How to Play The Adventures of HILLS: Systems and Daily Loop Guide
The Adventures of HILLS plays like a narrative time-management RPG with free city exploration, turn-based tactical encounters, and choice-driven story branches. This guide explains the systems the tutorial spreads across the first five days so you can plan confidently from Hills's arrival in Gadola.
Daily Loop and Action Points
Each in-game day grants Hills a fixed pool of action points split into morning, afternoon, and evening blocks. Story-critical events consume blocks automatically when triggered; optional activities — jobs, shopping, companion visits, and district exploration — spend blocks you assign on the city map. When the day ends, unspent optional blocks disappear. They do not roll over.
The UI highlights NPCs with story markers, time-sensitive side content, and risky optional encounters. Learn the difference early: a gold marker usually means main plot; blue means companion content; red hints at bad-event risk if you arrive unprepared. Our dedicated Action Points walkthrough lists efficient routes by chapter.
Efficient players reserve one evening block per week for non-story maintenance — shopping, lodging checks, and tactical practice in safe zones. Neglecting maintenance days starves you of consumables before mid-game difficulty spikes.
Free Exploration and District Unlocks
Gadola opens in layers. The Gadola Overview explains geography; mechanically, each district unlocks after story flags or companion introductions. You can backtrack to earlier districts anytime unless a crisis lockdown applies late game. Fast travel between registered lodging and discovered save points reduces walking time — see Unlock Order for the sequence.
Exploration rewards include clue items, optional puzzles, and short tactical skirmishes. Not every alley contains a scene; the map counter for "undiscovered locations" helps completionists without marking spoilers. Hidden alleys often require companion abilities — for example, a lockpick passive from Slums companions or Micoco's hazard resistance in sewer-adjacent areas.
Talk to every shopkeeper once after a district unlocks. Several rotate stock and gossip hints only after first contact, a common Mango Party pattern from MICOCO carried forward into HILLS.
Turn-Based Tactical Combat
Combat is turn-based on grid-style arenas rather than real-time brawling. Hills and registered companions act in an order determined by initiative stats and occasional story scripts. Positioning matters: flanking, elevation, and cover reduce incoming harm from nobles' guards and slum syndicate enforcers alike.
Each character has a basic attack, a special ability costing tactical points, and optional combo actions when adjacent to specific companions. Read Combat Basics for UI labels and Turn-Based Tactics for advanced positioning. Unlike pure visual novels, losing a fight can consume a day block or trigger bad-event follow-ups if you flee unsuccessfully.
Practice fights in the Market District training yard unlock after Day 4. Use them to test companion pairs before story-mandatory battles that appear in Mid Game.
Puzzles, Clues, and Investigation
Investigation scenes combine inventory checks, dialogue choices, and lightweight puzzles — lock sequences, ledger decoding, and environmental clicks. Difficulty stays fair; the game expects you to revisit districts with new key items rather than brute-force every puzzle on first sight.
Clue items live in a separate journal tab from consumables. When stuck, check which district the journal tags and whether a companion suggested a follow-up time window. Several puzzles only activate at night in the Slums or during market rush hour, tying back to the action point schedule.
Micoco-related puzzles often involve multi-step environmental gags referencing the prequel; they are optional for story completion but reward achievement hunters. Hints live in How to Find without full solution spoilers in this page.
Choices, Reputation, and Multiple Endings
Dialogue choices affect companion trust, hidden reputation with factions, and which crisis solutions appear when the countdown begins. The game rarely shows numeric reputation; instead, watch for changed shop prices, new dialogue options, and companion comments at lodging.
Multiple endings branch from crisis-week decisions and pre-crisis preparation — not from a single binary at the finale. Hills's fate can swing from triumphant true ending to bad ending if exposure meters maxed earlier. Read All Endings for overview and How to Complete for route planning.
Steam Cloud saves help across devices but plan manual slots for ending splits as noted in Save Points. This guide was last updated in June 2026 after launch-day verification of action point costs on PC.
UI Navigation and Journal Hygiene
The city map, journal, companion roster, and inventory occupy separate menus bound to keyboard shortcuts documented on Controls. New players under-use the journal — it tracks investigation threads, clue combinations, and tomorrow's implied schedule when NPCs mention "come back tonight."
Mark mentally which journal entries are thread headers versus sub-clues. Headers unlock turn-in scenes at lodging; sub-clues only highlight districts on the map. Combining clues prematurely by visiting wrong NPCs wastes action blocks without failing the thread — a soft trap repeated across Mango Party titles.
Gallery and achievement progress are not visible inside journal; alt-tab to Steam overlay or keep All Achievements open during mid-game if trophy hunting.
Tactical Difficulty and Assist Options
Turn-based fights scale enemy health and damage slightly with story chapter rather than Hills "level." If damage feels low, upgrade companion participation and consumables before assuming you need optional grinding. Training yard enemies do not drop rare loot — story missions and scripted skirmishes do.
Tactical assist options in settings highlight valid moves or reduce incoming damage on lower settings. They do not simplify dialogue bad events. Players struggling with grid positioning should enable move highlights for crisis week only, then disable for achievement runs if desired.
Combo actions require adjacent positioning at turn start — plan movement before attacking. Companion AI follows rules listed in combat basics; they will not automatically reposition for combos unless their passive says otherwise.
Story Pacing vs Free Exploration Balance
PantyParrot's Steam description emphasizes freely roaming Gadola — but free exploration still competes with crisis preparation on the same calendar. A balanced first playthrough spends roughly sixty percent of optional blocks on companions and clues, thirty percent on income and supplies, ten percent on training and flavor scenes. Min-maxers shift toward clues; story enjoyers shift toward companions.
Main story gold markers never expire silently except during final countdown days — if you ignore gold markers for optional farming, the game eventually forces progression via lodging emergency scenes that still consume blocks without bonus rewards. When lodging NPCs warn about "strange rumors downtown," treat that as soft story throttle.
Multiple endings reward different pacing: bad ending paths tolerate neglected optional content; true ending paths punish it. Plan accordingly using How to Complete before mid-game banquets.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do action points carry over to the next day?
No. Unspent optional blocks expire at day end. Story blocks are scheduled separately.
Is combat mandatory?
Main story includes required fights. Optional skirmishes can be avoided with smoke bombs or routing choices in some districts.
Can I free explore during the crisis countdown?
Yes, but action points become scarce and some districts lock by story phase. See Late Game walkthrough.
What happens if I ignore companions?
Story can continue, but tactics get harder, CG routes close, and true ending requirements fail.
Is there a difficulty setting?
Check Settings for tactical assist options. Story bad events are not disabled by easy mode.
How long is a full playthrough?
Expect fifteen to twenty-five hours for one ending, longer for gallery and achievement completion.