Aisles Of The Locust Flashlight Guide: Light Discipline and Locust Detection

Keep the flashlight off by default in Aisles of the Locust. It is the tool that gets you through the store's near-total darkness, but the Locust that patrols the aisles keys on light — so the same beam that shows you the shelving can hand you away. The short version: toggle it on for brief looks at the layout, kill it entirely the moment the Locust might be close, and once you hear clicking audio cues nearby, go dark and stand still.

The whole tradeoff rests on one documented quirk: the Locust hunts by sight and flashlight exposure rather than sound alone. Light is both a tool and a tell here — the sections below cover what the flashlight is actually for, how to ration it, and exactly when it stops being safe.

What the flashlight does

The flashlight is a toggleable personal light — a handheld beam you switch on and off, and nothing more elaborate than that. It exists because the store gives you almost nothing to see by. A run starts outside a dilapidated supermarket, and inside the aisles the darkness is real: one player in recorded footage picks up a flashlight partway through a run and immediately notes there's "barely any light," and in another session a player without one simply can't see anything at all.

Even equipped, don't expect a spotlight. The beam is weak — "it's barely doing anything," as one recorded player put it — so treat it as a short-range reading light for shelf layouts, counters and door frames, not a way to flood an aisle with visibility.

That weakness is fine, because the flashlight has a second cost besides its battery: stealth. Every second it's on, it's also advertising your position.

How to toggle and ration it

The game's walkthrough builds the habit in from the first minute: before pushing into the aisles, toggle your flashlight and sprint once to get a feel for both — and don't leave it on out of habit, because battery life matters later in the run.

Past the produce section, the store gets noticeably darker, and that's where the flashlight starts actually draining. From that point on, the rule is short bursts: flick the beam on to read the next stretch of shelving, then off again before you move.

Your default state is off, for two reasons at once. The game's own list of common mistakes puts it plainly: leaving your flashlight on by default drains it in the deep aisles — and it's also how the Locust spots you in the first place.

There's no reliable battery number to plan your bursts around, so let the habits do the work instead of the math: off by default, short bursts in the dark aisles, and an instant kill the moment the Locust enters the picture.

How light changes Locust detection

The Locust is a distorted, insectoid humanoid that patrols the store, and the game's community guide documents how it hunts: by sight and flashlight exposure rather than sound alone — a reversal of the usual "make noise and die" horror setup, where your light is the tell.

Three documented rules of thumb follow from that:

• Locust nearby → light off. It tracks by sight and light exposure, so a lit beam is a straight giveaway. Turn the flashlight off whenever it's close.
• Clicking audio cues nearby → kill the light entirely and go still. The Locust struggles to find stationary targets sitting in total darkness, so panicking and running is usually worse than freezing. The clicking cues get their own breakdown in the clicking sounds guide.
• In the dark, break line of sight instead of running. Slipping behind shelving units is far more effective than trying to outrun a sight-based hunter in the open — and the main central corridor is the most exposed path in the entire store, handing the Locust a clean sightline.

Two honest limits matter for your decisions. There's no reliable spotting distance to lean on, so treat "possibly near" as "near": if you can hear it or half-see it, you're already in light-off territory. And since this rule is documented by the community guide rather than shown in a stat readout, and lighting and enemy AI can change between patches, it's worth re-verifying after a major update.

Your light call at a glance

Common misunderstandings

• "Only light matters." No — the documented rule is sight and flashlight exposure rather than sound alone, so sound can still matter. Recorded players play it that way: crouched, sneaking and silent whenever the Locust closes in.
• "The beam will light my way." It barely does — players describe it as weak even when it's equipped. Plan your movement around the dark store, not around what the beam shows you.
• "Freezing works with the light half-on." The protection comes from total darkness. A stationary player with a lit — or half-lit — beam gives up exactly the advantage that makes freezing work.
• "Wait for a battery timer." There's no dependable number to watch, so ration by discipline: off by default, bursts in the deep aisles, instant kill on clicking cues.

Light discipline matters most exactly where a run gets tense — pushing toward the customer service desk with the Locust's patrol sweeping past. The standing advice there is to watch its loop before committing and use shelving as cover rather than racing a sight-based hunter in the open. For the full picture, the Locust guide covers the hunter itself and the stealth guide expands on staying unseen, while the complete walkthrough puts the flashlight in context from the front doors to the loading dock.