Unlock Winning Strategies in Tongits Go with These Pro Tips and Tricks
As someone who's spent countless hours navigating the tense corridors of The Thing: Remastered, I've come to appreciate both its ambitious design and its frustrating limitations. Let me share a hard-earned insight: winning strategies in this game aren't just about surviving alien encounters—they're about working within, and sometimes against, the game's very systems. The developers created this fascinating premise where "anyone could be an alien," but then built level design that often contradicts this core concept through rigid scripting and progression gates.
Your teammates aren't too shabby in a fight, at least, though their main purpose is often to open doors for you. I've noticed this creates the first major strategic consideration—you need to protect certain characters not because they're definitely human, but because the game literally can't continue without them. The level design commonly gates progression with broken junction boxes that prevent things like doors and computers from working. While you're able to fix some damaged equipment, about 70% of them require a specialized engineer. This creates one of the first issues with the game's notion that "anyone could be an alien." If you require an engineer to progress, then their death or transformation simply results in a game over screen, removing the potential for the type of randomness that makes the game's concept so enticing.
Here's where strategy becomes counterintuitive. You'd think the optimal approach would be to test everyone constantly and eliminate threats immediately. But the game's scripting often makes this irrelevant. I've had runs where I blood-tested someone, confirmed they were human, only to watch them transform at a predetermined story moment minutes later. The game essentially tells you one thing through its mechanics while showing you another through its narrative design. This isn't necessarily bad design—it creates a unique tension between player agency and inevitable fate—but it definitely changes how you need to approach each playthrough.
The more you play, the more it's revealed that The Thing: Remastered is essentially struggling under the weight of its own ambition. Certain squad members will become aliens at pre-determined points, no matter how carefully you've managed their trust and fear. Even if a blood test reveals that they're still human mere seconds before, this is quickly rendered moot by the game's rigid scripting. From a strategic perspective, this means you're not really playing a pure deduction game—you're playing a resource management game where some outcomes are predetermined. I've developed what I call the "pragmatic paranoia" approach: assume everyone will turn eventually, but prioritize protecting characters who are essential for progression until their scripted transformation moments have passed.
What fascinates me most is how this creates two layers of strategy. There's the surface level of managing fear and trust meters, conducting tests, and surviving encounters. Then there's the meta layer where you're essentially learning the game's scripted beats and planning around them. I estimate that about 40% of transformations are truly random, while the remaining 60% occur at fixed story points. This knowledge completely changes how I allocate resources. I'm much more willing to sacrifice characters who I know have upcoming transformation sequences, while being extremely protective of those who don't have scripted turns.
The door mechanics perfectly illustrate this dual-layer strategy. Early in my playthroughs, I'd carefully position engineers to repair multiple doors throughout a level. Now I understand that only certain repairs are actually necessary for progression. I've mapped out exactly which junction boxes must be fixed by engineers versus which ones can be handled by any character. This knowledge saves precious time and reduces unnecessary risks. It also means I can sometimes afford to lose an engineer later in a level if I've already cleared their essential repair objectives.
Some purists might argue that learning the scripted elements diminishes the experience, but I've found it creates a different kind of strategic depth. You're not just reacting to random threats—you're managing known quantities while preparing for unknown variables. The tension shifts from "who will turn" to "how do I optimize my resources around both certain and uncertain threats." This actually mirrors the themes of the original film quite brilliantly, where the characters had to manage both the immediate alien threat and the deteriorating infrastructure of their Antarctic station.
My winning strategy ultimately involves embracing the game's contradictions rather than fighting them. I maintain the illusion of uncertainty while strategically planning around the known quantities. I'll blood-test characters not necessarily to catch transformations (since scripted ones will happen regardless), but to manage fear levels and maintain team cohesion until key progression points are cleared. It's a delicate balance between roleplaying the paranoid survivor and executing calculated resource management. The real victory comes from understanding that you're not just playing against the alien—you're playing with, and sometimes against, the game's own systems and limitations.
After approximately 85 hours across multiple playthroughs, I've come to appreciate The Thing: Remastered not as the purely emergent horror experience it initially appears to be, but as a carefully crafted narrative with strategic elements. The most successful players aren't necessarily the most paranoid or the most trusting—they're the ones who understand how to navigate both the random and predetermined elements while maximizing their resources. It's a unique challenge that rewards both adaptation and foreknowledge, creating a strategic landscape that remains engaging long after you've learned its secrets.
