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Everything you need to know to beat Madison's puzzles and monsters

If you're looking for a full Madison walkthrough, you've come to the right place. We've forged ahead and solved every puzzle, survived every ghost encounter, and emerged from the Maxwell house with Luca's soul intact. It's not the easiest game to navigate, so we're here to help guide you through the various challenges Madison will hit you with.

Read on for our full Madison walkthrough and we'll help you reach… well, an ending of one sort or another.

We've broken our Madison walkthrough up into twelve sections that represent the main events of the game, in the order you encounter them, and you can navigate through these by means of the links on the side of the page - or just scroll down to encounter them in chronological order!

The important thing to remember is that as a game, Madison has an… elastic relationship with logic, arguably because of the distorting power of the demons and the implication that the reality as you perceive it is fairly questionable. Intuiting the next steps or what the game wants from you, as well as how you're supposed to go about it, can be a little tough at times. If you ever want to break away from the walkthrough and try to solve things on your own, focus first on making sure you know absolutely everything at your disposal, read through any notes and text, and then go about the process of seeing how it all ties together. What puzzles want from you can often be a little unclear if you don't have all the pieces yet, so exploration and situational awareness is key.

However, for those who do want some help, never fear! Well, fear quite a lot, there's horrible ghost demons, but at least you won't be stuck on how to find them. We'll also be focusing on the critical path, with less attention given to optional notes and collectibles.

As the game starts, you'll begin trapped inside a locked bedroom with somebody hammering on the door. Your first objective is to escape, though not via the door itself.

Now you're in the corridor, your objective is to find a way out of the house, but the only door is padlocked. You actually won't be escaping via that (or using the hammer to just break a window, which I would do), but instead by making your way further inside.

The polaroid instant camera is the big new addition here - it's an integral part of your inventory and serves as an important way to gain information. Like with the lightbulb, it can alter certain key objects by photographing them, and the photographs it prints out can reveal additional information beyond what your eyes can see. As a rule, you should photograph anything surrounded by polaroid photos, or just anything that seems weird.

Once you step through the study door, just ahead of you will be a small room with a safe, where you can deposit items to make space in your inventory. As a rule, you always want at least once space available to pick up new things, otherwise you'll have to trek back to this room to make space again, as items can't be discarded or dropped.

The Red Door is one you might've found already if you've been exploring, but until now it wouldn't open. This marks one of the first times that Madison will display a flexible attitude to logic and reality, though not the last.

Now you're back in the house, things are going to get a little more complicated. The goal of escaping has been put aside in favour of pursuing answers about your situation, though they'll be few and far between. 

Inside is a network of tunnels that forms a maze - and frankly, it's a nightmare. You can't die in here, but there are jumpscares and there's also no clear explanation of where to go for a while. Here's our best advice:

This is another segment we've gone into more detail in the Madison church mazes page, but you can find what you need here too in an abridged version. Luca can travel between three eras of the Cathedral - 2022, 1987 and 1951 - by photographing the signs labelled as such, and needs to use this power to acquire four candles and set them up beneath the appropriate paintings while avoiding Hans the Nazi Ghost. Obviously.

Things get a little confusing from this point on - Luca discovers that Madison Hale is trying to start a ritual to take over his body from beyond the grave, and is so shocked and horrified by this idea that he… carries on doing the ritual for her? Or perhaps Madison already has some control and is forcing him to do it, it's not clear. Either way, it's the only path to progress, so we might as well.

At this point the objective of the game is getting the Madison lock code so you can complete the ritual, which we've discussed a little more at the attached link. Of course, the guide below serves just as well if you want to keep reading.

The next phase is all about setting clocks, which was Grandpa's shtick, and explains all the various clocks you've been seeing around the game so far that you couldn't interact with. This is their time to shine - pun most definitely intended. 

Things are going to probably reach their creepiest point from here on out, as Luca will have to deal with the Madison Blue Knees demon, who we've elaborated on at the attached guide, including some lore on this horrible gremlin.

You're nearly there now, as the confrontation with Blue Knees is more of a final boss fight than anything else. The final stages are fairly simple, but we'll walk you through them just in case.

Congratulations on completing Madison! The ending is certainly pretty cryptic, so we've put together a Madison ending explained guide to help consider the consequences of what happens to Luca in the final act.

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Joel Franey is a writer, journalist, podcaster and raconteur with a Masters from Sussex University, none of which has actually equipped him for anything in real life. As a result he chooses to spend most of his time playing video games, reading old books and ingesting chemically-risky levels of caffeine. He is a firm believer that the vast majority of games would be improved by adding a grappling hook, and if they already have one, they should probably add another just to be safe. You can find old work of his at USgamer, Gfinity, Eurogamer and more besides.

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