Blue Prince was released on April 10th and was quickly lauded by some as potentially the game of the year. An unusual concept, striking visuals, numerous secrets, and promises that adventure games would never be the same – it all sounds like something truly innovative and remarkable. But does the reality live up to the hype? Let`s delve into it below. We`ve aimed to avoid major spoilers, but some details, albeit without specifics, are present in the text.
Baron Herbert Sinclair was an eccentric man, a trait reflected in his will. Shortly before his death, he revoked all previous instructions and left everything to his 14-year-old nephew, Simon. However, there`s a catch: to inherit, the young man must prove he is the true Sinclair by solving the riddle of Uncle Herbert`s mansion. This peculiar building, with its daily changing layout, initially appears to have 45 rooms, but Simon needs to find the mysterious 46th room, while adhering to specific rules: no overnight stays, no bringing items from outside, and nothing can be taken away. There`s no time limit to solve the puzzle.
This is the premise of Blue Prince and the explanation of its core mechanics. It`s an unusual hybrid of a roguelike and a puzzle game that has captivated many with its unique concept. However, an equal number of gamers have been put off by precisely the same concept. But let`s discuss everything in order.
The “roguelike” element primarily refers to the house`s structure, which is generated semi-randomly. Each time you open a door, the player can choose one of three rooms that will appear next. The logic behind their appearance is initially unclear, but after a few runs, you start to notice certain patterns: some rooms only appear near the entrance, while others, conversely, are closer to the antechamber – a room whose location remains constant. Another helpful piece of knowledge, which isn`t a spoiler, is that each room can only appear once in the building. This is something to consider when constructing the mansion: sometimes it`s useful to place an unneeded room into a dead end, simply to prevent it from appearing later.
The rooms in the game are divided into several main types by color. For example, orange rooms are hallways, purple rooms are bedrooms (granting extra steps), green rooms are gardens, and red rooms are “harmful” rooms with some sort of negative effect. These can be simply dead-end rooms like a restroom, or, for instance, a darkroom where the lights go out, forcing you to choose the next room blindly.
The aforementioned purple rooms are necessary because Blue Prince has something akin to a fatigue system: each transition between rooms consumes steps, and you start with only 50 steps to explore a mansion of 45 (or 46, if you`re immediately aiming for victory) rooms. Of course, this number isn`t fixed and can be changed both positively and negatively by modifier rooms.
It`s also worth mentioning that initially, players will likely only notice obvious puzzles like a dartboard and three boxes with riddles. The first few runs will almost certainly be unsuccessful and won`t even reveal a tenth of what the game has to offer. Appearances are deceiving, and at this stage, judging by Steam reviews, many players drop out without ever uncovering the true essence of the game.
The superficial and simple puzzles mentioned above are hardly interesting on their own. They are undoubtedly needed in the overall picture, but they barely reveal what Blue Prince truly is. By the fifth run, players start to pay closer attention to various interesting details scattered throughout the mansion: for example, it`s impossible not to notice the paintings hanging in many rooms, the strange inconsistencies in the images in the drawing room, or, say, a peculiar photo in the boudoir, attached to a mirror. Small details gradually begin to coalesce into something larger, suggesting that the initial puzzles are just a hook, and the real mystery lies not in a specific location, but in the mansion itself. Somewhere around this point, players will likely find a note recommending keeping records, and will probably acquire at least a piece of paper and a pen – or start taking screenshots of everything that seems even slightly important.
Oddities start to form patterns, and patterns lead to the search for new puzzles. And now, the player meticulously records fragments of notes scattered in different rooms, notices that clues are interconnected, and that a common thread can be drawn between some of the rooms. Approaching the first ten runs, the player begins to understand that they shouldn`t just blindly choose rooms, but try to build them into a specific chain. To do this, they start to actively use tools that reduce randomness and equally actively mitigate randomness themselves – for example, by placing “harmful” rooms in dead ends, reducing the chance of them appearing in the future. Found items start to come into play: a magnifying glass, initially seeming like a strange accessory, quickly becomes clear that documents and photos often hide useful clues. The latter, for example, can easily lead to unexpected places and show that you need to explore not only the mansion, but also the connections between rooms, which can unlock secrets both inside and outside.
Somewhere here, it starts to feel like the rabbit hole is much deeper, and the scope for puzzles is almost endless. A real “wow” effect occurs after the player first encounters the prediction system and finally understands how to open safes or, for example, the principle of operation of the electrical panel in the utility room. The player is getting closer to the mystery of the 46th room and…
At some point, the player accumulates a critical mass of information and realizes that further progress requires obtaining a specific combination of rooms, which… may simply not appear. As an example, I can say that to get what I wanted, I needed to “knock out” a pool and rooms associated with it: activating one increases the chance of others appearing, but… for six runs in a row, not a single one of the needed rooms appeared. Of course, you could always switch to other puzzles, but not all of them are as complex as they try to seem.
Perhaps the most frustrating moment was when the realization dawned: taking notes while playing isn`t really that necessary. Almost all multi-stage puzzles don`t yield anything truly important: for example, having finally solved the mystery of the paintings, I realized that the obtained clue gave me something I already knew. And some of these mysteries are not needed for completion at all and simply reveal some nuances of the world. Of course, if the story is engaging (and there`s a good chance of that – a quite interesting picture emerges from notes, photos, and other documents), then this is not a minus at all, but it`s impossible not to note that it`s superficial and not mandatory.
Ultimately, the further the player progresses, the more often they have to rely on chance, which surprisingly doesn`t stand out in the middle of the game. Until you manage to get at least one more permanent (we`ll avoid spoilers), some runs will seem boring: old puzzles are already solved, and new ones are impossible without a high degree of luck. This leads to frustration: more than once, a situation arose in which progress required obtaining a certain combination that simply didn`t appear. The pool mentioned above is, alas, not the only such example.
Somewhere here comes the understanding that the mix of roguelike and puzzle game is, to put it mildly, not for everyone. Or rather, it was clear from the very beginning, but then the game surprised and started to go deeper. However, the “depth” often turns out to be just veiled stretching of what`s happening using the notorious randomness, which kind of entertains, but at the same time repels and doesn`t allow you to feel what you actually come to puzzle games for.
As a result, instead of delight from an interesting concept, a much sharper feeling of dissatisfaction remains, especially pronounced in later runs, where many processes are simply automated: the player already knows what and where they need to see to succeed, and hopes that this time everything will work as it should. Against this backdrop, it`s doubly frustrating when dead-end development options start to appear from the start simply because the rooms of interest appeared at the “wrong” angle.
Of course, there`s always a chance that even despite this, interest will persist, and here everything heavily depends on the specific player. However, the very fact that gamers` ratings turned out to be several times lower than those of the first critics suggests that the experience is by no means universal and still requires a very specific set of preferences. Alas, even a love for roguelikes and puzzles doesn`t guarantee that Blue Prince will work for you.
Blue Prince is intriguing on a conceptual level, but it also falters because of it. The game surprises – both pleasantly and negatively, and you need to be prepared for that. For the most part, the local puzzles are rather enjoyable, but it cannot be denied that they lack elegance – and this is precisely related to the chosen concept. There is a strong suspicion that if the game were linear and more conventional, there wouldn`t be such loud admiration for its concept – simply due to the very ostentatious nature of the local puzzle depth. In reality, they don`t measure up to adventure games of the early 2000s, let alone the Myst series, which regularly surfaces in comparisons. You have to rely on the concept and hope that it clicks. Overall, the scheme is workable, judging by the reviews.