Ever wanted to be a Disney princess and live happily ever after? Well too bad! You’re gonna have to earn it first! Welcome to our Time Princess beginner’s guide!
Time Princess, published by IGG, is a dress-up game and what could be best called several visual novels as campaigns. Underneath the cutesy Disney-Pixar-esque art style lies some very well written, researched and frankly pretty nerve-wracking stories. Political intrigue, high-tension choices, friendships and ideals being tested to the limit, and of course, romance, all of it can be found here.
The main gameplay revolves around dressing your character up to meet a level’s score requirement, matching tags to increase the score. But beyond that, the choices you make will matter, as each book you can unlock has several different branching story paths.
From the lethal whimsy of fantasy stories, to the crime-ridden yet lively streets of New York during the Prohibition, to the royal court of France right before the Revolution, you’ll visit many different worlds and eras. As the Time Princess, you’ll slip into the shoes of many characters, and help them towards their hopes and dreams. Or get them and their friends killed/maimed/murdered horribly, depending on your choices. Live or die, you’ll look fabulous doing it!
With each story comes outfits befitting their theme or era, and beyond trying to get the highest score you can, the simplest goal is to rack up a nice wardrobe for your character avatar, one that matches your taste. Here more than in any other game, fashion is endgame!
As the Time Princess, will you live out history and fantasy? Will you fall victim to it? Or will you take it by the reigns, kicking and screaming, and change it, for the better or worse? Either way, we hope this Time Princess guide helps.
SAVING HISTORY (AND YOUR SKIN) THROUGH THE POWER OF FASHION
The main draw of this game is its story mode, with many beautifully written stories with conflict, romance, and should you make certain choices, obituaries. The main requirement before you even get to make such choices though? You have to look the part. Every level has a clothing requirement with a score system tied to it. Here are some tips specific to both Story Mode and the general clothing-based gameplay inherent to the game.
Clothes and How They Work
Each piece of clothing you wear has a star level, and a Tag or two associated with it. The star level determines an outfit’s base score, but rarely is that enough to brute force your way through a level’s clothing requirements, though it DOES occasionally happen (Usually the first time you unlock that free [WEDDING GOWN SET]). The main thing you’ll look for instead, are your outfit’s tags: Most levels have two tags you’d best match with your clothes, and the Stage Hint will give you the outfits needed for a perfect score.
That said, you can still get a perfect score with other outfits appropriate for the job, sometimes simply by filling out slots you lack the Stage Tip clothes for with whatever you have that doesn’t clash (The game will automatically remove clothes that clash with each other) and has a high star level or similar tags.
It’s usually a good idea to tap the Recommended button: It will give you the best set you have available to you for that mission (i.e. The set that gives you the highest possible score your current wardrobe selection allows), and if it still isn’t good enough, that’s your warning to go clothes-crafting!
Relics
Relics are cards you can get to boost certain clothes and clothing Tags. You can equip only one at a time, and there are many ways to get them. One way is through the Gold Jerry Baloon gacha, where they have a chance of appearing asd a reward. They can also appear as level completion rewards, albeit rarely.
The least frustrating way to get them is to level a character’s Goodwill up to 5. Each character you can meet in the Lantern has their own personal Relic card, and dumping them full of gifts will get you that Relic.
You can level them up in the Lantern by going into the Relic Vault and filling them with Cuddle, Passion and Promise Potions, which give out differing amounts of Relic EXP. Your main source of these potions is Kitty Exploration and the Gold Jerry Gacha.
Read Your Books!
If a story is based on historical events or any existing printed work, such as Marie de Antoinette’s (Yes, that one with a bad case of head-guillotineitis), it’ll be a good idea to read up on such events or stories and do research. It will help you inform your decisions.
As an example, you can eventually get a 600-diamond necklace as Marie de Antoinette, but have to pay an exorbitant amount for it from the royal treasury of France. You can take the necklace… But if you know France’s history, you’ll know about the Diamond Necklace Affair: A sordid, convoluted scandal which rendered France’s coffers empty, and left Marie de Antoinette a head’s length shorter.
Taking or refusing the necklace can swing the story wildly and cause different events to happen, perhaps even rewriting history. Now whether those events lead to your head paraded all over Paris or not is up to you.
Speaking of reading, you see that hourglass button at the lower left of the screen? Tapping that lets you recap all the dialogue and narration of the level so far. When coming upon a choice and you’re unsure which to pick, read back through the rest of the chapter and think hard. That hourglass will likely save your character’s life!
If Stuck, Play A Different Route
The way the game works, there are many different story routes you can go through in every book. While it may feel unsavory to say, go through a path that might result in your character ending up in a horrific scandal or doing rather stupid or even evil things, it’s usually a good idea to do it if you’re stuck: Certain stories have costume rewards locked into certain story paths, but going into other paths does not stop those exclusive costumes from being on the level’s recommended list if they happen to meet the level’s clothing tag requirements.
You can go through a path until you get a costume you need, then resume the story path you actually want to finish. Preferably the one that ends in the smallest possible body-count. On top of this, events from one path may clue you in to choices you can make in other paths, so keep the events in one path in mind even as you go through new ones.
Helpfully, the game has a screen that lets you figure out which levels have branching paths, so you can gun for those. Besides, even the bad endings count towards completion anyway!
Speaking of The Route…
Always check the Route Flow Chart, located at the bottom of the screen. Sometimes, it may provide you with clues you’re missing to unlock paths, and to preemptively spot nearby endings, marked with an ornate design on top of them. This will help you unlock endings more quickly, or clue you in to which choices lead to certain paths in the story.
GENERAL TIPS AND TRICKS
Outside of normal gameplay, there’s a ton of stuff to keep track of, just like with keeping oneself looking and acting presentable in real life. Here are some tips to keep in mind, mainly for stuff outside general gameplay.
Story Friends…
The Goodwill system isn’t just some way to unlock free stuff or get past mission requirements. Certain choices in the game let you choose a character to talk to, do something, or perhaps save your princessly butt. And in some of those decisions, characters you don’t have a high enough Goodwill level for will be locked out as choices. You’ll need to start giving those people gifts so you can unlock alternate paths and endings apart from whatever mission path you are already on.
You can interact five times per day for every character in the Lantern to improve Goodwill, but after that your main way of doing so is through craftable Gifts. If you’re lacking a gift, you can simply select that gift, tap the + button, and start crafting.
Keep in mind that much like clothing, each character prefers gifts with certain tags, two of them to be precise. You can select tags to filter out gifts that they don’t want, so you spend the minimal amount of resources for the maximum amount of Goodwill.
There is also a power meter for each gift much like an outfit’s star level, with 3 gift icons being the strongest. You can also unlock character-specific Relics (Cards which can be used to boost clothing scores) by reaching lv5 Goodwill with them.
Also, if your Companions hand you a gift box, save it. Wait for the Double Encounter event, then open the boxes. If they have stamina in them, great! Now you can make the most of it with the Double Encounters doubling the rewards you get per stamina spent.
… And Real Friends
Having a healthy friends list will help in the game, as you can get Friendship Beans out of them. They allow you to use the Friendship Jerry Balloon gacha, from which you can get costumes based on whichever story you have unlocked and pick.
You can get a maximum of 20 Beans a day, but players can only give one Bean per friend per day, so 20 is a good minimum count for your friends list. Try to fill it out completely anyway just in case a few of them miss a couple of logins. It’s a win-win for everyone involved!
Kitty Bank: Free Stuff With Extra Steps
The Kitty Bank looks expensive, but it only truly costs you your time for a free high-star level outfit piece. The way it works, you pay a certain amount of gems, get a free outfit and a ton of materials for said gems, then the gems are given back to you after a few days.
So technically, it’s free! Considering the outfits given are often max-starred, it’s certainly a deal worth taking. You can find the Kitty Bank button to the right of the screen, in the Story screen. You can get them immediately if you want the costume reward ASAP, or wait until a Double Encounter event since they often have Stamina in them.
Shopping Trip
There are two main ways to spend your Gems. There’s buying blueprints in Parven’s Shop, and going for the Gold Jerry Baloon. Early in the game, you should try to use Gems to grab Blueprints from Parven’s shop, since those are the only way to get those blueprints.
On the other hand, you can use tickets for the Gold Baloon instead, though unlike with the Blueprints shop, you can get six star clothes here. Not to mention, the Gacha also gives out EXP Potions for Relics, so keep that in mind too.
Save up 10 tickets to get a guaranteed 4 star item or better out of the 10-roll and you should be good. Once you have all the blueprints though, you can stop worrying about whether or not it’ll be worth spending Gems on the Gold Balloon.
Fashion Lab
The Fashion Lab, located in the Boutique, lets you boost the power of all your clothes by a percentage, depending on which outfit type you want to boost. You can get the materials for this via Kitty Exploration and the Mirage Tree missions, so go there if you want the upgrades from this screen.
The typical order for upgrading in the Fashion Lab is to start with your Dress, then Accessories, then Hair, then finally, Shoes, with Makeup and Pants dead last in priority since Makeup is rarely recommended in missions and any Book reliant on large gowns (Marie de Antoinette’s story comes to mind) tend not to need Pants anyway. They all cost the same per level yet a tag-matching Dress and Accessory gets you the most points.
DAILY ROUTINE
As you get acclimated to playing Time Princess, you’ll notice a routine start to form in your gameplay habits. There’s quite a lot of things to do before you even get started on the next story level, everytime you log in.
Encounters
Encounters are one of your main ways of grinding materials, and low tier clothes that can be used as materials. Oddly enough though, you should never do them simply by jumping into the Encounter screen directly. Instead, you should do them by going through whatever screens require the things you need, like say, the Stage Hint button on the Level Select screen.
As an example, you can go to Stage Hint, pick an outfit you’re missing, and if you have the blueprint for it, pick the material you’re missing. Not only will this send you to the Encounters screen, it will also mark that item for you, and you will constantly get Encounters that have it as a possible drop, until you pick a different material. Then you craft your fancy outfit (Or if you picked a different screen, you craft whatever the heck it was you wanted) and go off to flaunt your fashion in the next story episode!
Big, Chunky Kitties
You can have pet Cats in the game, and rather fat ones too! They have a few roles available to them. First, you can send your cats off on Kitty Exploration trips. They will return after a while to give you free stuff, and the more cats you send out, the more rewards you get. Second, you can bring them with you as part of your outfit.
Leveling your cats up by feeding them and giving them gifts will raise their score boost for your outfit. Finally, you can get them to go on a romantic date (at first with one of your own cats, but afterward with a friend’s cat, so again, fill that friends list!) to make tiny adorable kitties!
Higher star level cats make higher star level kitties, and leveling them up via food and gifts will eventually let them mature into adult cats at level 4, and allow them to help with Kitty Exploration and your outfit just like their parents. They may also occasionally pick up stray cats (adults or kittens) of varying star levels during Kitty Exploration, which you can keep and use!
Mirage Forest
A set of quick 10-stamina levels, the Mirage Forest is a time and stamina-efficient way to make Gold when compared to Encounters, though the materials given to you come in randomized boxes rather than being precise. Do a few of these every day, or expend as much stamina as you can doing these until your current wardrobe stops getting Perfect scores.
When that happens, it’s time to unlock more outfits. Go here if getting coins is more important than getting materials. If you want materials for crafting, go for Encounters instead since it’s a lot more precise and spammable, unless you want materials for Clothing Research.
Societal Tasks
Like in any mobile game, it’s a good idea to join a guild in Time Princess, called a Society in this case. A Society can help you unlock clothes exclusive to the Society Fashion Tree. Nurturing the Tree not only allows these clothes to be unlocked, they also give you Time Coins needed for the Time Emporium guild shop, which will let you buy shards and blueprints to unlock said costumes for you to craft yourself.
You can also help out fellow Society members (And perhaps get some help yourself) in the Flower Basket, where Society members can wish for Materials. Each member can give each wisher 1 of the material they are asking for.
As for the Lucky Treasure, it contains both a daily reward and the Crazy Lovecraft, a shop where you can lower the price for yourself and other guildies for whatever it is they’re selling at the moment. You can only lower the cost of the rewards on offer in the Crazy Lovecraft if you can afford to, but the Gems don’t actually get spent when you do so. It’s usually a good idea to buy it only once your guild has lowered the price to the bottom it can go.
Fantasy Fair
One of the oddest ways to have PVP in a mobile game, the Fantasy Fair is a board game-type mode where you roll a dice to move across a board. Certain tiles give you rewards, mess with your movement, and do other things, but some of the tiles have you show off your clothes against another player, specifically the one with pink toy soldiers on them.
Whoever has the better clothing score wins, and every week, clothes with certain Tags get a score boost. This is going to be a fairly long-term battle, since you need to rank up to unlock better items to buy from the Fantasy Fair shop. You can earn coins 30 times in a day from wins against other players, far more than your allotted daily dice rolls, so make sure you use all your dice everyday.
While you’re at it, make sure you save the items you pick up in the board game for a fortuitous situation. Tactical use of these items may get you the most profit for the least amount of battles, which is always nice if your wardrobe is suffering a bit.
Phantom Mirror
One of the more difficult things you can do daily, at least very early on before you have a decent wardrobe, the Phantom Mirror is a challenge where you have to match the outfit shown to you. You don’t need to match it 1-1 to get rewards or even a perfect score: If you lack the outfits shown, you can try matching the outfit’s tags instead.
The closer your outfit is to the one shown, the better your rewards, and you get two tries a day, and you ARE allowed to bring the same outfit twice. That being said, the names of the outfits are hidden from you, except for two which you can reveal. Even as a player with many costumes in your belt, you should still have a sharp eye to remember what outfits she’s wearing.
Or you can simply take a screenshot and use it as reference, whether it be on your phone or on an emulator with a tab open showing the .PNG file. For obvious reasons, the Recommended Outfit button doesn’t exist here.
Cat Tablet Minigames
The little tablet with a cat paw in your room lets you play minigames that change roughly every half a week or so. You get energy for these minigames, and rewards depending on how well and how often you do them, with an accumulating total score unlocking new rewards every score threshold much like a Season Pass.
Often, these minigames will also let you watch ads for extra score, when you screw it up, win normally, or both. Always tap the (!) button on the top right corner of the screen when you enter, so you know what you’re getting into. Always expend the energy you’re given daily for these, as it’s separate from your Stamina meter.
Event Center
As with any online game, Time Princess comes with limited time events. You can find these in the Event Center. There are 3 tabs in the Event Center: Events, Benefits and Community. The Events tab are where all the main limited time events are. Normally, you get rewards for doing tasks within the game during these events, so use them as extra quests to gun for.
As for the Benefits tab, this is for events that typically give you free stuff just by logging in, with events that often last much longer than the ones in the Events tab, usually for new players as a way to keep them playing. The Community tab simply gives you a small stipend of Gems for visiting the game’s various social media accounts.
And that ends our Time Princess beginner’s guide. Have fun gracefully dodging death, drama and politics, and enjoy the stories the game has to offer. If you have your own tips, don’t hesitate to share them in the comment section below!