Evac strategy: the car is not a safe place
A hotel is on fire, and you run the lift. Every floor has a call button in the shaft: press one and the car goes there and lands level, press several and it answers them in the order you pressed. The driving is done for you, so the whole game is which floor, and in what order. Almost every mistake in Evac comes from treating the car as somewhere people are already safe. They are not. The car breathes the same smoke they do.
The smoke is the only clock
Nobody has a private timer. Smoke enters each corridor from the stairwell at the far end and comes along it toward you, and a person only starts losing air once the front has actually reached them. That is why how far the smoke has come along a corridor is how long the people in it have — and why two people on the same floor are not on the same clock. Whoever is standing further from the doors is in trouble first.
It also means the clock is a picture, not a number. You do not have to remember anything. Glance down the shaft and the corridor that is furthest gone is the one that is furthest gone.
A full car can be the slower rescue
Six people fit. That does not make six the number to aim for.
Every door you open lets smoke into the car, and it clears slowly once the doors shut. So a passenger you picked up three stops ago has been breathing the building the whole way down. The arithmetic is simple and it is unforgiving: an extra stop spends everyone aboard to pick up one person.
The rule that falls out of it is not "never fill up". It is never make an extra stop just to top up. If the last person is on your way down, take them. If collecting them means a detour, they are costing everyone already aboard.
Read the bars, not the floors
The bar above each person is the air they have left. It is the only number in the game that matters, and it is the one most new players ignore in favour of whichever floor is nearest.
Going to whoever is worst off beats going to whoever is nearest, and it beats going to whichever floor has the most people. Be warned, though, that a six-seat car narrows the gap: with that much room, most orders of stops end up rescuing a similar number, and the choice only really bites when the building is filling faster than you can empty it. That is exactly when it is hardest to look.
A family boards together if it can
Some people come out of their rooms together. You can see them: they stand side by side, they are dressed alike, and they share one pooled shadow on the floor rather than a shadow each.
They board as a group when the car has room for all of them. When it does not, they are no longer left standing: the free place goes to whoever has the least air, even if that splits the group up. So arriving at a family of three with one place free is not a wasted stop any more — but it is still a stop, and it still costs everyone aboard a door.
The habit worth keeping: before you climb toward a group, look at what you are carrying. Arriving with room for all of them takes all of them in one door opening, which is always cheaper than two.
Above the fire is worst, and below it is a reserve, not a car park
Smoke is hot and it wants to go up, so it does not climb the building evenly, and the upper corridors are the first to turn. Where it settles is the thing to learn: the floor directly above the fire is the worst in the building, and every floor higher than that holds a little more clear space at the lift end. The top is not where people die — the floor above the fire is.
But not complacent there. Smoke also works downward, at about a quarter of the upward rate, and a corridor the fire has stopped feeding clears again. That is what makes the floors below the fire your reserve rather than a second emergency: leave them, and they get better on their own. The lobby itself never fills — a way out you cannot use is not a way out.
One call at a time
The car always lands level now, so landing is not the skill. Choosing the next floor is — and the surprise is that you should choose only the next one. You can queue several, and it is a trap. A queue is a plan made in the past: by the time the car reaches the third floor on your list, a corridor you did not queue has gone bad and the car is committed anyway. Played one call at a time against a queued sweep of three, the same driver got 51 guests out instead of 34.
So press one, watch what the stop changes, then press the next. Press a lit button again to take it off the list — useful when a floor you called has since been overtaken by a worse one.
The coughing is a warning, and it is a real one
When somebody's air gets low they start to cough, and the runner they are standing on lights red and pulses so you can find the floor without scanning all eight. That warning arrives with roughly five to ten seconds left, depending on how deep in the smoke they are. It is enough time to reach most floors from most places, but only if you leave when you hear it rather than after you finish what you are doing.
What the numbers actually are
| Situation | Time until they are overcome |
|---|---|
| Standing in a fully smoke-logged corridor | about 19 seconds |
| Smoke has just reached them, near the doors | about 32–39 seconds |
| Smoke has just reached them, far end of the corridor | about 19–26 seconds |
| Sitting in a car whose doors keep opening | about 19 seconds of total exposure |
| From the first cough | about 5–10 seconds |
Five people overcome ends the run. There are no levels — guests simply keep arriving, faster and faster, and the game tells you when the rate steps up.
The short version
- Go to the worst bar, not the nearest floor. It is the better rule, and it matters most when the building is filling faster than you can empty it.
- Check what you are carrying before you climb to a group. Room for all of them means one door opening instead of two.
- Do not detour to fill the car. The last passenger costs everyone already aboard.
- Call one floor at a time. A queued plan goes stale; press a lit button again to cancel it.
- Move when you hear coughing. That is five to ten seconds, not thirty.
- Expect the floor above the fire to go first and do not treat the bottom as parked.
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