Anglerfish Guide: Death Loop Route, Shotgun Combat, Secrets, and Endings

Anglerfish is easiest to misunderstand if you treat every death as a reset. The game only saves when you die, and the next run changes according to where and how the last one ended. That means a good guide is less about memorizing one perfect line and more about knowing what each death is trying to unlock, what to check when the bar changes, and when to stop repeating the same route.

This is a death loop guide with walkthrough checkpoints, combat advice, secret cleanup, and ending guidance. It is written for players who want to survive the first night, understand why the game keeps changing, and clean up the hidden gnomes, eyeballs, two-person room clue, later playthroughs, and secret-ending path without pretending that every run is identical.

Quick Route For A First Clear#

1. Explore the bar before midnight. Talk, inspect rooms, collect phone-number clues, and learn where locked doors, bathrooms, side rooms, and interactable objects are before the horror turn starts.
2. Accept that the first death is part of progression. The opening disaster teaches the save rule. Do not waste time trying to preserve a first run that the game expects to break.
3. Check the bar entrance after respawning. A new tool can appear after the first forced death. Use it to open the way to the shotgun room.
4. Practice shotgun spacing before pushing deep. Enemies kill on contact, and the 2.5D perspective can make a shot look lined up when it is not.
5. Go below the bar only after you know your escape lanes. The basement and sewer routes are where the game starts mixing darkness, ambushes, puzzle rooms, and post-death changes.
6. After every death, repeat the first minute slowly. Talk to the dog, check the entrance, look at previously locked paths, and scan rooms that were useless before.
7. When stuck, change the death. Because changes are handcrafted around where and how you died, repeatedly dying to the same hazard can keep you in the same learning loop.
8. Finish the first ending, then keep playing. Later playthroughs and secret content are part of the game’s structure, not just optional trivia.

What Kind Of Guide Is This?#

Anglerfish is not a conventional chapter-by-chapter horror game. Official Steam and press-kit material describe the core rule plainly: the game saves on death, and the next attempt changes based on that death. Community and review references also agree that the bar, basement, puzzles, and later playthroughs can change enough that a rigid “turn left, shoot once, use item” script becomes fragile.

Player Need	Best Approach	Why
First survival attempt	Walkthrough checkpoints	You need to know the intended early deaths, the shotgun unlock, and how to read changed rooms.
Repeated deaths	Death-loop diagnosis	The right question is often “what changed after that death?” rather than “how do I avoid all deaths?”
Combat failures	Shotgun spacing guide	The shotgun is simple, but touch damage and 2.5D alignment punish rushed shots.
Secrets and cleanup	Checklist with confidence notes	Gnomes, eyeballs, the two-person room, and Konami-code clues are real community-tracked secrets, but some exact triggers are still better treated cautiously.
Endings	Playthrough roadmap	Multiple playthroughs and a secret ending are supported by review/community references, but public Steam achievements are not exposed.

Before Midnight: Use The Bar As A Tutorial#

The opening looks like a strange bachelor-party dating game, but it is really giving you a safe map-reading phase. Use it. The bar’s rooms, exits, bathrooms, furniture, patrons, and odd little interactions matter more after midnight than they seem to before midnight.

Do these things before you worry about speed:

• Talk to people and collect number clues. A readable community walkthrough reference frames the opening as learning the bar, getting numbers, and meeting your fate at midnight.
• Memorize the main room layout. When monsters appear, you will not have time to calmly test every doorway.
• Notice locked or blocked rooms. Anglerfish often turns a death into a new tool, new opening, or new joke at your expense.
• Do not panic if you die unarmed. The first death is a teaching device and a save trigger.

After The First Death: Get Armed#

After the opening death, check the entrance area and any obvious new object before running back into danger. Community review cross-checks describe a new tool appearing near the bar entrance after the first death; use it to open the room that leads to the shotgun.

Once you have the shotgun, the game becomes survivable, but not safe. Treat the weapon as permission to explore, not permission to sprint. Enemies can still end a run instantly if they touch you, and every run back from the entrance is an opportunity to notice what the game changed.

Shotgun Combat Rules#

Combat is deliberately simple so the horror can come from change, not from ammo math. The danger is positioning. If you die several times in the same room, slow down and check whether you are firing from the wrong lane rather than assuming the enemy is too fast.

Problem	What Usually Happened	Better Habit
You shoot but still die	The shot looked lined up, but the 2.5D lane was slightly off.	Move to a clear horizontal lane before firing. A half-step matters.
Enemies reach you after one hit	Front attacks may require more than one shot.	Back up immediately after firing, or use room shape to approach from behind when safe.
You die while turning around	The movement momentum carries you into contact range.	Turn earlier than feels necessary and avoid last-second pivots near enemies.
Dark corridors feel random	You are using the shotgun as a panic button instead of a spacing tool.	Pause at thresholds, fire only from stable lanes, and use brief flashes only to orient yourself.
A familiar hallway becomes deadly	The last death changed enemy placement or room behavior.	Do not autopilot a solved route after any unusual death.

How To Use Death Productively#

The most important Anglerfish skill is not dodging. It is reading the run after a death. The official rule says the next run changes according to where and how you died, so each failure should create a short checklist.

1. Name the death. Was it a vampire touch, a fall, fishing, a dark-room ambush, a chase, a puzzle mistake, or a deliberate test?
2. Check the first hub again. Talk to the dog, inspect the entrance, and look for tools, gifts, doors, or altered dialogue.
3. Revisit the room before your death. If the same room changed, the game may be telling you the next route.
4. Look for open shortcuts. Review sources describe the game reducing repeated travel through opened doors and new access as you progress.
5. Change the experiment if nothing changes. Die somewhere else, die to a different hazard, or solve a nearby puzzle before returning.

Keep your own two-column note while playing: death cause and new change noticed. That sounds dry, but it fits Anglerfish perfectly. The game is a haunted lab notebook with a shotgun in it.

Walkthrough Checkpoints#

The exact order can vary with your deaths and later playthroughs, but these checkpoints are the safest way to think through a first clear.

Checkpoint	Goal	Watch For
Bar arrival	Explore the social space, collect number clues, and learn room connections.	Hidden numbers, bathrooms, room props, and doors that may matter later.
Midnight turn	Let the game reveal the horror layer and teach the death-save rule.	Do not assume this is a fail state. It is the mechanism.
First respawn	Find the new entrance tool and open the shotgun route.	New objects near the start, changed dog dialogue, altered access.
Armed bar route	Clear or bypass threats while opening the path beneath the bar.	2.5D shot alignment, contact deaths, ambushes in familiar rooms.
Basement and sewer push	Follow the underbar route, solve environmental puzzles, and learn dark-room hazards.	New enemies after death, puzzle-state changes, rooms that react to previous failures.
First ending	Reach the credits and unlock the next layer of the game.	Do not stop at the first ending if you want the full secret route.
Second and later playthroughs	Use first-run knowledge while expecting the game to weaponize that knowledge.	Changed puzzle solutions, new collectible routes, eyeballs, secret-ending hints.

Dog Questions, Gifts, And Changed Runs#

The dog outside the bar is worth checking after every meaningful death. Review references disagree on how much individual yes/no answers matter, so do not overfit one answer path. The practical value is simpler: the dog marks that you are in a new run, sometimes frames what the game is doing to you, and can point your attention toward new conditions.

If the dog dialogue changes, treat that as a reason to slow down. Check the bar entrance, check the shotgun room, and check any room connected to your last death. Anglerfish often tells jokes like a prankster, but the joke still has level-design information inside it.

Secrets And Cleanup Checklist#

The secrets below are based on readable Steam discussion evidence and should be treated as community-confirmed cleanup, not official checklist text. The Steam public achievement page returned an error, and the global achievement API exposed no public achievements, so this guide does not claim a verified Steam achievement list.

Secret	Where To Look	Reward Or Purpose	Confidence
Gnomes	Reported spots include a pot before the kitchen vampire, behind the lounge chair near the TV, an office desk, and the blue gnome from fishing in the break room.	After finding all gnomes, interact with the crate in the butler’s room; the reported reward is speed boosts from dandelions.	Community discussion, cautious but specific.
Eyeballs	Look especially during the second playthrough and revisit puzzle/break-room style areas after deaths change the route.	Reported reward is a shield that protects from one hit, but not from falling.	Community discussion, cautious.
Two-person stepping-stone room	Shoot the enemy whose legs remain near the lower-left area, then lure the legs onto the two-person plate to open the room.	Leads to a room with a reference scene and a painting that can reveal a Konami-code clue.	Community discussion, specific opening method.
Konami-code clue	After opening the two-person room, shoot the top-right painting for the clue; a commenter points toward a poster room accessible before midnight or before taking the gun.	Likely tied to a secret interaction. The exact input execution was not fully resolved in the captured discussion.	Partial community confirmation; do not treat as fully solved.
Petting the dog	Official materials say the dog can be petted, while review/community references connect it to hidden conditions.	Small secret interaction and run flavor.	Officially acknowledged, exact trigger not fully verified in current captures.

Gnome Route Notes#

Do not chase gnomes during your first survival route unless you already know the rooms. They are better handled as cleanup because death-state changes can alter access and because the fishing break-room gnome can kill you while you are trying for it.

A sensible cleanup loop is:

1. Finish or nearly finish a normal run so you know the bar, kitchen, lounge, office, and break-room layout.
2. On a later run, sweep the pot before the kitchen vampire, the TV/lounge chair, and office desk positions.
3. Save the fishing gnome for a run where you are willing to lose time or die.
4. After the set is complete, check the butler’s room crate before assuming the reward failed.
5. Test dandelions only after the reward state is active.

Eyeball Route Notes#

The captured discussion specifically frames eyeball cleanup around the second playthrough and reports a one-hit shield reward. Because the exact full location list was not present in the saved text, use a search pattern rather than a fake complete list:

• Recheck rooms that gained new puzzle logic in playthrough two.
• Inspect bathrooms, break rooms, symbolic puzzle rooms, offices, and any room that now has different prop placement.
• Do not rely on the shield for falling hazards. The community note says it does not protect against falls.
• If one eyeball seems impossible, change death type and revisit the room on the next loop.

Endings And Later Playthroughs#

Anglerfish is built to continue past the first ending. Official material promises each playthrough is a new take on the game, and review cross-checks point to a true/second-playthrough layer, a third-playthrough context, and a secret ending. The exact secret-ending trigger was not fully verified from the supplied sources, so the best advice is to prepare a clean later-run file rather than blindly repeating a first-run route.

Stage	What To Do	Do Not
First ending	Play normally, learn combat, and reach credits.	Assume the game is finished because the credits rolled.
Second playthrough	Check rooms that seemed decorative before, collect eyeballs, and compare changed puzzle states.	Autopilot the same route without checking new dialogue and rooms.
Secret cleanup	Finish gnomes, eyeballs, the two-person room, and poster/Konami-code clues.	Reset your save casually; the game uses death and progression history as part of the structure.
Secret ending attempt	Use a run where your secrets are already advanced, then inspect any room that hints at content beyond credits.	Trust any single unverified trigger as complete. Several public notes describe the ending, but the exact requirement is not cleanly exposed in the captured sources.

Common Mistakes#

• Trying to avoid the first death. It is part of the progression model.
• Running the same failed route ten times. Change the death, the room order, or the puzzle you test.
• Ignoring small new objects near the entrance. Anglerfish often places the next joke or key right where you are tired of looking.
• Firing before checking your lane. The shotgun is forgiving only when your alignment is clean.
• Stopping at the first ending. The game is designed around later layers and secrets.
• Assuming Steam achievements will guide cleanup. Public Steam achievement endpoints did not expose an achievement list during source checking.
• Copying another player’s exact death order. The broad logic is stable; the fun is that the game reacts to your path.

Video Walkthrough Companion#

The video below was verified through YouTube oEmbed as Anglerfish Full Gameplay / Walkthrough 4K (No Commentary) by Kozu. It is relevant as a full-play route companion. Use it when you want visual confirmation of room flow, but keep the written notes above beside you because your death-state changes may differ.

Sources And Credits#

Official information and images are from the Anglerfish Steam page and the Professional Villains press kit. Route and cleanup notes were cross-checked against readable community walkthrough, discussion, review, and verified video references; inaccessible or unrelated sources were not used for guide facts.