Blue Prince Beginner's Guide

This guide's goal is to familiarize you with the mechanics and tell you a few things you wish I had known sooner—all without spoiling anything significant related to the plot and to do it quickly. 

You're playing Simon P. Jones, the heir to this estate. All you have to do is find the 46th room of my 45‑room estate. After receiving a sentimental message from your late relative and picking up some mysterious blueprints of the house, you'll find yourself at our first door.

Starting and Drafting

It's time to meet the quintessential mechanic of the game: drafting. You'll be drafting the layout of your house from a set of three rooms. Every time you open a new door, your chosen room will be placed in your home, and the blueprints will be updated. 

Your blueprints are always available by pressing Tab, which shows you a map, the player marker on the left, and your resources on the right. Pressing the Tab while drafting a room pulls up your blueprints like a mini‑map and shows you how a new room will fit when you highlight it.

A day in Blue Prince consists of drafting rooms, adventuring through the estate, and finding the secrets and puzzles of Mount Holly. You'll do this until the day ends, when the house will magically reset itself. Your items will return to the house, and you will explore again tomorrow.

Room Facts

Rooms are the most crucial element in this game. You'll learn about rooms: they have doors, and if you don't have a door, you have a dead end. If you have all dead ends, you have nowhere to go, and your day is done. Try to keep your options open, and remember that if a door faces an outside wall or another room without a door on that side, you can't go through that door.

Rooms are unique—if you choose the Nook as your first room, there are no more Nooks for the rest of that day. Make your placements count, especially in the first few days; try to get as many new rooms as possible. Think of exploring as your highest priority.

Rooms have colors and are divided into types: purple rooms are bedrooms, orange are hallways, green are gardens, yellow are shops, red kicks you in the teeth, and blue is everything else. Each color has strengths—orange rooms have more doors—and some items and rooms benefit from focusing on specific colors, but you don't have to worry about that now. Just be careful when choosing red.

Rooms have preferred places: you won't find the West Hall in the East Wing. Keep that in mind when you start noticing similar placements between your days. If you're ever curious, check out your house history in the Escape menu when you need a refresher on what your house used to look like.

Rooms also have a rarity. Picture a deck of cards where each card is a room. The deck is shuffled but mostly stacked from common to rare. You must dig deeper into your deck to find all the fun, rare rooms. 

If you want to know more about rooms, press R. It will give you all the details of the room you're currently standing in and a directory on the left‑hand side. You haven't found that room if a number is blank in the directory.

Resources

On the top left, you have your steps; on the top right, there are dice, keys, gems, and money. Steps are like your energy or turn in Blue Prince. You may spend literal hours in the same room, but the second you walk from one room to another, you pay one step. 

If you run out of steps, your day is done. You can get more steps by eating food you find or drafting bedrooms. Some unique items give you more steps or slow their loss. Later on, this becomes less of an issue, but keep an eye on your step counter early on and try not to double back if you can.

Dice allows you to "nope" your current set of three rooms while drafting and drawing three new choices. Dice are uncommon, so save them for moments when you'd be stuck with nowhere else to go.

Keys open doors. As you adventure deeper into Mount Holly, the odds of a locked door climb. You'll need keys sooner rather than later. Thankfully, keys lie around in shops, and many rooms that guarantee keys will let you know on the drafting page. 

Sometimes, you'll see tempting locked chests; it's usually not worth using a key on those. Prioritize keys for doors.

Gems are an additional cost for some rooms, and they're usually the better rooms—on average, gem rooms have more doors, more items, and special abilities. You can find gems lying around; many rooms indicate gem availability by default. Green rooms focus on gems, but others can randomly have them. You can survive without many gems, but be prepared for tough room choices if you ignore them.

Money is surprisingly non‑essential in Blue Prince. This isn't to say you should ignore it, but your run won't end if you go broke. Cash gives you shop options, which, at the right time, might provide the key, gem, food, or item you need. Hold onto your cash until you know what you need.

Important: Look Closely

Rooms are never the same twice. Extra items can appear in almost any room, but their locations change daily. Take the time to comb over each new room you find. Every note left on a table, every strange thing on the wall, and every key or coin in a corner is a secret waiting to be uncovered.

Note Taking

This game throws a lot at you. Almost every room has a secret or a clue to another puzzle—some rooms even have the puzzle answers written right in them. You'll be frustrated if you find something, think, "Wait, I remember something about this," and can't recall where. The game recommends a pad and pen, but you can take a screenshot (F12) for an exact image. 

Remember to name your screenshots, or you'll regret it. A notes app is built into Steam: Shift + Tab, then select Notes. You might keep an ongoing list of puzzle solutions in one Tab, puzzles you're working on in another, and room notes in a third.

Get Creative

Blue Prince may have hints on every wall, but it will never say, "Gosh, I wish I had a shovel", when you click on a pile of dirt. Most items have secondary uses, and the game won't tell you what those are. Experiment—what would you do in a magical house if someone gave you a sledgehammer? That said, don't brute‑force puzzles.

Final Notes

The times you'll want to quit most are when you sit in front of a lock, fearing you won't be able to come back or progress until you solve it. Most puzzles don't progress the game; they're quality‑of‑life improvements and optional until they're plot‑important. 

You'll see every puzzle and every room again, so you won't miss anything if you leave a challenging puzzle for later. My only request: please don't look up solutions. I promise the rush of solving a puzzle alone is worth it.

Also, check our Blue Prince Review and other guides below:

• Blue Prince Guide | How To Unlock West Gate
• Blue Prince Guide | How To Unlock Orchard
• Blue Prince Guide | How To Solve Dartboard Puzzle
• Blue Prince Guide | How To Solve Breaker Puzzle