Ear Me Out! Guide: How to Clean Every Ear and Hear Every Secret

Ear Me Out! is a game played through a tiny camera inside other people’s ears. This guide covers how scoring works, which tool suits which wax, how to get a plug out in one piece, and how to read every secret. The story section stays light on spoilers.

This is a silly video game. Do not try any of it on a real ear. Ears clean themselves, and if yours feels blocked, see a doctor.

How an ear is scored

Each ear is scored out of 100. Most of the score comes from how clean it is. The rest comes from being gentle, from the size of your biggest single piece, and from the things you find. A patient who walks out caps your score at 40, however clean the ear is.

Hearing is the real reward

Everything outside the patient’s head, from the music to the voices, is really filtered by the wax. So is the subtitle at the bottom of the screen. Its letters fill in as hearing improves, and a passage matters more than the amount you remove: one solid plug keeps the patient deaf however clean the rest is. Open the narrowest point and everything comes back at once.

To read the sentence on the report you need the ear nearly fully open. If it is still garbled at the end, go back and do it better.

Which tool for which wax

• Dry, flaky wax wants the loop. Hold and stroke across it. Flakes crack along their edges and come away whole, so you do not need to scrape all of a flake.
• Wet, sticky wax smears under the loop. Press 2 for suction.
• Rock-hard wax does not move and squeals if you try. Press 3, press once on the plug, wait a moment, and it softens all the way through. Oil is limited, so aim at the plug and not at the wall.

Pulling a whole plug

When you hook a big piece a bar appears. Hold to pull and let go a little to ease off. Progress only counts while the marker is in the green. If it reaches the red the plug snaps, which hurts, and the broken pieces do not count as your biggest piece. Short holds work better than one long one.

Going fast has another cost. Rushed loop strokes knock crumbs further in, where the skin is more sensitive.

Keeping the patient happy

Skin hurts, and deep skin hurts more than shallow skin. Lift the tool when you run out of wax. The eardrum at the far end is the worst thing you can touch.

Patients also move. When you see AH… AH… or a phone ringing, take your finger off. If the tool is still down when they jolt, you jab them. Lifting in time costs nothing.

Later patients have a sensitive spot low on the wall about halfway in, shown as a faint red glow. Touch bare skin there and they cough.

Finding things

Things people have lost sit in the wall under the wax. Clear around one and the tool changes to tweezers when you point at it. Press and pull it out the same way as a plug, with short holds. Four rare finds can turn up in almost anyone, including walk-ins. Everything you find goes in the Jar, and you can get 23 in all.

If something scuttles past, tap it.

What to buy

Steady Hand and Numbing Gel make mistakes cheaper and are the best first buys. The Comfy Chair helps in Walk-In Rush. Wider Loop speeds everything up, and Extra Oil is worth it for the rock-heavy later patients.

Daily Ear and Walk-In Rush

Daily Ear is the same ear for everybody that day. There is no online ranking, but Challenge gives you a code that hands a friend the same ear. Walk-In Rush is one ear after another, getting harder until someone walks out.

Do not like wax?

Open the Kit and choose Cotton Candy under Wax style. It is free from the start and turns the whole thing pink and sparkly.

Keep listening

Somebody has been giving you advice this whole time. You may want to think about who.