Ever since I was young, I’ve always been attracted to puzzle games. From the Professor Layton series to adventure titles such as those from Kotaro Uchikoshi in AI: The Somnium Files. Blue Prince has been making waves recently as a puzzle game of the ages, with many even stating that we’re looking at a potential Game of the Year contender here. So, of course, I had to try it out and see what mysteries this game had for me.
Find the Mysterious Extra Room
Blue Prince‘s story takes place in a weird little mansion at Mt. Holly. You are Simon P. Jones, the grandnephew of Henry S. Sinclair, who, upon his death, has agreed to write a will that allows Simon to inherit his estate. This will comes with one condition: he must find the hidden 46th room of his forty-five room estate. Sounds easy enough.
He soon realizes that the mysterious rooms within the mansion change every day, and any tools found within the manor grounds cannot be taken with him. And that’s about the only dialogue you’ll possibly get, barring a certain room which I’ll keep a secret for the sake of keeping this review relatively spoiler-free. Blue Prince uses that type of storytelling where you subconsciously start to think about the mysteries based on what you’ll find from the various notes and puzzles scattered across the mansion.
Let Us Open the Door of Hope
At its core, Blue Prince‘s gameplay starts with the mansion’s entrance hall, which contains three doors. For each door, you are given a set of three choices, which will change how that room looks until the end of the day. These rooms can range from bedrooms to pantries or even hallways.
Depending on how you structure your blueprint, certain rooms are known as Dead Ends, which prevent you from exploring any further. For example, the bunk bedroom and the lavatory both feature no connections, which means you will have to either choose another fork or you’ll be forced to call it a day and reset the house, simply due to being unable to progress.
It’s also important to consider your steps. At the beginning of each day, you’ll start with a given number, and every time you enter a room, it decreases by one. If this stat reaches 0, you’ll be unable to explore any further, and the game will advance to the next day. This stamina can be replenished by entering bedrooms or by eating fruits scattered across the mansion.
And as the note at the entrance warns you, the player’s inventory is completely cleared on the next day. This approach sort of reminds me of roguelike games, and while that would normally frustrate me, Blue Prince manages to do anything but. It’s uncanny how it makes you carefully consider what room to draft next. You can keep a log of each room’s effect you encounter on that specific save file and properly draft out strategies to get to where you need to go.
There are also three types of currency: Keys, Gems, and Coins. Keys are pretty self-explanatory and can unlock locked doors and chests around the house. From time to time, to select a specific room draft, you must pay some Gems, or it won’t let you. Lastly, Coins can be used to purchase a variety of items throughout the Shops in the mansion.
Furthermore, you also have a lot of other rooms that will affect how certain rooms behave, such as the Security Room, where you can reduce the amount of doors that require a keycard to enter, and even entire rooms that can negatively affect you, such as the penalty you get from entering the Gymnasium. Each room is colored differently, and the further you go into the mansion, the higher the chances of you encountering a locked door.
Have You Been Keeping Note?
In Blue Prince, one particular note even mentions keeping a notebook or a notepad handy because you’ll find hints scattered across the mansion that will be fundamental for you to keep track of. For example, the mail room has a hint to solve a puzzle in the utility closet, and the classroom contains hints for a puzzle in the billiards room. The game expects the player to be taking down notes at every chance they can since it’s not always a given that they’ll find the room containing the hint the next day. Even rooms that may seem like they do not contain anything of note at first might have a clue or two.
One key example that happened to me is the laboratory, where I got a hint from decoding a message, but even with it, I was unable to truly solve the puzzle within the room because it seems another puzzle must be solved before I can start doing this. This approach soon had me jotting down every possible hint, and even with the game off, you’re still drafting potential solutions in your head. Furthermore, you’re also not limited to inside the mansion. The outer grounds of the mansion also contain their own unique puzzles.
No Two Plays Will Ever Be the Same
Because of its nature, the game offers a lot of replay value because of the way each room is randomly generated on the fly. This is the one game I would strongly suggest not looking up anything beforehand. Blue Prince is all about self-discovery, and the enjoyment of finding a new hint or the solution to a puzzle cannot be understated. If you ever thought to yourself, “I wish I could erase my memory to experience this anew”, Blue Prince is certainly one of those games.
Due to its nature, it is impossible to mark out an exact amount of playtime you’ll take with Blue Prince. Maybe you’ll get lucky and reach the Antechamber on your first run. Or maybe you’ll solve a puzzle without any hints—either by brute-forcing it or eventually drawing the right conclusions on your own. But even though you might fail many times, the knowledge you gain from each and every run will eventually make you arrive at the end.
Perhaps my only gripe is how the randomness of certain rooms can be both a blessing and a curse. Certain puzzles require specific rooms to be present for you to make any meaningful progress. There are ways to get around this, of course, especially after you get some of the permanent upgrades that make subsequent runs easier. Still, it can be incredibly frustrating when you’re so close to solving a puzzle, only for an unfavorable RNG to force you to essentially start everything anew again, especially later in the game.
Blue Prince’s Unmissable Adventure
Blue Prince simply blew away my expectations. What appeared to be a simple game turned out to be one full of surprises around the corner, and I would definitely recommend it to any puzzle game fan. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but this might be the first roguelike game I actually enjoyed.
Truly, it’s a game that you can easily get yourself engrossed with. Perhaps its only sin is just how heavily the RNG calculation affects your experience, but that’s but a minor gripe. Still, be prepared to have your phone’s notes app full of your own conclusions and notes, much like myself.
