3 above it; and column 12 is blocked across rows 1–3, so from that corridor you either cross at row 0 — straight through the top-row patroller, whose route ends on the treasure tile itself — or drop back to row 4 and come at the chest from underneath. Wait for that guard to walk left, then take row 0 behind him.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do vision cones work in Skulk?
Every enemy projects a vision cone in the direction it faces: human guards sweep a warm 60° flashlight beam, patrol robots scan with a red fan almost twice as wide at 108°, and security cameras hold a narrow red arc that swings a quarter-turn every other tick. A cone reaches four tiles horizontally and a little over three vertically from the enemy's own tile. Detection is sampled the moment you move and again on every guard step, so a tile that was clear when you stepped onto it can still catch you when the cone swings round 600 milliseconds later. The glowing beam on screen always shows the live danger area.
How do laser grids work in Skulk?
From the second Rooftop floor onward, corridors are crossed by security laser beams that switch on and off in a fixed rhythm — each beam burns for 55% of its cycle, and cycles run between 2.4 and 3.4 seconds depending on the level. An amber dotted line appears for the last moment of the off window to warn you the beam is about to fire; while it glows red, being on any tile it crosses triggers an alert exactly like being spotted by a guard. Watch one full cycle to learn the timing, then cross during the gap. Lasers cannot be diverted, smoked, or frozen — timing is the only way through.
What does the Rock gadget do?
The Rock gadget lets you throw a stone to any tile. If an enemy is within about five tiles of where it lands, the nearest one leaves its route, walks to the landing tile, waits three steps and then resumes its patrol — a window to pass through an otherwise blocked corridor. Throw further out than that and nothing is diverted, but the rock is still spent, so aim close to the enemy you want moved. Your rock supply is shown in the HUD, and floor rocks can be collected mid-level to restock.
How is the score calculated?
Each level cleared earns 1,000 base points plus 10 points for every whole second left on the level timer. Clearing the last floor of a location without raising an alert on that floor adds a further 500-point bonus. Every alert — from a guard, a robot, a camera or a laser — deducts 150 points from your run total at the end, and the final figure is floored at zero. The leaderboard ranks players by that final total, so a clean no-alert run with fast times is the path to the top.
What happens when a guard detects me?
The screen flashes red to signal detection and whoever spotted you shows a brief “!” bubble. Your character is immediately returned to the level's starting tile, but the timer keeps counting down. One alert is registered in the HUD, and 150 points will be deducted from your final score. The level is not over — you can still reach the treasure and complete the floor. Enemies never chase you or break formation over an alert: every patrol carries straight on, so the pattern you already learned still holds.
What does the Smoke gadget do?
Pressing E selects the Smoke gadget. Click any tile on the grid to deploy a smoke cloud at that position. For eight seconds, any guard within two tiles of the cloud has their vision cone blocked entirely — they cannot detect you even if you step into where their cone would normally reach. The cloud shows as a fading blue haze. Use it to cover a crossing point before you move.
What does the Freeze gadget do?
Pressing R selects the Freeze gadget. Click a tile and the enemy nearest to it freezes for exactly ten guard steps — six seconds — provided it is within roughly five and a half tiles of the tile you clicked. Click further out than that and the charge is spent with nothing frozen. A frozen enemy stops moving entirely and its vision cone stays locked at the angle it was facing, so freeze a Sweeper or Sentinel while its cone points away and walk through behind it. The frozen enemy renders in blue to signal its state.
