The House of Da Vinci – Tips & Strategy Guide

Like any good puzzler, from Monkey Island to The Room, The House of Da Vinci has its share of tricky sections that will have you scratching your head and desperately jabbing at the screen in a vain bid to stumble into the solution.

It can be frustrating to get stuck, but looking at a walkthrough feels like defeat. And, let’s be honest, it is defeat. There’s no shame in that, but you know deep down that if somebody had to tell you how to solve a puzzle in a game, you never really finished that game.

To help you navigate between the dual hazards of soul-crushing frustration and victory-undermining relief, we’ve put together some invaluable tips to help you make it through The House of Da Vinci with both your sanity and your dignity intact. With a little help from the development team at Blue Brain Games.

Oculi importance

Don’t forget about your Oculi. The Oculi Infinitum, which allows you to see through surfaces, and the Oculi Tempus, which shows you a living slice of time, are required to solve numerous puzzles, but they’re easily forgotten about in between. If you find yourself stumped at any point, try re-examining surfaces or features through your Oculi to see if the solution is hidden from normal view.

Developer tip: “We recommend players to learn to use both special lenses, oculus infinitum and oculus tempus (swipe up or swipe down) to discover secret mechanisms and hidden tools that Leonardo Da Vinci labeled to help you up.

Don’t just pick it up, study it

Picking up an item often isn’t enough. Finally working out how to open that hidden compartment and retrieve the weird key may feel like the conclusion of a problem, but quite often it isn’t. Get into the habit of tapping on your newly acquired item in your inventory to see whether it still needs to be pulled, pushed, or screwed before it will actually work.

Developer tip: “You can also discover sketches, which will let you access the achievements in the Achievements room”

Think outside of the box (single room)

Puzzles aren’t always solved in one place. In fact, as often as not to access an item or solve a problem you’ll need to make a change in one spot and then zoom all the way out, cross the room, and move to another point to solve the next part of the puzzle.

Developer tip: “It’s important to carefully examine all inventory objects, especially the ones marked with a plus sign, which indicate the possibility of combining more inventory pieces together.”

Keep an eye out

Be thorough. While most of the points of interest in The House of Da Vinci are subtly highlighted, like the slightly better lit book on the bookshelf, or downright obvious, like the fancy ornament in the middle of the floor, there are some spots essential for solving puzzles that are very easy to miss. Normally these are parts of larger objects, so you should get into the habit of double-tapping on the less obvious bits of scenery as well as the obvious ones, just in case.

The House of Da Vinci is available now on Google Play or the App Store.