Tips and Hints for Scream Collector:

The guides by Evil Mr. Henry are awesome for the basics. I'm just adding a few tips based upon my play through of the available content. If you follow my rules, you should have a better time of it, but you do you.

1. Don't waste time: Games like this are a time sink, meaning that you can waste a lot of time in a non-productive manner, which is kind of the point because the dev needs to make money and encouraging you to want to skip ahead is the way to do that. Do what you can do and then save and exit. Come back in a day or two. Play something else in the mean time. Consider it an exercise in building patience. Take a deep breath and enjoy.

2. Don't waste gems: Saving up gems is what you need to do to make everything better. Don't waste them. Some things are worth the investment in the beginning, save the rest until you're going through and completing everything. You need auto-clicker and auto-clicker runs offline. You need auto collect slots, the more the better. You need time skips, but don't purchase them with gems until mid to late game, and then only when you really have to to boost your money to make a goal. Increased click income is critical. You need improved wheel spins and tickets. In the beginning, do not spend a lot of gems on actual spins and tickets. Later on, once you've gotten over the hump with the Halloween spirits rewards (you'll know when this is because it will won't take so long after resetting to build back up to finished exterior/interior) you can spend gems almost freely on tickets and spins. I didn't spend a lot of gems on things that you have to be sitting there to employ such as faster spawns of a hammer or ghost trap. I now have all the upgrades purchased, but that didn't happen until I made this guide because I wanted to finish it off before publishing.

3. Play the mini-games: Clicking bats, feeding trees and zombies, washing witches, etc. only as long as they seem really productive. Have patience. Walk away and play something else for a while. This is not a job. This is not a race. In the beginning, the extra gems and such are very helpful/necessary.

4. Secret Strategy: (If you already know this, meh) Stretch the edges of the screen out farther by grabbing right along the outer edge and pulling with your mouse. When you have a good-sized margin on the left side of the game screen, the grey border area I mean, you can use this to your advantage. Flying objects slow way down in this margin on the left only. So, when you're chasing bats, focus on getting the right-side and upward bound bats first, then if you need to go into the border, just start rapidly clicking in the area where the bat left the screen. If you're fortunate, you should still be able to click the bat(s) for several seconds after they have left. Sometimes this ability is blocked by the witches, which also take forever in the left margin. Now that I've said this, it may get patched in a future update.

5. Increased Bonus Speed/Income/Click Length are good, but save click length until later--maybe after having the autoclick offline. Make the game do as much of the work for you as possible. Activated timers don't run down while logged out. Wait until you have built up a good set of stacking timers, save, and log out. Come back after a while to check progress, do all you can, save, log out. Keep doing this and you can stretch your timers for a long time. Bonus bar fills faster is good to get you bonus timers.

6. Early on, don't use the x10 spin unless you've got a decent chance of a good return. Once you've built up a good stock of gems and have upgraded the wheel fully, always use x10. The once in a while hit on the rare bottom wedge is worth the expense in my opinion because I've hit it a bunch of times, resulting in having 3000 gems and 2000 spins at one time. Once you get to that point, I've found that you have so many spins and gems that you'll hit again if you just trust the spin to pay off big. Don't waste too many gems on spins/tickets early on. You lose a lot in a reset because all those entity rewards (zombies, witches, etc.) go away. When you do buy spins/tickets, almost never waste gems on getting less than the full x25 purchase. Every bit adds to a huge difference in the end with this game. It's about numbers, time, and patience. One note about tickets. I always scratch the same ticket slot, middle row, first column. Why? I don't believe in chasing rewards randomly. All things come to the one who waits. Check the images below to see how that's paid off in gems (and tickets though you can't see that in the image). It's like playing the same numbers in the lottery each time. Maybe it helps. Maybe it doesn't. You do you.

7. DO NOT become addicted to gambling. People's lives have been ruined by so doing. I've finished all the content without spending one dime. However, if you feel that this game brings you enjoyment, feel free to support the dev in the amount and manner you choose. Work should bring a reward, but I cannot personally support this game financially because it could conceivably encourage some to become addicted to gambling. Don't laugh. Your experience is not everyone's. Your opinion is not the only valid one. In real life, the house always wins. Always. AL... WAYS... . No. No, no. Always.

8. Spirit Bonus: Timing is crucial. Too often and you just struggle to rebuild. Too sparse and you miss opportunity. Okay, so you're really on your own with this. You have to judge based on your experience. In the beginning, it might take a week perhaps for a decent flop over (I give a week because my memory suggests that's what it took in the beginning, but I can't really remember). Early on, you'll need some spins/tickets/time boosts to help you reach a full level. Later on, buy your biggest earners first. That double spirit bonus means every time you collect spirits, you get twice the amount it says you'll collect. In the beginning, I waited until it seemed I had waited enough, then reset. What does that mean? It means, pay attention to the rate at which you're growing, get good at adjusting it upwards, and learn from your mistakes. Now, I reset after leaving for a week or two or when I've got a good time boost. After resetting, it now takes me maybe 3-5 minutes tops to rebuild to finished level, and that's while doing other things.

9. Always do all the mini games before doing anything with a time boost, including spinning the wheel/scratching a ticket. Nothing like wasting it by not at least clearing all the hammers, eyes, buckets, etc. and so on. Early on, every reward matters. Later, not so much. I almost never do mini games now as I'm just focused on spinning/scratching and waiting for the dungeon to be released. I only do mini games now when I need the gems to get more spins/scratches.

10. Try to always keep a stockpile of gems saved for a rainy day. Once I got past the first few weeks, I tried to always have 100-200 gems sitting in the bank. Money attracts money. Seems silly and illogical, but it's true... to a point. Never blow through all of your gems until you've got to the point where this is just an exercise in seeing how many spins/tickets/gems you can win without spending money. Once it turns into that, you've seen the game for the grind it is and won. Feel free to walk away until new content is added.

Just so you know that these strategies really work (again YMMV):

Gems and Spins

Gems and Tickets

Spirits Outside:

Spirits Inside: