Thirty Flights of Loving Beginner Tips - Short Story, Montage, and Optional Details

Thirty Flights of Loving is a compact first-person story by Blendo Games about a heist gone wrong. It is closer to an interactive short film than a traditional adventure, but that does not mean you should rush through it. The best first run comes from moving slowly, watching the cuts, and letting the game teach you how to read rooms without a quest log.

The whole experience can be finished quickly, so this is a spoiler-light tips guide rather than a step-by-step route. Use it to get the right mindset, avoid missing the small interactive touches, and decide what to do after the first ending.

Essential Tips

1. Treat the First Run Like a Short Film You Can Walk Through

Thirty Flights of Loving is built around a very brief first-person trip through a crime story. It is not asking you to master combat, solve long inventory chains, or grind for better results. Your job is to inhabit the scenes, notice where the game places you, and pay attention when the timeline jumps.

That changes how you should play. Keep your pace calm, let each room breathe, and do not treat a lack of enemies or puzzles as a problem. The design is doing most of its work through placement, music, sudden cuts, character posture, and the contrast between what you expected to happen and what the next scene shows you.

If you usually sprint through first-person games, make a deliberate adjustment here. Walk into each scene, look at the people in it, note what objects are prominent, and only then move on. The game is short enough that slowing down costs very little, and the extra attention makes the ending land harder.

2. Use Basic First-Person Habits, but Expect Fewer Commands

The core controls are simple: move with standard keyboard movement and look around with the mouse. Interaction is limited, but important. When the game lets you pick up, touch, or activate something, the action is usually there to advance the scene or give the room a little more texture.

Do not look for a deep verb list. This is not a puzzle adventure where every object combines with another object. It is a focused first-person piece where movement, looking, and occasional object use carry the whole experience. When you can interact, assume the moment is worth reading carefully.

That also means you should keep your hands off autopilot. Instead of hammering the interaction key at every surface, look first. Ask what the scene is presenting: a teammate, a hallway, a bar, a door, a vehicle, a wounded companion, a museum-like space. Then act on the items or routes that feel intentionally framed.

3. Follow Characters Before Wandering Too Far

Several moments ask you to move with or near other characters. In a larger game, it might be natural to wander off immediately and scour every corner. Here, following the movement of the scene is usually the cleanest way to understand the intended rhythm.

Start by tracking the people the game introduces. Watch where Anita and Borges go, how they are positioned, and how each cut changes your relationship to them. The story depends on your sense of who these companions are before and after the missing heist, so their placement matters more than a collectible counter ever would.

Once you understand the route, a second pass is better for poking at side details. Because the game is short, replaying is painless. Let the first pass show you the shape of the story, then return to test doors, corners, bar details, and odd spaces you ignored.

4. Read Jump Cuts as Part of the Challenge

The game does not show every event in order. It cuts from preparation to aftermath, jumps around the timeline, and leaves the central heist out of view. That can feel disorienting if you expect a normal mission briefing, objective, action scene, and escape.

Instead of fighting that structure, treat each cut as a clue. When the location changes suddenly, ask what must have happened between the two scenes. When a character is healthy in one moment and wounded in another, hold both images in your head. When a celebration, crash, or museum-like ending appears without a long setup, let the contrast tell you something.

The game is not hiding a long rulebook. Its main test is whether you can build emotional and narrative continuity from fragments. You will get more out of it by thinking between scenes than by looking for a direct explanation inside every scene.

5. Interact With Objects That Break the Room’s Pattern

Although the mechanics are sparse, some objects and spaces reward curiosity. Doors, bar areas, switches, seats, and framed routes can contain small touches that are easy to miss if you only follow the center line. These details are not required for finishing, but they make the world feel more handmade.

Use a simple rule: if an object looks more deliberately staged than the scenery around it, give it attention. A door in a hallway, a usable-looking item behind a bar, or a switch in an unusual place is more promising than a blank wall. The game has a playful side, and some of that play sits just outside the main path.

Keep expectations modest. Optional moments are small, not sprawling side quests. A knock, a reaction, a hidden detail, or a strange failure state is enough. The reward is a better sense of how the game mixes cinematic control with little pockets of player curiosity.

6. Avoid Pausing to Decode Everything Mid-Scene

Because the story is fragmented, it is tempting to stop after every cut and try to solve the whole timeline immediately. That can make the first run feel colder than it should. Let confusion exist for a few minutes. The game is designed to build meaning across the full sequence, not to answer every question the instant it appears.

A useful pattern is to play once for feel, then replay for structure. On the first pass, notice moods, faces, props, and movement. On the second pass, pay closer attention to scene order, repeated rooms, and what the game leaves out. A second run is short enough to fit comfortably, and it often makes earlier images click into place.

This approach also protects the ending. If you overanalyze each transition before you have seen the full arc, you may turn an elegant short piece into a checklist. Let the game be strange first, then make sense of it afterward.

7. Save the Commentary for After Your Own Interpretation

The package includes developer commentary, and that is a good reason to return after finishing. Commentary can add context about construction, intent, and design choices, but it works best after you have already formed your own read.

Play the main story cleanly once before turning on any extra explanation. Then use commentary as a second-viewing mode, especially if you are interested in how a very small first-person game can use montage, room layout, and object placement to carry a story without long dialogue scenes.

If you are comparing it with Gravity Bone, play both close together. Gravity Bone is included as the prequel, and seeing the two side by side helps explain why Thirty Flights of Loving feels like a bolder, stranger extension of the same first-person spy-story language.

8. Accept the Ending Instead of Hunting for a Win State

Thirty Flights of Loving is not built around success, failure, or a perfect route. You are not trying to rescue every character, fix the heist, or unlock a better ending through cleaner play. The route is brief and directed, and the ending is part of that design.

If you reach a strange final stretch and wonder whether you missed the real objective, resist the urge to restart immediately. Finish the sequence, watch how the game closes, and only then decide whether to replay. Many players get more from the game once they stop asking what they were supposed to win and start asking what the sequence made them infer.

For completion-minded players, the best cleanup is not a better score. It is a second pass for optional interactions, then a commentary pass, then Gravity Bone if you have not played it yet.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

1. Do not sprint through rooms without looking at character placement - The story depends on how scenes are framed.
2. Do not expect a normal shooter loop - The first-person view is for movement and perspective, not gunplay mastery.
3. Do not treat every timeline jump as a missing objective - The cuts are part of how the story works.
4. Do not chase optional details on your first pass before following the scene - Get the main rhythm first.
5. Do not ignore doors, switches, or bar details on a replay - Small interactions are part of the game’s personality.
6. Do not turn on commentary before forming your own read - Save explanations for a second pass.
7. Do not assume Gravity Bone is unrelated - The included prequel helps frame the style and returning spy-story world.
8. Do not restart at the ending because it feels unusual - Finish the sequence before deciding what it means.

Summary

Category	Top Tip
First Run	Move slowly and read the scenes like a short interactive film
Controls	Use movement, mouse look, and interaction without expecting a deep verb list
Story	Treat abrupt cuts as clues rather than errors
Optional Details	Replay once to test staged doors, switches, bar spaces, and odd corners
Commentary	Save developer notes for after your own first interpretation
Next Step	Play Gravity Bone nearby to understand the broader style