Blue Prince - meandeirng thoughts and discussion while playing

The Game Room
41

So I’ve been playing a bit. (I have a 3-month-old and a 2-year-old, so my gaming time is very limited.)

I’ve just finished Day 5 of my run, and some thoughts I’ve had.

First, kudos to the designers for the colored notes thing. When I came across the note that said The West wing has more locked doors on either Day 1, I took the note to heart. So I concentrated mostly on the East Wing for Days 2 and 3. Until I drafted the Security Room on Day 3 and come to find that red notes are lies and blue notes are truth. And realized that the real issue is the higher the rank the greater the chance of a locked door.

Day 4 was my favorite so far. I managed to draft the garage. (Oddly enough on my first day I drafted a bedroom with a random locked chest that had the car keys. One Day I hope to have both.)

Since I had already drafted the Utility Closet on a previous Day, I knew what the connection between the two was and powered up the garage door which unbeknownst to me allowed me to open up the West Gate. I also drafted the Trading Post and solved the box puzzle there. Granting me my first allowance.

That box puzzle was weird. Completely not intuitive at all.

Also managed my third draft of the Observatory. (My second draft was wasted due to not having enough keys or a sledgehammer.)

Uncovered a bunch of other rooms as well.

Anyway. Day 5 was my second favorite day, and arguably more successful, if not quite as satisfying. Made it to the Antechamber, but couldn’t get in. Drafted the Shelter and then proceeded to draft three red rooms just to check them off, including the Archives. Then realizing that the archives only held one thing of note, decided to look up some info on it and discovered that all red rooms suck. And was unintentionally spoilered that one of the Red Rooms is actually pretty great when drafted wtih the Shelter. Apparently the reason the Lavatory is a red room is not merely that it’s a dead end with nothing, it’s that it can never hold any items. Except when drafted with the Shelter power. Turns out, it actually is set to hold 4 items, but the Red factor prevents this. Until the shelter turns that off. So if you draft the shelter, draft the lavatory and get four items.

Drafted the Nursery. Drafted a lot of other Bedrooms as well.

Also popped the Laboratory that day. Unfortunately, too late to take advantage of the “allowance bump for each bedroom drafted” experiment because I was mostly running out both bedrooms and places to put rooms in general at that point. Also never got the option to draft the Boiler Room.

Got the Parlor on my first day. Like to draft that room because the puzzle is easy. Got the Billiard room on Day 3. Took me a bit to figure out the Darts because I was going in blind. (Found on Day 4 the hint for that puzzle.) Didn’t realize that double/triple spaces were meaningless. Figured out both addition and subtraction parts by brute-forcing the order and then working backwards to figure out why the number I clicked on was the right one. By the time multiplication reared its head, I deduced what it was and solved the puzzle easily.

Current mysteries I’m working on:

How to open the safe in the Boudoir.
Password to network.
What date I entered the house so I can open the shelter’s safe.
Combo on gate near campsite.
Do the various framed photos on the walls mean anything or are they just there for show. (E.g. the tag with the number 10 on it that keeps showing up in various rooms.)

42

Sounds like you’ve made good progress. Let me know if you need a tiny shove in the right direction on your current mysteries. I like to go spoiler-free but I can be a masochist at times.

43

Wow, I can help, too. I have yet to get inside Antechamber, but I do know the nudges you might need for solutions. Those are some pretty neat puzzles.

44

Thanks all!

Right now mostly trying to do this without help, but I’ll reach out if I get stuck.

Also forgot to mention that I drafted the Library on Day 5 as well, which was pretty cool. Especially getting to see all my stats in the upstairs book. And I have a feeling that the books I can check out that show up in the next draft of the room will answer a lot of questions.

So Day 4 was my favorite because it opened up a bunch of possibilities, but Day 5 was probably the best at overall advancement and figuring things out.

Looking forward to Day 6, assuming I don’t get unlucky draws.

45

Spoiler. You will sometimes. :slight_smile:

I’m actually reaching a frustration point as where I am, I am well aware how to get to the Antechamber, but I just don’t get the right rooms needed.

My newer, untested strategy, is to put as many dead ends in the first three levels/rows as I can manage…so I can stop getting dead ended in the northern region.

I’d love a permanent 10 keys or 1 keycard that I get daily. Keys are killing me sometimes.

Or I get keycard doors and found no keycard anywhere in the house.

46

Finally found a big key to solving this one. I’d explored the main section of the tomb, found a clear puzzle, but no idea how to solve it at the time. Kept a bunch of notes on it, though, and then… a head-slapping moment much later. Now I just have to pull the tomb again. Assuming I’ve figured it out, but I think I have.

Any idea if there’s something that triggers pulling the schoolhouse, or is it just rare? I’ve literally only drawn it once. I sorta wonder if it only shows up if you’re stuck on a puzzle for a while.

47

I’ve been playing this a lot the last week or so. So far:

I’ve made it into the antechamber, and used the basement key to enter the chamber under the fountain. Currently stuck there - I think my next step is to unflood the dock down there so I can use the boat, but I’m not sure how to do that - the pumping room seems obvious, but I don’t know where to put the water, since all the empty space was taken up by draining the fountain.

48

I’ll keep the actual spoilers hidden under the main spoiler here.

Minor spoiler regarding draining the fountain and reservoir simultaneously:

You don’t have to. But you might think about what that implies.

A slight additional hint:

But you’ll find you still don’t have enough space! And yet there’s something in the pump room that might help.

And a more robust hint:

That extra stuff in the pump room doesn’t work, though. You’ll need a way to power it up.

49

Day 6 went okay. Day 7 was good.

Drafted The Hovel on Day 6. Kind of a crappy room, actually. Though I find it interesting that there’s a gas line to light an outside torch and there seems to be three more of the torches Didn’t really screw me over too much, because even with running out of steps after getting both the car keys (from Guest Bedroom) and the Garage and finding my first computer disk in the car chest, I didn’t have any terminals to upload the disk to anyway. But other than uncovering some new rooms (e.g. the Pool Room and the Secret Passage), not much interesting that day.

Day 7, though, I managed to draft the library again. Which meant I got the book I reserved. Which meant I finally know what the date is based on the stamp on the checkout card, so next time I draft the shelter I can open its safe. bought a metal detector from the Commissary because I somehow got lucky with a lot of money. Other fun things was drafting the Root Cellar and managing to get a shovel in the Greenhouse. Also drafted the Patio. Also drafted the Conference Room. And the Boiler Room which probably didn’t help much because I don’t think I drafted anything that relies on it. But still, first time draft on that one. Also I had a lot of stuff from the shovel that I didn’t get to use because I ran out of steps.

In summary, the only long-term thing it seems I accomplished was drafting the library for the book. (And one more draft of the Observatory, so one more star.) But they were fun days where I drafted a bunch of new rooms.

Oh, and I forgot on Day 7 I also drafted the mail room for the first time. So I’ll get a package the next time I draft it. Saw the letter from my dad. Alas, I didn’t have the magnifying glass so I couldn’t collect the stamp.

50

Heh, I guess that’s one way to find out the date. I just started with the start date (Nov 7, IIRC) and counted upward.

There’s one nice event that happens on Christmas (in-game). I wonder if there are any other in-game holidays.

51

My partner and I are playing together so I’m also following along in this thread. We’re up to day 8 and starting to unlock some of the more advanced areas people are taking about.

Minor spoiler:

This is mostly but not entirely true. You may want to examine where you got this information closer.

52

Where is that given, though? I don’t think it’s anywhere openly available.

53

Hey, I thought I knew as well before found the library. Was not stated or on the opening letter or something?

54

“Beat” the game last name, although there’s still plenty to do. I actually figured out how to get to room 46 well before I actually managed to get all the pieces in place at the same time to do it.

Question for those who have gotten there:

Can you actually go into room 46, or does it just trigger the credits again?

55

Thanks for the hints! Turned out, I beat it without needing to revisit the pump room. Instead, I figured out how to activate the elevator in the foundation, which gave me the second access point I need to solve the gear/bridge puzzle in the basement..

56

Nope.

Though, I did find a second location in my Epic Day 8 playthrough which I’ll detail at some point when I have time.

57

The Epic Day 8.

How epic? Well, for starters, this was the summary after my character finally collapsed of step exhaustion. (While uncovering a new room that I forgot to check what it was at the summary so I’ll have to check my list of rooms on Day 9 to figure out. I only caught a glimpse as the character passed out.)

Mt. Holly
Impressive Manor
Total Rooms: 36
Rank Reached: 9
Steps Taken: 109
Items Found: 12
New Rooms: 6

The day almost had to end a few times. From running out of keys with everything locked to running out of steps and then getting a boost. But I had a series of serendipitous events that kept me going.

For starters, I drafted the Tool Shed outside. Got myself a metal detector and some other item that I forget, but wasn’t particularly useful from that.

Early on in West Wing exploration I drafted the Mail Room. Got my package from the other day. Open it up to find a set of lockpicks and a compass. Also, there was a treasure map in the room.

Explored a bit, picked up a coin purse, a magnifying glass (I can now collect the stamp from the Mail Room letter when I get back there), and some other stuff. Drafted the Coat Check at some point. Drafted the Security Room (reduced the number of key-card locked doors). Looked closer at the note on the desk and discovered that Handwritten notes on red post-its aren’t lies. Missed that the first time around.

Found an okay number of gems. Hardly any keys, even with the metal detector. Lockpicking my way through everything anyway.

Drafted the Drawing Room on the treasure map location. No shovel. :frowning: Northern door locked and not pickable. Decided to draft east. However, my choices were two dead end rooms and the Archive. Didn’t want to dead-end myself, so drafted the Archive. Unlike last time I drafted it, I had no protection from its penalty. Good news, though. It had a shiny key card. Drafted north from the Archive and chose the Great Hall, because lockpicks. I figured I could open the doors…then I discovered that only two of them are pickable and those both were empty behind them. Metal detector beeping, but I would have to spend a key to find out what it was beeping about. Decided to hold off. Being at rank 7 I decided to unlock the North door. And saw the Foundation pop-up as an option. Knowing it was rare and permanent, figured drafting it due southwest of the Antechamber was likely a good thing. Elevator doesn’t work, though. Probably need to activate it somewhere else. Metal detector going off. Either finding something in a dirt pile (still no shovel) or somewhere the elevator leads. Door to the North has a key card lock. Door to the west is locked and unpickable.

Have two or three keys and decide to unlock Great Hall doors. Not enough keys for the remaining four doors, but could get lucky.

Unlock the SE door…find an upgrade disk (metal detector stopped beeping after picking it up). Long way back to the security room, unfortunately. Have enough steps to make it if I need to, though. Unlock SE door, and find a key as well as a wall lever. I pull it. East door of Antechamber slides open. Cool and all, but I don’t think I’ll be able to draft a room next to it before running out of resources.

Go to NW door. Unlock it. It’s the west exit. Draft storeroom (need another key).

Unlock final door of Great Hall. East exit. Draft corridor. Other exit of corridor locked.

Figure I’ll go slide my keycard into the North door of the foundation now.

Draft the Library. (Located west of antechamber now.) I believe this was the archive option because the other two sucked so got lucky here. Reserve another book. Look at my stats. Apparently I’m a sucker for the Dark Room because that is the room I’ve passed up the least when it’s been an option to draft. (Though it doesn’t even crack the top 3 actual drafts.) Who knew? To be fair, only the first time I drafted it did I not have an active Utility Closet

Anyway, go to draft from the Library and get the Laboratory! Second time ever. Go to the terminal and amazingly enough get the option to run an experiment where every time I choose an archive to draft I get two keys! I will for the rest of this day always draft archive unless I have a compelling non-archive draft. Also put in my upgrade disk. It’s for the Storeroom. I can 9 more gold, 1 more key, or 1 more gem. I go for the key, which costs 10 gold normally anyway. Next time I draft it I’ll get an extra key.

Went back to archive, drafted Darkroom from there using archive option. Get two keys. (North exit from Archive blocked by Corridor.)

Draft east door of Darkroom. Random pick since Dark Room doesn’t let you see the draft. Didn’t get any keys, so it wasn’t an archived option. And draft the Utility Closet!

So enter and Flip the lights on in the Darkroom. And turn the lights off in the not yet drafted Gymnasium, which I actually would draft in the East wing later. But the best part is I finally have both a lit Darkroom and a magnifying glass. So I can finally zoom on those photos. 11-28 is date on tree. Hartley has bad green memos.

Anyway, at this point, I’m out of gems (ran out of them a while ago) and low on steps. I won’t be able to make it back to the Mail Room to get the stamp. But hey, I can drop something off at the Coat Closet. While the magnifying glass is useful, I’ve gotten it at least twice before. And the metal detector or lockpicks are cool and all, but I think the key card is probably the best thing to check overall. (I had a few other possible options as well.) So I check the keycard.

Figure I’ll go back to the entrance and spend my last few steps drafting early rank rooms in the East Wing. I’ll stop by the Boudoir on the way and See if the 11-28 on the tree is the combo to the safe…nope…no luck…oh well.

Go to the east wing door of the entrance hall with only 2 or 3 steps left and draft…

The Dining Room! Dinner is served! 20 additional steps, baby! Shame I didn’t have a Boiler Room for another 10 on top of that. Draft south and get the Guest Bedroom. 10 more steps to the collection. Now we’re cooking with gas!

Anyway, time to go to the mail room and get that stamp.

And pass through the Security Room on the way there. Hey, I wonder if that thing about the network password is visible with the Magnifying Glass. What do you know? It is! I can now login to the network. Find out the staff sent me a nice little message under the announcements on the day I started. I now have two sources of my start date. The library cards, and the terminal message.

Get the stamp. Return to the dining room. Draft north and get the Chapel. Draft North from there and get the Rumpus Room. Hey, free money! And a funny mechanical guy in a glass enclosure. Oooh, my fortune. Some beach with me standing on it. And a black cat. And a red flag. And a forever locked door with a moon on it.

Draft North from there and get the Freezer. Gosh it’s cold! [spoiler]Look at all that frozen stuff. If I were a betting man, I’d bet the Boiler Room could thaw this out. But hey! They froze all my assets. Bye bye 10 pieces of gold and the one gem I found in the West Wing. Good thing I get to start the next day with them.

Go back and draft one more room and pass out from exhaustion.

58

This game is occupying my attention. I’m really playing blind to the point that I have not read most of the posts in the thread. I probably need to take better notes, especially after listening to Alzara. I can solve the dartboard puzzles easy enough, and the parlor box puzzle.

I still haven’t figured out what the colours of the rooms signify, do you need so many rooms of each colour?

I wish I could figure out how to get certain blue prints to manifest, and how to build down in the foundation, and what exactly to do outside and a million other things.

At some point I might have to look on-line for some clues, but in the mean time it is an enjoyable journey.

59

I am good at this one, but the harder it gets I do find myself thinking “uh, these gems could be in at least two of these boxes.”

I’m sure I’m wrong, but it seems that way to me.

60

On a quick side note, my chrome browser dictionary is clearly localized for American English–makes sense since I’m American–because “colour” is triggering its spellcheck. I’m now going to add it to dictionary.)

Anyway, the colors are just ways of categorizing room types. Some color categories have interactions with each other in special ways or with other rooms. It’s a way of expanding the mechanics of room interaction in interesting ways to add more complexity to the game. I’m going to spoiler an explanation of each color, but it’s not really revealing any real secrets.

Blue: They are part of the main “blue prince”…er blueprints of the estate. They don’t have inherently any connection to each other, though individual rooms may interact with each other or with one or more of the other color categories. They are more apt to carry items, gems, coins, and keys.

Purple: Bedrooms. Typically give you bonus steps. Frequently have items. One of them will cause all further bedrooms drafted to give additional steps to whatever steps they may or may not already give.

Orange: Hallways. Yep. Hallways.

Green: Gardens and Outdoors. Some are literally outdoors. Frequently have dig spots. Frequently have gems. Frequently cost gems to draft.

Yellow: Shops. They sell stuff.

Red: They have disadvantages. There are mechanics that can nullify or reduce (or in a specific case reverse) these disadvantages. Often have a lot of exits, so if you need a lot of exits, it can be worth it to draft, but most of the time you want to avoid them.

There are other rooms that fall outside of this but knowledge of this is actually spoilers.

Also, unlocked the gate by the campsite on Day 10. Could have done it 9 but forgot about it. Both days kind of sucked because of lousy draws that dead-ended me everywhere. But I did manage to draft the observatory both days. And drafted a couple of new rooms that didn’t help mechanically because all my other draws weren’t that good. Also unlocked the timed safe. Rather underwhelming that I only got a jewel out of it, but it added some nice background story.