Haunt Sweet Home Guide – How to Scare Everyone Out, Use Ghost Powers and Get 3 Stars
Haunt Sweet Home is a free Halloween strategy and comedy game for your browser and phone. You play a little bedsheet ghost, and a new family has moved into your house. You have until 6 AM to haunt the furniture until every resident runs out of the front door screaming. This guide explains how the scares work and how to get 3 stars on all 12 nights.
The basics
- Haunt an object: click or tap one of the glowing icons. The ghost flies over and the object goes wild. Everyone in that room gets a fright. The icons glow brighter and pulse when somebody is in the room.
- Move the ghost: click or tap an empty spot and the ghost floats there. This is how you hide from ghost hunters.
- Powers: press 1 to 4 or tap a power button, then tap a room.
- Look around: drag to pan and scroll or pinch to zoom. The + and − buttons also zoom. P or Esc pauses.
Each resident has a fear bar above their head. When it reaches the top, they flee: they scream, run out of the house and score you 300 points. Clear the whole house before the clock reaches 6 AM to win the night. You lose if anyone is still inside at dawn.
Ecto: your spooky energy
Every haunt costs ecto (the green bar, shown as dots under each icon): 1 for small tricks like the lamp, radio or phone, 2 for most objects, and 3 for the Message Mirror and the Mannequin. Ecto refills slowly on its own. You also gain:
- +1 when a scare hits two or more people at once,
- +1 when a resident’s fear first passes the halfway mark,
- +3 every time a resident flees.
Each object has its own cooldown (the dark ring on the icon), so you can’t spam one object.
How fear works
- Same room only. A haunt scares everyone standing in that room, and nobody else.
- Variety matters. Every time you use the same kind of trick on the same person it works less well. The penalty fades over about 20 seconds, but it’s better to move around the house and mix it up.
- People calm down. After 5 quiet seconds, fear slowly drains away. It never drops below about a third of the highest fear that person ever reached, so progress is never fully lost.
- Panic. Above about 60% fear, residents panic. They look for company, so adults head for the busiest room and kids run to a grown-up, and then they cower there. That bunches people together for your next group scare.
- Panic spreads. A fleeing resident who runs through a room terrifies everyone in it and wakes up anyone asleep.
- The last ones are jumpy. When only two residents are left they scare 20% more easily, and the very last one 50% more easily.
Scoring, group scares and combos
Points come from the fear you cause. Group scares pay a big bonus: two people at once is a DOUBLE SCARE, then TRIPLE, then MEGA. Haunting again within about 5 seconds builds a combo. Each step adds 20% to the points, up to ×3, and a little extra fear. When everyone has fled you also get a time bonus for every second left before dawn.
Curious residents help you set up group scares. Loud objects and noisy ones like the TV, toaster, clock, piano, phone and toilet make calm people in the rooms next door come over to see what happened. Use one in an empty room, wait for people to walk in, then hit that room with something big.
The residents
- Parents: a bit jumpy. Nothing special.
- Kids: scare very easily. When they panic, they run to a grown-up.
- Teens wear headphones and can’t hear sound-only scares (radio, gramophone, piano, clock, toilet, phone, smart speaker, boombox). Use things they can see.
- Skeptics ignore weak tricks like the lamp, radio, toaster or curtains (“Old pipes.”). Big scares work. Once they are half scared, or after one BOO!, they become believers and everything works on them.
- Grannies are very brave. Grind them down with lots of different tricks.
- Party guests love loud music. While the boombox plays, scares in the party room are muffled to a quarter of their strength, rooms next door to 60%, and guests in the party room calm down twice as fast. Haunt the boombox (🔇) to kill the music. A guest turns it back on about 20 seconds later.
- Ghost hunters carry flashlights and walk to rooms where something spooky just happened. Other people feel braver when a hunter is in the room. If a hunter’s beam stays on you for half a second, you get zapped: you lose 3 ecto, your combo resets and you are stunned for a moment. When a hunter finally runs away, everyone else in the house panics.
Sleepers. As the night goes on, residents go to bed. A sleeping person barely notices quiet scares. Loud objects wake them up with an extra jolt, and their own Shaky Bed hits much harder. Sleeping people also calm down faster, so don’t let the house fall asleep.
Pets. The dog and the cat can sense you. Float within a few metres of a pet and it barks or hisses, which scares everyone in that room for free. The dog also wakes sleepers and makes people come over to look.
Ghost powers
| Power | Ecto | Recharge | Unlocked | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 👻 BOO! | 3 | 14 s | Night 1 | A big scare for everyone in the room, and it turns skeptics into believers. Hunters in the room see you and zap you. |
| ❄️ Cold Spot | 2 | 20 s | Night 3 | Freezes a room: every scare there is 50% stronger for 12 seconds. |
| 🌑 Lights Out | 3 | 26 s | Night 5 | Blacks out a room for 14 seconds. Fear creeps up on its own and scares hit 30% harder. |
| 🌪️ Poltergeist | 5 | 36 s | Night 8 | Every object in the room goes off at once, at 62% strength, ignoring their cooldowns. |
The best combo is a Cold Spot or Lights Out on a crowded room, followed straight away by your strongest objects there or a Poltergeist.
Night goals
| Night | House | Residents | ★★ | ★★★ |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 Welcome Home | 13 Maple Lane | 2 parents | 4,200 | 6,400 |
| 2 Bedtime Story | 13 Maple Lane | 2 parents, kid | 7,500 | 11,500 |
| 3 The Skeptic | 13 Maple Lane | 2 parents, kid, skeptic, dog | 11,000 | 16,500 |
| 4 House Party | The Party Pad | 4 party guests | 13,000 | 19,500 |
| 5 Headphones On | The Party Pad | 2 teens, 3 party guests | 15,000 | 22,000 |
| 6 Movie Night | The Party Pad | teen, 3 party guests, skeptic, parent, dog | 19,000 | 29,000 |
| 7 Tea with Gran | Hollowmoor Manor | granny, 2 kids, cat | 5,500 | 8,500 |
| 8 Family Reunion | Hollowmoor Manor | granny, 2 parents, kid, skeptic, cat | 14,500 | 21,500 |
| 9 The Séance | Hollowmoor Manor | 2 grannies, skeptic, teen, 2 parents, cat | 17,000 | 27,000 |
| 10 Ghost Hunters | Villa Futura | hunter, 2 parents | 7,000 | 11,000 |
| 11 Live Stream | Villa Futura | 2 hunters, party guest, teen, parent, dog | 16,000 | 24,000 |
| 12 The Big Haunt | Villa Futura | 2 hunters, skeptic, granny, 2 parents, kid, cat, dog | 24,000 | 36,000 |
The first star is for clearing the house before 6 AM.
How to get 3 stars
- Wait for crowds. One scare on three people is worth far more than three scares on one person. Lure people together with loud objects, or let panicked residents gather.
- Keep the combo going. Plan a chain of 3 or 4 different objects in one busy room and fire them back to back.
- Mix it up. Rotate between rooms and object types instead of using your favourite trick again and again.
- Strike before bedtime. Residents are easier to scare in the first half of the night. If they go to bed, use loud objects and the Shaky Bed to wake them.
- Hit and run near hunters. Haunt behind a hunter’s back, then float to the next room before the beam swings round. Scare the hunters early, because their exit panics everyone else.
- Finish fast. Every second left at dawn is worth points, and the last resident is extra jumpy.
- Shop upgrades. Ecto Tank and Ecto Flow let you haunt more often, Spookiness makes every scare 8% stronger per level, Swift Sheet speeds up the ghost and Power Charge recharges your powers faster. Coins also buy 10 bedsheets and 10 hats for your ghost.
Every cleared house ends with a real-estate listing for the place you just haunted. The faster they ran, the cheaper the house.