TAROTICA VOO DOO: Tarotica Voo Doo Walkthrough

• ARROW KEYS = Move cursor
• UP/DOWN ARROW KEYS = Move to next/previous frame of animation in interactions, for example moving your sword during combat
• SPACEBAR = Enter/exit interaction

These are all and the only controls in Tarotica Voo Doo! Not counting emulator options, of course. Saving and loading states may be useful if you need them, but this game is quite short.

Combat in this game is based on timing between your character’s animation and the enemies’ animation.

Once in combat your character, pictured in the bottom right in-game, will by default be holding a shield up. You will NOT be impervious to damage when shielded, but you’ll take much less than when you are hit outside of that position.

Unfortunately you will have to leave that position to swing your sword. There are 3 frames of animation you must flip through with the Up Arrow Key to land a hit, then quickly reverse through those 3 frames with Down Arrow Key to get back to your return position, safe behind your shield.

You must also return to the shield position to “recharge” your sword, giving it back the blue color that guarantees it will do damage. If, for example, you land a hit and then try to make another, but reversed back only 2 frames and didn’t put your shield back up, your sword will break on impact and do no damage. So you must be careful and make sure the back and forth of your swings are complete.

You have 15 hit points.* You shield cuts damage from hits down to 1 pt of damage, but unshielded damage is either 4 pts or, mostly for the first several enemies, a one hit kill. Death only means you have to restart the fight you were doing, and your health will refill fully at the start of every fight.

Every enemy in this game has unique timing for when and how often they attack, and when they will back off and give an opportunity to hit them back. The amount of times they attack before they go into a resting state to hit back is what I call a “cycle”; some enemies will have a cycle where they do a single hit before resting, others may do multiple per cycle, and at least a couple may arguably not have a rest phase it returns to, either continuously attacking or forcing you to swing within a very short interval between their attacks.

The key is understanding how many hits you can do in the space each enemy allows when they’re not attacking. I say to be careful with making full swings, but you also need to be fast to get as many in as possible before you have to shield too! It’s a balance between precision and speed. Experiment with those arrow keys to see how far you can go, to see if you can’t get one more swing in, and you will get the hang of it.

*An exploit that is really only occasionally useful: All battles in this game, on your first attempt, will actually give you 16 HP. Meaning that you can survive an extra hit for certain fights; there is one nearly impossible one where you can use this to win.

Press SPACEBAR after the TPM.CO SOFTWORKS logo, and a cutscene will play. Once it finishes, you will have control and find yourself just before the front door. The area that’s highlighted red is the room you are currently in, and where your interactions are currently limited to. Use ARROW KEYS to move a cursor around that room to find square interaction hotspots. You’ll find one over the front door, hit SPACE on it to bring up the front door in the interaction subscreen on the right. You can’t open the door yet, so exit this interaction with SPACE, and another square hotspot will appear beside the door on the map (this sign will be viewable from the start in the old version of the game); pressing spacebar on it will bring you to a covered sign that will teach you how to use UP AND DOWN ARROW KEYS to move through frames of animation. The sign tells you to shake the door, meaning to progress you have to (after using spacebar to exit the sign interaction if you’ve read it) “click” on the front door on the map, then “shake” it a few times in the subscreen with the up and down arrow keys. The door is stuck and you can’t open it yet, but you must shake it a few times to progress. Exit once you’ve done so and a new interaction will spawn behind you: your first combat encounter!

Dog

• 5 HP
• 3 hits per cycle, one hit KO w/o shield
• Please check the combat section before this walkthrough if you’re confused about what’s happening. Get a couple hits in before the dog starts its attack animation, then hide behind the shield for the 3 quick hits it does, then rinse and repeat. This fight is simple and easy, but you will need to be quick and fluid with your sword swings in coming fights, so get the rhythm down!

With the dog defeated, as the game tells you, a chime that tells you something changed plays. The front door will unlock, allowing you to swing the door open fully. Press space when a door is fully open to enter the mansion, now armed with the basics of how to play.

You’ll find yourself in the main foyer. None of the doors will work yet, but there are 4 interactables in each corner of the room. These are torches, and are very important in this game for progress. Put all of them into a “lit” position, and then a villager will spawn in front of the front door.

Villager

• 4 HP
• 3 hits per cycle, one hit KO w/o shield
• Attacks right out of the gate in 3 successive hits, so stay shielded until safe. Unlike the dog, yu will only have time for one hit before he attacks again.

Once you defeat the villager, the door to the left is unlocked (directions on what is where will be relative to the overhead POV of the map in almost every instance of this guide). Head into the west hallway through this door.

All the doors in this hallway are locked for now. There’s some cabinets to the right, with a single interactable one that leads to another battle.

Whip Man

• 4 HP
• 3 hits per cycle, one hit KO w/o shield
• Very similar to the villager but with a shorter window to attack him. Be VERY quick to swing and re-shield after his 3 whip hits.

Winning this battle will unlock the middle left door. Go in there to enter the bedroom. There’s not a lot to do in this room yet but there are 4 interactable points to note: 1) the wife sleeping in the north bed, who won’t wake up no matter how much you shake her, 2) a painting on the north wall which seems to hide a passage you can’t use yet, so just keep in mind it’s there, 3) a window to the west with blinds that won’t be unstuck until later, and 4) a note on the south wall. This note is important to something you will encounter soon. That’s all there is to do here, so head back into the hallway.

Reading the note makes all the cabinets interactable, including the one you clicked on before. 3 of them are cabinet zombies you must fight, with the exception of the 2nd cabinet from the bottom, which provides a (somewhat vague) hint on how to beat them.

Zombie

• 4 HP
• 6 hits per cycle, one hit KO w/o shield
• You will have to try and get two hits in at least once when they’re in the cabinet, otherwise they’ll kill you first. You can even do 3 swings if you’re feeling fast enough.

Once all 3 zombies are defeated, you’ll have access to the lower left room, the mannequin room. There are mannequins you can interact with in here, each with a window nearby shining light (or perhaps blowing wind) onto them. One of the windows can’t be opened completely, but you don’t have to worry about that yet. The positions the mannequins should be in is revealed in the note in the bedroom but the solution is: going counterclockwise, the first mannequin faces 2 o clock, the second mannequin faces 4 o clock, and the third faces 6 o clock, looking straight at you.

If you have the mannequins in the correct positions, you can then go back into the hallway and open the door on the top right, past the cabinets.

At the head of the table, you can interact with the father, as well as the daughter who’s seated to the right, but you can’t get them to leave the house as is. Light the upper left torch and you’ll get a rough map of two floors with marked spots, as well as a description of “salamanders”–火の妖精 in Japanese which can be translated as “fire sprites”, I will call them that from here on. What this map and the sprites are about will become apparent soon. You aren’t able to light the other two torches, but a fire inside the fireplace to the right can be lit when interacted with. Doing this will open a hatch appearing just above the fire, granting you access underground.

The two doors to the north and south are locked for now. A movie of fire sprites running around will play upon interacting with the center of the room, but it doesn’t do anything. All you can do is interact with a couple of sprite switches; opening them allow sprites to come up from the underground. Note how these switches correspond to the location of the torches in the dining room, and that the upper left switch is already active (if a switch is active, best to keep it that way). You will be spending the game opening a lot of these switches downstairs to light torches upstairs, as the map in the dining room indicated. With all the switches open, go back through the hatch into the dining room. You can raise the other two torches in the room, now that the fire sprites are using them can come up into them. The one on the left will make a poster appear showing that the family is having a big dinner, hinting as to how to get them to leave the house. The torch to the right will open the door to the bottom right.

There are two torches in this room, but the only one you can light is the top one right now. Lighting it reveals a note hinting that the portrait below it opens doors in this hallway (and calls you an idiot for not getting it). Specifically, where the eyes of the portrait are looking decides which door is open, and only one door can be unlocked at a time. For now you can only have the woman in the portrait look to her right, at the bottommost door, so unlock it and head into that room.

The only interactables in this room are a few windows on the east wall, open the blinds on all three to spawn three armor suits you have to fight to progress. And then after the armors are defeated, you will have to fight a rogue fire sprite that spawns closer to the door.

Armor Suit

• 13 HP
• 1 hit per cycle
• Has a lot of health. Unlike past enemies, armors won’t kill you immediately if they hit you when don’t have your guard up. This gives a little room for mistakes, but don’t lose your reflexes! This is a good opportunity to practice with the sword; getting two swings per cycle will do the job quickly enough, but see if you can’t manage a third…
• Also note that these enemies, and all others from here on, will not one hit kill you unguarded but take 4 HP with each unguarded hit. This will give you a little bit of wiggle room with your swings, but don’t get too comfortable with mistakes, as too many unguarded hits may doom you even when you’re not dead yet.

Fire Sprite

• 3 HP
• Hits continuously after a windup
• Tears through you once it begins its attack and doesn’t stop, so just get hits in as fast as possible, & don’t cower behind the shield. A 3rd hit before it starts attacking is possible, but don’t let missing that opportunity stop you! Attack into the flames!!

With all armors defeated and after the fire sprite retreats, go back underground from the dining room hatch. You’ll find the south door in the big room is now unlocked, head through it.

Opening the door that lets you exit the short conjoining hall will bring you to paths going east and west. If you check any of the four doors that branch off from these paths, you’ll find an already active sprite switch behind each. These correspond to the torches in the foyer, and there’s no reason to mess with them. The westernmost door is blocked, so take the easternmost one.

This brings you to a trail leading north, with 3 branching doors that you might guess lead to sprite switches. The only door here you can open is the one closest to the door you came from, so go in and open the sprite switch. Head back to the mansion and light the torch in the east hallway you couldn’t use before, which will allow you to aim the portrait’s eyes at the other doors. You can’t do anything with the middle room yet, so just aim her eyes to her left, granting access to the topmost door.

An interaction just to the right of the door will play a cutscene showing a draft is blowing. This is keeping you from lighting a hearth that will let you use the hatch next to it. Close the blinds on the one window in the room so the wind can’t get in, which will let you light the fire and give you another way underground.

The room you come down into will have three fire sprites you must fight. Once you beat all of them, you’ll have a fresh supply of sprites to activate torches with! The west door is locked, so take the south door out into the path you previously visited.

The two doors previously locked on this path will be unlocked; the door closest to where you came from has a sprite switch that is already active, but the one after it must be opened. Once you do so, head back up to the east hallway from the northeast hatch, change the portrait’s eye to look straight ahead, and enter the middle door in this hallway.

There will be a torch to light in this room, which reveals a new hint about the mannequins on a bookshelf, as well as an enemy you are locked in here with.

Knifeman

• 9 HP
• 4 hits per cycle
• This guy is tricky and unforgiving of mistakes, mostly owing to the larger amount of health he has. This is where playing it safe with just one or two hits per cycles ends; you need to get three consecutive hits in at least once, or he will whittle you down first. It will probably take some practice, but it can be done.

You can leave after the knifeman is defeated to, as you may have guessed from the hint, head back to the mannequin room. You may notice on the way the daughter has left the dining room table, but we will get back to her.

As the hint in Knifeman’s room suggests, you need to make all the mannequins face 6 o clock. To do this, open the blinds on the leftmost window that you previously couldn’t move before. With the mannequins in the correct position. This will change something in the bedroom where the wife was sleeping, so head there.

You can now open the blinds to the bedroom window. Doing so will wake up the wife, where you can battle her as she’s changing.

Wife

• 6 HP
• 1 hit per cycle
• Not difficult, but not much more you can do than trade a single hit back and forth, as she doesn’t give you time to do much else.

Once you defeat her, she will finally leave her bed and move to the dining room table. The next location you need to go is the room through the top left door in the west hallway, but that door will still be locked. Fortunately there is a secret passage; at this point, you should be able to go into the hole underneath the painting in the bedroom you fought the wife.

You’ll then find yourself in a laundry room. There’s a sign on the north wall telling you to wash a shirt 10 times, but you can’t do that yet. Go through the sliding door on the left side, and you’ll enter a bathroom. Check the upper part of the room, and you’ll find another hatch and a flame you can’t light next to each other. This hatch doesn’t require a lit flame however, so just use it to land in another part of the underground.

Going down, you’ll find yourself in a room with a single sprite switch and no way out. Just activate the switch, then head back up. Opening the switch will let you light the flame in the bathroom, do so and the bathtub will be heated. Unfortunately, the daughter wanted to hop in right as you did that, and she will show up as an enemy encounter.

Daughter

• 4 HP
• 1 hit continuously
• Almost impossible to win. The only way you can in my experience with the exploit I brought up earlier, being precise with your swing timing so that her odd numbered (1st 3rd etc) slaps are unguarded, and her even numbered (2nd 4th etc) are guarded. Don’t feel too bad if you don’t, as this is a battle you can lose and still progress. And you won’t get anything special for beating her anyway.

After the encounter (you probably lost), go back to the laundry room. Now since the daughter put her clothes in the wash, you can do the laundry. There will be an interaction just below the sign you read earlier to do this. The game counts one wash as when you dunk the shirt in fully, and then bring it back out fully. When you successfully do this 10 times and press space, a servant should appear to take the shirt out of the wash and bring it to the backyard to hang and dry. You need to follow her there; head through the now open north door in the dining room.

This brings you to the kitchen. You’ll find in here some appliances you should seem to be able to use but can’t fully, along with a recipe book for consomme to the right of the door you came in through. After all these chores you’ve been doing you might get the idea that you’re the one cooking dinner, and you’d be right, but that will come in due time. For now, head to the back room to the west, and from there you can get to the backyard from the door facing north. Interacting with the clothesline outside the house will put you in a battle with it.

Hanging Clothes

• 5 HP
• 2 hits per cycle
• The hard part is getting the rhythm, as it’s a short amount of time between their 1, 2’s. Always make it a quick hit and a quick re-shield!

After taming the laundry, you’ll find yourself in the back room of the house, so from there go to the laundry room. In front of the bathroom door is a fire sprite you must defeat. On doing so, the daughter will exit the bath and give you a key, which will unlock a door in the underground. With the bathroom free, you can take the hatch back down there and go through the door that was locked previously.

You’ll be in a corridor with one door leading down, and another going right. Take the right door first, and you be in room with three sprite switches. Opening these won’t do anything right now; these switches connect to the kitchen, and you will need a lot of sprites on hand for cooking before any will jump in. From here go to the right, heading towards the hatch that brings you to the study in the northeast, and you will find a fire sprite to fight in the conjoining hall. Once you defeat it, then you can head back to the door going south you passed before.

A long corridor will stretch before you. The interactable closest to the door you came from will be a fire sprite you need to fight. After doing so, and assuming you have also defeated the sprite that was in the northeast corner of the underground, both the doors on the west side of the corridor will be open. First, though, check the note just above the door in the center of the path. It says “SLEEPING ROOM, KEEP CLOSE”; this is a too vague hint for something I’ll explain in the next paragraph. First, go through the door that’s closest to the southern exit from this corridor.

You’ll find yourself in a small conjoining hall and unable to get through the next door. This is what the note refers to (except that this is NOT the sleeping room you’re trying to get into right now, but it’s relevant to that room too): in these small hallways, the door on the left will stay locked until you close the door on the right, and vice versa when you’re coming from the other direction. Think of it as an airlock, where you have to close the door you came in from to “depressurize” before moving forward. Once you do so, you’ll be in a storage room with nothing to find except a cookbook that drops from a shelf. This will add a couple more recipes to the book in the kitchen you will need soon. After grabbing it, head back into the long north-south corridor without neglecting to close doors behind you. Maybe for wine storage pressure reasons? I don’t know.

Then you can go into the actual sleeping room the note mentioned through the door next to it. Use the “airlock” method I mentioned again to get through the small hallway into the room proper. In this case keeping doors closed makes some sense, so as to not disturb the several sprites asleep in this room. But now they have to be on the clock for dinnertime.

Check every bed and remove the covers of each wherever possible–you’ll get to the one who’s a stubborn sleeper in a bit. The only one who will wake up immediately is the sprite in the 2nd bed from the top of the right column, and the rest will need some more incentive. Check the alarm in the top left corner of the room, ring it 3 times (keep in mind 1 time = 1 back AND forth), and 5 more sprites will rush out of the room. There’s still one sprite left to wake up: the one in the bottom bed of the left column that wouldn’t let you remove the covers. Do so now, and you’ll find it’s because it’s bedridden from a wound (or perhaps a tear in its fabric?). You’ll use some medical(?) tape you got from somewhere to fix it up, it will thank you and leave.

With all seven sprites awake, head back to the room with the three switches and turn them on. Even if you had them opened before you will need to do it again, as the game resets their position after you get all the sprites awake. With all three switches to the kitchen powered up, you are finished with the underground and are ready to cook dinner for the family! Head into the central underground room, take the hatch there to get to the dining room where all three family members are seated, and move to the kitchen.

First check the recipe list in the corner again, and you’ll find two new recipes from the book you got in the storage room underground. MAKE SURE TO “CLICK” ON THE RECIPE YOU INTEND TO COOK BEFORE YOU START OR THE STOVE INTERACTIONS WILL NOT PROPERLY APPEAR. Also, once again, keep in mind that 1 stir, pour, mix, etc in all of these recipes will be equivalent to forwarding through all the frames once, and then reversing back to where it was. If you mess up, you can start over no problem. Now, follow these directions for a full three-course meal…

Consomme, the appetizer

• 1) Go to the pot on the stove that you may have tried to stir earlier. Give the pot 15 stirs. If you did it properly and nothing happens, check to make sure you’ve clicked on the consomme recipe in the book. Otherwise just count your stirs carefully.
• 2) Right next to the pot, pour the contents of the pot into the thermos 9 times.
• 3) Then, right next to the previous step, ladle the broth into 4 cups to serve.

Go back to the recipe book to prepare the next course which is…

Poussin Chicken, the main course

• 1) Where the pot was, rotate the roast 12 times til evenly brown.
• 2) Next on the right, add 3 shakes of pepper.
• [3) Finally, open the oven (just leave it open without closing), and your roast is ready!

Once again and for the last time, go to the recipe book to find the page for…

Crepes, the dessert

• 1) Mix the batter 13 times.
• 2) Then cook in a skillet, letting it roll itself up 5 times.
• 3) And add 2 drizzles of sauce to taste.

With all three courses served, it’s time to check on the family. The wife and daughter just have a cutscene play when you interact with them, but interacting with the father initiates a battle as he’s eating!

Father

• 7 HP
• 1 hit per cycle
• You have to get a swing in each time before he can get you unguarded. The timing is tricky but you’ll find it!

Then, interact with the wife and she’ll start stabbing you with a fork!!

Wife (w/ fork)

• 25 HP
• 1 hit per cycle
• The safe strategy is to do 2 hits before she can get you unguarded, but 3 is doable too. Not a difficult fight though being greedy may cost you, as she has the highest HP in the game.

Finally, clicking on the daughter leads to the final showdown with the entire family!!!

Family

• 13 HP
• 5 hits per cycle
• A very tough and very strict fight. You will only have 3 opportunities to land hits, and not must they be 4 swing turns at least but one needs to have the coveted FIVE swings! The best place to try it is one the third and very last turn, though it’s possible on the 2nd.

Upon defeat, a cutscene and credits will end the game. Congratulations!