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What is Blue Prince?
Blue Prince is in many ways unique in the pantheon of video games. It takes the genre of “roguelites,” one traditionally associated with combat, and the intricate puzzle mechanics of a game like The Witness and combines them into something incredible. While not without its frustrating aspects, Blue Prince truly is one of the best games of the year, especially for those who love solving mysteries and escape rooms. This review will be spoiler-free as much as possible. This is the kind of game that really needs to be played to be believed.
Story
To understand Blue Prince, you first have to understand the premise of the game. You play as Simon Jones, the grand nephew of Herbert Sinclair, a man known for his mysteries. In his will, Herbert bequeathed to Simon his sprawling estate, a strange manor filled with secrets. However, Simon is only allowed to collect on this inheritance under one condition: he must find Room 46 in the 45 room estate.
I don’t want to spoil anything more really, because the story of this game is best experienced through playing. However, the more you explore and the more that is uncovered reveals to you more of the story of both Simon and his family and the world as a whole. There are bigger politics at work here than just the story of a rich family and there is abundant drama to discover. The story, in many ways, is combined into the game mechanics: you must understand what is going on in order to solve some of the puzzles, especially the further into the game that you explore. It’s masterfully done and as a player it is supremely satisfying when a story detail you took note of earlier becomes relevant to a puzzle and leads you to the correct solution.
And I will share one more thing: finding Room 46 is only the beginning.
Gameplay
The genre of “roguelite” video games finds its origin in the old game Rogue, where each time you died you had to start over from the beginning. Since that time, games in that style, where each time you complete or fail a run the game resets, have become a genre in themselves. Roguelites, the Blue Prince category of games, follows the patterns of runs and resetting but with the added bonus of a certain amount of progression that is carried across runs. In many roguelites, this might mean levels or weapons or permanent upgrades. In Blue Prince, this progression is mostly seen through unlocking certain areas of the house and starting with certain resources each run.
Blue Prince is played entirely in the sprawling Sinclair mansion and the surrounding grounds. There is no combat. Instead, you must solve the puzzles and mysteries to make progress both towards Room 46 and in what comes after.
Each day, you build up the house room by room. Each time you open a door, you get to pick one room out of three options to fill the space. The alignment of the doors in the rooms are very important for creating paths further into the house. Additionally, each room is associated with a color that denotes the type of room it is. Certain colors are associated with certain items or certain effects. For example, red rooms are negative and will have an effect that hinders the run.
Simon can only take a certain amount of steps each day with a step being used each time you cross the threshold into a new room. Once you run out of steps, the day ends no matter where you are in the house and the house resets for the next game (excluding any areas that are permanently unlocked). During a day, you can find items or rooms that have effects that will assist you in getting more steps or unlocking more rooms.
The game mainly takes place in a 5 by 9 grid, with each square of the grid denoting a room that you can draft in the house excluding the Entrance Hall where you start each day. Each row of 5 is considered a higher rank and the farther you get into the house the more difficult it is to keep going, with more locked doors and rooms with a higher drafting cost appearing.
For the most part, that’s the game. You draft the house each day, solving puzzles in individual rooms and puzzles that span across multiple rooms or across the whole house in order to reach Room 46 and the goals beyond. This is a game with depth, where you truly learn more each run and the puzzles get more interesting and complicated through progression. Each time you solve a major mystery, another layer is revealed that is even more intricate than the previous one. I highly recommend keeping notes as you go so that you don’t lose a detail from one area that you need to solve a mystery later.
In many ways, the gameplay is entirely brainpower and the puzzles feel like they were crafted with a deft hand. It is incredibly satisfying to solve one of them and make a breakthrough. However, because of the random nature of the game, with different rooms appearing each time and there always being a chance that what you need doesn’t show up, there can be some frustration or days that feel like they were wasted.
I believe that the positives outweigh the negatives, however. As annoyed as I could get about my bad luck, I also always felt compelled to keep playing. That’s the sign of a good game in my book. It’s also the type of game that is amazing to discuss with friends! There are often different ways to reach the same solution, so you never know what you’ll learn when working with someone else.
Final Thoughts
Overall, Blue Prince has really helped to redefine both what roguelites and what puzzle games can look like by combining the immersive puzzles of an escape room with the technical randomness of video games. If you like games like Zero Escape or Escape Academy or if you have never played a video game before but you enjoy puzzles in real life, I really recommend giving Blue Prince a try.
I don’t know if we’ll see a game like this again, but I certainly hope this is only the start of innovations in the puzzle game genre. In the meantime, I have some rooms to draft.
Blue Prince can be found on Steam, Playstation, and Xbox.