Summary
The roguelike puzzle adventure,Blue Prince, has beena surprise hitwith players across both PC and consoles. The game’s unique concept of drafting the layout of the mansion and its rooms through player-driven choices on each run is well realized. The varied choices and risk/reward nature of exploration lead to a compelling gameplay loop that has struck a chord with many players.
Picking rooms to draft isn’t easy, though. There are a lot of options, many of which players won’t see until they’ve worked out how to get further into the mansion and make more progress each run. Without some experience from playing with the rooms in a trial-and-error manner, players won’t fully understand how these rooms all interact.
That’s why it can be useful to go in armed with a little foreknowledge of what some of the more desirable rooms can do. This will make life a little easier as players get to grips with the puzzle mechanics and navigate the mansion. There are a lot of rooms, some are essential to progress, and some offer unique benefits. Focusing on beneficial effects rather than game progression, these are some of the best rooms to pick inBlue Prince.
1Vault
Vast Wealth
The Vault is a dead-end room, but it’s a valuable one, as it grants 40 coins on entry. The drafting cost is three gems, making it an expensive room to draft, but if players need gold, there’s no better room to collect a swift payout.
2Mail Room
Pen Pals
The Mail Room can be useful for all sorts of reasons. It’s a tomorrow room, which means players receive the benefit the day after they draft it. In this case, that’s receiving mail. The mail can include items, tools, and evenpuzzle solutions, so it’s worth drafting. The Mail Room can also be upgraded so that the mail goes directly to the entrance hall, which saves steps and a drafting slot eventually.
3Rumpus Room
Fortune Teller
The Rumpus Room can be a useful room for players looking for hints into the deeper mysteries of the mansion. As well as giving a few coins on entry, players can interact with Great Alzara, the fortune-teller here, to receive hints about hidden locations and story elements. It’s not the most valuable room to draft in a run, but it can help uncover some of the trickiersecrets inBlue Prince.
4Nursery
Extra Steps
Running out of steps is a run-ender inBlue Prince, and that means rooms that replenish or give extra steps are highly valuable. The Nursery’s bonus starts at +5 steps, which isn’t huge, but players also get +5 steps for every bedroom they draft.
Once players have access to the Bunk Room, this counts as two bedrooms when drafted, so that’s +10 steps for each one of those rooms. The bonus can stack quickly if players plan their drafting well.
5Foyer
Unlocked Hallways
When drafting new rooms, finding that progress is blocked by a locked doorwhen players have no keysto open it can be frustrating. The Foyer ensures that the doors in any new hallway will be unlocked by default, which can be a great advantage for drafting coherent routes.
This also applies to the Great Hall room, which is an extra-long hallway that spawns with more doors. For players who are trying to make a route to the Antechamber and “complete” a run, this can be a vital room.
6Freezer
Frozen Assets
The freezer can be a valuable room, but players have to use this one wisely. The Freezer “freezes” a player’scoins and gems, which means they’re saved for the next run, but they can’t be used or added to on this run.
This is useful if players know a run is not going anywhere, and they’d rather start over with some assets intact. The effect can also be reversed in a run with a Sauna or Furnace if the player’s luck changes.
7Coat Check
Item Saver
The Coat Check can be a very useful room when players are trying to deal with thelonger-form puzzles inBlue Prince. This room allows players to save an item, including tools and quest items, and retrieve it the next time they visit a Coat Check. Strategic use of this room can save players a lot of steps in a run.
8Conference Room
Item Collection
The Conference Room is a great quality of life room, if players have some other beneficial rooms placed down in their run. When a room bonus spreads items around rooms in the mansion, like the Locker Room, these items will instead be collected in the Conference Room. That turns this room into a one-stop item collection room, with two additional doors that players can draft from.
9Library
Forbidden Knowledge
The ability to request books in the Library might not seem like much, but it can be vital to progressing with thepuzzles and mysteries inBlue Prince. When requested, books appear in the library the next day and contain hidden knowledge about the mansion and its puzzles.
To help make this a convenience rather than a chore to draft each run, the Nook can be upgraded to a Reading Nook, which guarantees the Library can be drafted as an adjoining room.
10Workshop
Crafting Options
The Workshop can provide vital tools that help with the exploration of the mansion, acquiring extra items, and solving puzzles. Entering this room allows players to combine items to make new tools with more capabilities, like sledgehammers or shovels that find higher rarity loot. This works best when combined with a Coat Check, so that players can save their most valuable tools for when they’re most needed.
