In Blue Prince, what is quite possibly 2025’s game of the year, at least in the puzzle genre, managing resources is quite important. Not only do you have to watch the amount of footsteps you have left — essentially the game’s form of stamina or health points — you’ll also have to conserve gems, keys, and coins. But what if you just happen to be extremely wealthy on a certain run in this puzzle roguelike and end up with no keys? Or if you want to just even out the number of gems and keys you’ve got? Are things looking ominous and you’re considering if it’s time to call it a day?
Fear not, there’s a quick hack to save your run, and it comes in the form of an unassuming dead-end called the Laundry Room. Rather than act as a room where our 14-year-old protagonist must launder his own clothes — gosh, he’s much too important for a meager task like that — the Laundry Room can help you launder, well, currency. For a small fee, a well-placed Laundry Room could just turn some cash into desperately needed keys or gems. But like with most things in Blue Prince, one wrong move, and you could just be washing away all your advantages. If you misinterpret the exchange rate, you could possibly exchange your hard-earned money for nothing. After all, zero converts back into zero.
Luckily, I have already served as guinea pig weeks before this game released, and have already made this exact mistake, so that you don’t have to. Here’s exactly what the Blue Prince Laundry Room exchange rates mean so that you don’t have to wonder or fearfully click without knowing what to expect.
As a final note before I get to the heart of this issue, I will note that due to the fees, the Laundry Room is not always the best choice of a room to draft. Upon request, I’m happy to share more tips about what rooms are best for drafting, as well as other secrets I’ve uncovered after about a hundred hours with this game.
Blue Prince Laundry Room Spin Cycle
For the price of five coins, you can exchange all of your gems with all of your money at a 1:1 rate. To illustrate what this means, let’s say you have 4 gems and exactly 6 coins. After the procedure, you’ll be left with 1 gem and 4 coins. What a terrible deal! Well, how about if you have 0 gems and 10 coins? Then, you’ll have 10 gems and 5 coins left after the trade, a better bargain. Do be wary when using this service.
Blue Prince Laundry Room Wash & Dry
Again for five coins, you’ll be able to exchange all your keys for all your gems at a 1:1 rate. To better understand this, let’s run through a few examples again. If you had 5 keys and 0 gems, you’d now have 5 gems and 0 keys. A bad idea, considering most doors at the higher ranks will be locked! But say you had 5 keys and 8 gems, and you needed to increase the number of keys you had, while you didn’t need anymore gems (say you took a special room that made all gem costs be footprints costs instead), this laundry service would net you 8 keys and 5 gems, and you could happily unlock any door of your heart’s desire. That’s a pretty rare scenario, so more than likely, you’ll be like me and you will largely never use this particular service.
Blue Prince Laundry Room Fluff & Fold
Finally, for a hefty 10 coins, you can exchange all of your keys with all of your coins. This one’s actually come in handy for me a few times. Say you have 5 keys and 10 coins leftover after you pay the fee, that’s now going to be 10 keys and 5 coins. That’s an important improvement when a few extra keys can get you to the final hallways and rooms of the mansion you’re drafting, while a few locked doors can bar you from entering.
A large spoiler warning ahead for an additional detail.
Blue Prince Laundry Room’s Secret Service
Bonus: If you manage to power the Laundry Room with the Boiler Room, which has an infuriating puzzle of its own, a new machine will turn on. (You will need to have drafted the Boiler Room close to the Laundry Room, in a compatible position, to accomplish this.) You’ll be able to exchange all of your constellation stars with all of your daily allowance. Both of these are your permanent rewards for playing the game over and over again. For instance, I am at about 39 stars and 25 daily allowance in coins. This exchange would bring me back down to 25 stars, but get me 39 coins in daily allowance, a useful sum for purchasing many luxury goods in the house. That’s a trade I’m willing to make!
For more on Blue Prince, check out our interview with developer Tonda Ros, our 10/10 review, and more guides to come.
