With this site’s reviewing career ending soon, it’s time to start considering what comes next. The next step for some here would be to find another website to continue practicing the craft of reviewing games critically. However, some may be able to inherit a new website to show off their growing skills. The site is now in its golden years, with the writers ready to move on. Just like the writers on the site are ready to move on and work towards their future, the protagonist of Blue Prince is facing a new future with what they learned. Thankfully, this game that followed death and inheritance is a good and solid time.
You are Simon P. Jones, the sole inheritor of his great-uncle’s fortune. Said inheritance is a giant home with well over 40 rooms. However, you don’t get the mansion quite yet; to do that, you’ll have to reach the 46th room of the house. It’s not going to be a simple walk in and out, given how your great-uncle was a puzzle fanatic. Getting to the 46th room will have you exploring as much of the mansion as you can, looking up and down for any secrets and using whatever you find, with each room being one randomly generated from the blueprints you find around the location. You can’t stay in there forever though, as you’ll get tired after moving across 50 rooms, requiring you to head back, leave behind every item, gem, coin and anything you found inside the mansion, and sleep as the mansion deletes all previous rooms to start the next day completely random and unique from the day before. You’re going to need to utilize every advantage you can find, make permanent changes whenever you can, and use your wits to get to the bottom of the mystery of how to get to the 46th room, alongside figuring out just what happened before your arrival.
First off, the setting is both gorgeous in terms of an artistic sense, and a sound design. It’s a mixture of realistic proportions with a light cartoonish art style with noticeable black outlines. The game focuses mostly on the environment, not having any character models on screen for 98% of your time playing it, and it works well with how the game wants you to just relax into the relaxing atmosphere to get you ready to solve puzzles. The sound design is just as atmospheric. From the soft footsteps as you walk around the manor, the jingling of gems and coins you pick up, and the keys unlocking your way to the next area, it’s all sound effects that feel nice to hear, and the music is just as great and moving. The soundtrack never tries to get too dramatic, but it knows what song to play up and when, especially when you’re able to finally open up the path to the 46th room.
But how do you even get to this room? Well, the gameplay is a roguelike puzzle game, where at the start of every day, there’s the entrance room, and the exit room, where room 46 is. Each day has the rest of the house’s rooms are selected by you from a random selection of three different rooms. These rooms can be dead ends with a useful shop or item, connecting rooms with puzzles that get harder and harder each passing day, or hallways with two or three exits to other rooms to prevent you from being too trapped. However, you can only enter and exit 50 different rooms before getting too tired to continue and needing to head back to your camp to sleep, where afterwards, your entire inventory and rooms are reset for the next day. Some permanent additions can be added if you can think outside the box enough, but more often than not, your knowledge is going to be the one thing that sticks with you each passing day. With each passing day, you’ll learn more and more of the mansion’s secrets to be able to inch your way to room 46.
The puzzles come at you in a couple of flavors. The easiest flavor to digest is one that is locked in certain rooms. The easiest of these puzzles will have you deducing word puzzles and number problems, while harder ones will have you playing around with power and water to see how to properly move everything around. The next main puzzle is figuring out how to get to the end room, with you exploring other rooms and look into all the secrets in the mansion. There is a separate layer of puzzles for more permanent additions to the mansion to give you a leg up. From starting with more gems, an entire outer room, or giving you more steps to work with, there is more than enough reason to go around to every room at least once, just to see what potential puzzles or clues to the mansion you can find to help you get to the end. One final set of clues you’ll find doesn’t progress the story, but instead slowly reveals to you the backstory of everything that happened. No spoilers in terms of story or puzzles here, but even after getting to the end, you’re still going to be going back in to explore every corner.
Plus, getting to the end can be fun, even if it’s sometimes annoying. There are a handful of different room categories, and multiple rooms within these categories, with each room serving a different function. One room could be used to find digging spots to uncover treasures with a shovel, another can be used to build and utilize powerful tools, another could provide multiple pathways to get through the manor at the cost of taking away one gold from you each time you enter if you have it, and others are just dead ends with a handful of goodies to pick up. From deciding which rooms to place from a random selection of three, to getting the chance to upgrade some rooms permanently for extra benefits, you’re going to be trying to find a groove for each run of the home. But those dead ends are still going to be in the pool of rooms for the day if you don’t select them, so you’re going to have to play them sooner or later, especially if you don’t have the keys or gems needed for another room.
As fun as this new take on the roguelike genre can be, it still absolutely is a roguelike, so luck will be playing a factor in some runs, whether you want it or not. Some days you’ll end up just stuck with a small lay of the land with dead ends, and others will have you getting to the end but fail to open the door because you forgot one small detail that can’t be performed now because you don’t have the correct room ready. Now, getting destroyed by Lady Luck in a roguelike is normal, and helps players feel like they can get it if they have just one more go at the game, they’ll be able to get to the end. However, this can become annoying if you know the way to the end or to solve a side puzzle but just can’t execute your plan because the game refuses to give you the item or room you need.
Plus, and this may just be me proving the “bad at games” allegations, but sometimes the puzzles do feel like they can feel too nonsensical. Now, no spoilers still, but as the days go on and get higher, the puzzles in the parlor and billiards room get harder and harder, which is a fun idea, but when it gets to the point where it feels like you’re reading 3 self-contradicting paragraphs for the three boxes and the billiards room has you feeling like you’re in high-school math class, the small rewards don’t feel worth it unless you pump the rooms with an upgrade. And even some of the main puzzles can feel a bit out there, especially when you need to connect rooms to complete the puzzle. The game is usually fair with you, and can give you hints when you’re too stuck, but some cryptic answers along with the luck needed to get it all together in the first place can feel like the game is just pulling you along for a laugh at your expense.
But those moments are few and far between, and nowhere near enough to bring the game down. Blue Prince is still a clever and innovative game. The atmosphere in terms of graphics and sound design is relaxing and scenic, fitting for the nature of the game. Most of the puzzles in the game are both fun to figure out and engaging to discover and look around for clues. The entire game feels like an old playground rumor that kids love to say and boast that they figured out how to solve the game from their dad, who worked for the company (but they can’t show you because it will get him fired). Weirdly, the game can feel nostalgic in the sense of being a kid; unaware of the world around you and slowly piecing together a path and string of logic to get through it all that makes sense for you in the moment and growing to be smarter and more understanding of the world around you. It’s a type of game that comes out and is so new and unique that even if it wasn’t as good as it is, it demands you to check it out to see just what it’s like to play it. Blue Prince is a solid and intriguing time for any puzzle genre fans, and for anyone who wants to have a unique take on the roguelike formula.
