Shred the Secrets Rooms Walkthrough — Room 5 Buttons
Shred the Secrets Rooms 1-8 walkthrough: objectives, secrets, the Room 5 hidden buttons, what resets. The 12-room [ENDING 3] route has its own guide.
Last updated: 2026-09-18
Quick answer
A run spans 12 rooms since the 30 July [ENDING 3] update (8 before it) — this page covers Rooms 1-8; the new Rooms 9-12 are the Ending 3 route, covered in the Ending 3 guide and now in the Room 12 vault-room guide. Each room: hit the money goal (US$ 1.000.000 in the early rooms, up to US$ 5.000.000 in the new ones) and clear the document and scrap objectives to open the exit — you only need a path, not every paper pile. Cash-bought upgrades reset when you enter a new room, so re-max Shred Amount and Carry Amount every room. Badges mostly start in Room 2 (full guide inside): Room 3 hides the locker key and the phone, Room 4 the fake exit, Room 5 the 4 hidden buttons for Ending 1 (frame by frame in the Room 5 guide), and Room 6 the crowbar route to the basement, whose elevator opens into Room 7, the under-renovation office. Details: secrets, endings.
Room-by-Room Overview
| Room | What Happens | Secrets / Badges | Confidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Room 1 | Tutorial: grab documents, crank shredder, throw paper balls into the bin; US$ 1M goal; tutorial reward US$ 193 | Welcome!, First Day on the Job, Company Card, Millionaire (likely) | Video-reported |
| Room 2 | FBI first appears (jump scare); upgrades reset — Shred Amount back to 1 sheet | FBI capture possible (It's Not What It Looks Like) | Video-reported |
| Room 3 | Filing cabinets and lockers; secret door that stays shut; key in a locker opens a new area with the Sketchy Coworker | Keymaster, Nosy Coworker, Let's keep this between us (phone) | Video-reported |
| Room 4 | Office area hiding a fake exit door behind the paper stacks | Tricked! (fake exit) | Video-reported |
| Rooms 5-7 | Room 5 hides the 4 hidden buttons between the paper-stack columns (Ending 1 chain); Room 6 is the cobweb room: clear webs with the broom, grab the glowing crowbar, and break the boarded-up doorway at the bottom to reach the basement | Housekeeping (20 cobwebs), Intruder (planks), button chain | Video-reported |
| Room 8 (final) | Clear the last room; the Room 5 button chain pays off here — the unlocked side room holds the secret document (a golden sheet with a grocery list); the FBI arrives with a cat; Ending 1 escape | What? (Ending 1) — confirmed by multiple videos | Video-reported |
| Basement | Below Room 6 behind the planks; coffee machine brews a pot in 2 minutes (drink = shredding speed burst), then the elevator takes everyone up to the "under renovation" final area | Joy Ride, route to Dark Secrets (Ending 2) | Video-reported, high confidence |
Key Points Per Room
Room 1: Learn the loop
E to grab, F to crank, right-click to throw. Buy your first upgrade here (Company Card badge). Speedrunners re-clear Room 1 on repeat for Paperclips.
Room 2: Expect the reset
Upgrades reset on entry — do not over-invest late in Room 1. FBI jump scare; Night Guard class reduces FBI damage.
Room 3: Open everything
Open every locker (the key hides in one you will skip) and every filing cabinet (Nosy Coworker needs 20). Meet the Sketchy Coworker and grab the phone.
Room 4: Check the walls
The fake exit door blends into the room. Opening it awards Tricked! instantly — 21.5% of players have found it.
Late rooms: Webs and buttons
Carry the broom for cobwebs (20 for Housekeeping). In Room 6, grab the crowbar and break the planks to the basement for Intruder. In the button room, clear every other paper column to reveal the 4 hidden buttons.
Rooms FAQ
12 rooms per run since the 30 July [ENDING 3] update — the in-game HUD reads "ROOM 12/12" in the final room. Before the update it was 8 ("room one out of eight" in older footage). The new Rooms 9-12 hold the Ending 3 route: attic, testing lab, Mesa Corp offices and the bank vault.
Yes — walkthrough footage shows Shred Amount dropping back to one sheet per cycle when entering Room 2. Speedrunners respond by re-maxing upgrades in every room. Community-reported but consistent.
A fan guide claims Room 1 shows the US$ 1M target with a time limit (unverified). One community hypothesis links an expired timer to FBI capture — also unverified.
The basement — but you enter it from Room 6, not after Room 8. Grab the crowbar in the cobweb room, break the boarded-up doorway, brew coffee (2 minutes), then ride the elevator up with everyone aboard to reach the "under renovation" final area and Ending 2 (video-reported). (On the current 12-room build the run itself continues into the new wing at Room 9.)
All 4 Room 5 buttons glow green between the floor-to-ceiling paper-stack columns — clear every other column to reveal them and watch the wall counter tick up. Pressing all 4 unlocks the side room with the golden document and starts Ending 1 ("What?", 22.8% of players). Full answer with the exact wall prompt: Room 5 buttons.
It depends on the room. The early rooms (1-7) don't count documents at all — the exit tracks the US$ 1,000,000 money goal plus a document/scrap objective, and you only need a cleared path, not every pile. The [ENDING 3] rooms show a documents counter in the HUD instead: recordings from August 2026 show 52 documents per new room, while a September 2026 recording of Room 9 shows a /50 counter, so treat the exact number as version-dependent (video-reported; see the Room 8, Room 9 and Room 12 guides for the room-by-room reality).