Blackwood Gameplay Guide: DVD Store Days, Hitman Nights

Developer

AttritoM7 Productions

Publisher

IZilla Games, AttritoM7 Productions

Released

16 September 2026 on Steam

Platform

Windows PC via Steam

Core structure

DVD store by day, contracts by night

Mission limit

One mission per day

Open world

No — missions run in isolated sandboxes

What the two halves of Blackwood actually are

The game revolves around your character living two lives in the same building. You start each day in your apartment, run the DVD store on the first level, and deploy to missions from a hideout in the basement. Nothing about the daytime half is optional flavour: the store is where your legitimate income comes from, and it is what pays the bills.

Missions are isolated in dedicated sandboxes, so there is no exploration loop needed to unlock locations or checkpoints. When all objectives in a mission are complete you are returned to the apartment building automatically. You then have to sleep in your bed to wrap up the day, which saves your progress and moves you to the following day.

The daily schedule you repeat every in-game day

Every day splits into daytime and nighttime, and the daytime half has a fixed opening routine. At the start of the day you freshen up, change your clothes, eat breakfast, and check your mail or order DVDs from your computer. Eating breakfast is not cosmetic — the guide notes it gives you a small HP bonus during missions.

Clothing matters too. Your character will refuse to leave the apartment if he has not changed, and will not enter the store while wearing questionable outfits, so keep something normal on hand. Buying a business suit impresses the store associate and helps raise your relationship with her. Purchased outfits are delivered to your apartment doorstep, so remember to pick them up.

The store stays open until 7PM. Once it closes, you cannot re-enter it until the next morning, and the daytime section of the day is over. Walk to the door at the end of the same hallway to reach the basement hideout, where the PC handles your mail, missions and black-market shopping.

Running the DVD store and where clean cash comes from

Your store is the source of clean cash, and clean cash is what keeps you alive. You need at least $10,340 available to pay your bills, and failing to pay them ends the run — the sources describe this as game over. Clean cash also covers business expenses such as restocking DVDs, store equipment and other purchases.

During store hours you directly affect how well the shop performs. Cleaning, restocking magazines and newspapers, suggesting movies to customers, and organising racks all feed your end-of-day evaluation and your long-term store popularity. The store's daily income is added to your wallet automatically at the start of the next day.

Store popularity is weighted across four categories, and the guide gives the exact split:

• Stock accuracy — 45%. Put DVDs on the correct genre racks, restock above minimum levels, and keep shelves at roughly 80% capacity.
• Customer service — 45%. Suggest movies that match customer interest, price DVDs fairly, and use discounts to encourage purchases.
• Organisation — 5%. Return items customers leave behind, update the daily news board, and refill the popcorn and coffee machines.
• Cleanliness — 5%. Clean stains, dust and litter, straighten shelves, and repair flickering or broken bulbs.

Stock accuracy and customer service together carry 90% of your popularity, so those two are where your time is best spent. Each rack holds up to 24 stacks and each stack holds up to 8 identical titles, which is why the guide recommends merging two partial stacks of the same film back into one.

Clean cash versus dirty cash

Clean cash pays bills and business costs; dirty cash buys the tools of the night job. Weapons, gear, ammo, weapon mods and weapon parts are all bought with dirty cash, so contracts and side missions are how you fund your loadout.

The two economies are connected by laundering. Every morning, 15% of your dirty cash is laundered and converted into clean cash, which is a steady trickle toward your bills. The black market also applies its own costs: items bought through it carry a 15% markup because they are delivered instantly to your garage.

How combat works during night missions

Combat is a normal third-person shooter core with a few signature moves layered on top. You carry one primary weapon and one sidearm and that is the limit; right-click aims, left-click fires, and you can swap between left- and right-shoulder aim on the fly. Accuracy depends on both your skill and how the weapon is modded, and some weapons offer automatic, semi-automatic or single fire modes.

The two standout mechanics are the dive kill and the throw. A dive kill lets you run, jump and shoot while time slows mid-air, and if you run dry in a face-to-face fight you can throw the empty weapon at an enemy and rush in for a melee takedown. Both reward aggression that is still calculated.

Melee uses left-click to attack, right-click to block and space to evade. The guide is blunt that this side of combat takes getting used to. When several enemies are involved, the priority is avoiding getting surrounded, funnelling enemies into tight spaces, and fighting defensively so you can counterattack after an overhead or charged swing.

Takedowns are cinematic finishers that kill instantly. Most can be performed with at least one weapon in hand against a full-health enemy who is within melee range, while melee takedowns require softening the target first so the prompt appears. Takedowns also restore a small amount of health, and you are invincible during the animation, which makes them a defensive tool as much as a finisher.

Mission limits, repeats and story progress

You can only take one mission per day, whether or not you complete it successfully. Main story missions can be repeated, but a repeat pays only 20% of the original cash reward and still uses up that day's mission slot. Some contracts reappear in your list a few days after completion and pay their full reward again.

Story progress only moves when you complete main missions. Side work — invites and contracts — exists to build your dirty cash so you can afford better gear, weapons, mods and ammo. Every Sunday the store is closed, so those days are purely for missions and contracts.

Driving, briefly

Driving is a minor system rather than a way to explore. You cannot freely roam the city, so the muscle car you own mainly exists to move you through mission areas. Controls are W, A, S and D for accelerate, turn and brake, with spacebar as the handbrake, and the car is slippery enough that braking while turning is the reliable way to corner.

Other gameplay systems worth knowing

A few smaller systems shape how a run plays out. Health is shown as a segmented standing figure in the lower-right corner, and damage taken within your current segment heals automatically after you take cover and avoid damage for a few seconds. Damage that reaches lower segments caps your recovery at those lower segments, and there are no healing items to buy, so long missions punish careless play.

Your hideout basement handles everything between missions. The punching bag sets takedown choreography, the workbench modifies weapons, the ammo stash and weapons cabinet manage your loadout, and the computer runs Dark Mail and Clean Roads. Clean Roads is the in-game black market where weapons, gear, ammo, mods and parts are bought, and it also hosts an online slot machine if you want to gamble dirty cash.