DON'T LET HIM IN Doors and Windows: How to Keep the Creature Out

In DON'T LET HIM IN, every way in runs through a door or a window, and the official description is blunt about the stakes: light keeps the creature away, "but one vulnerable entrance is all it needs." Your standing orders each night are to keep the floodlights powered, watch the doors and windows, and restore the breaker the moment the power fails. When you hear him working on an entrance, the in-game tutorial gives a three-step response: look right at him, shut it, and turn on a flood light. Hold every entrance that way until 6:00 a.m. and you survive the night.

How entrance defense works

The official game description frames the whole mechanic: work together to survive the night "while it circles the house, studies your mistakes, and searches for a way in." The creature can reach the doors, the windows, and even the second floor, so upstairs entrances need watching just as much as the front door — players regularly spot him climbing toward the upper rooms. If he gets inside, the house goes dark. Your win condition is time: he comes every night, and you keep him out until 6:00 a.m., when he runs off.

Two facts shape everything else. First, he doesn't wait for an invitation — gameplay shows him opening doors and windows on his own, so a shut entrance is a task to re-check, not a solved problem. Second, light is your per-entrance protection, which is why the breaker matters as much as the doorbolts. His broader patterns around the house are covered in the monster behavior guide.

The three-step scare-off

The tutorial's instruction is: "When you hear him at the door or the window, go scare him off." The response it teaches is:

1. Look right at him. Make eye contact with the creature at the entrance.
2. Shut it — close the specific door or window he is working on.
3. Turn on a flood light to restore the protection that keeps him away from that entrance. The floodlight guide covers the light system in detail.

Your cue to move is sound: players hear footsteps outside and knocking at the door before he starts working an entrance. The game also confirms it on screen — while he is tampering, the state "Opening active." appears, meaning the moment to react is now, before he gets in. Speed matters: one player estimated "you have like 3 seconds before he comes inside," but that's a spoken guess from a single session, not a documented timer. Treat it as "go immediately," not as a countdown you can rely on.

Doors: he opens them himself

The creature works doors open on his own — groups catch him "opening doors" outright, and in one run, right after a player restored the power, he was already "opening the upstairs main B." Because closed doors don't stay closed, re-check and re-shut them after he's been meddling nearby or after any power event.

The second door rule is about you: never open a door while he is standing outside it. One player warned another directly: "If you open that door, he'll run right past you and just rip me in half." In another run, a group opened the door to let a teammate slip out while he was loitering nearby — moments later came "Breach active." If someone needs to move during the night, make sure the coast at that specific door is clear first.

Windows: the way he actually gets in

Windows are his most reliable entry, and the recorded breaches show every version of it:

• He jumps through windows. One player who missed the approach reported simply: "This guy literally jumped through a window."
• He opens windows himself. Players catch him mid-work: "He's opening another window," "he's opening up windows."
• An open window is an open door. One player restored the power, looked around, and found his "window is wide open" with the creature already inside. A player-opened top window ended worse: "It came into the pantry and ripped me in half again."
• Opening a window to peek invites him in. Players shut that down instantly: "No, close the window, bro. I don't want him to jump through."

The defensive play players fall back on is exactly what the tutorial implies: get upstairs and seal them. One group's plan when he pressed the ground floor was "go upstairs... we can close the windows."

When the power fails, every entrance is exposed

The creature cuts the power himself — in one run "the monster didn't even check any of the rooms... and he cut the power" — and the moment he does, the light protection on your entrances disappears. The official line that "light keeps it away" is the general rule; in one recorded run the on-screen text spelled it out for The Locust: "The locust doesn't breach lit areas." The power system guide covers restoring the breaker.

Until the power is back, entrance defense is manual. One group kept repeating "close them until we fix it" — and for good reason: in another run, the creature got in through the downstairs window while the group was occupied repairing the power. If you're on breaker duty, someone else is on door-and-window duty.

On-screen warning states

Entrance mistakes that end the night

• Opening a window "just to look." Every documented window breach started with a window that was open — his jump, or your curiosity.
• Opening a door while he's right outside it. He rushes straight past whoever's holding it.
• Trusting a shut entrance to stay shut. He opens doors and windows himself; re-sweep them after he works an area or after a power event.
• Treating upstairs as safe. He reaches and opens second-floor entrances, including the main bedroom.
• Letting a power cut wait. Dark entrances have lost their protection, and he uses the window you forgot first.
• Relying on silence instead of watching. The tutorial does say "watch your noise," and one player got called out with "You've been too loud, dude" — but no recorded breach traces to noise. Every documented entry came from an entrance state: an open window, a door opened while he was outside, a single vulnerable dark entrance, or a power failure. Stay quiet if you like, but spend your attention on the entrances.

If "Breach active" flashes anyway, the problem is no longer the doorway — the breach survival guide takes over from there, and the tutorial's own advice for that moment is to hide in a closet without letting him see you get in. For how a full night fits together around these checks, see the walkthrough. And since entrance and power behavior can shift after gameplay updates, re-check your habits against a fresh run if the game stops matching what's described here — the updates page tracks changes.