Cast your mind back to high school English classes, the ones where they decided try to introduce Shakespeare to a severely disinterested bunch of teenagers (I count myself among them at the time). You’re told at the start that it’s not going to make a lot of sense to you, so they take baby steps, showing you plays, movies and other companion works alongside it. The thinking is that, one day, it’ll click for you and reading Shakespeare will be no different from modern day English to you. Whether or not that happened is always an exercise left up to the reader but I’m increasingly finding many games rely on much the same experience, Blue Prince among them. When you first start out every run feels like a roll of the dice, a prayer to RNGesus to bless you this time so you can get what you need done. Many hours on though you start to go full rain man on it, seeing the patterns in the randomness that will chart your way to victory.
Little do you know that’s only the beginning of the game.
The Mount Holly estate is yours, bequeathed in your uncle’s will with only a small stipulation: you must find Room 46. What is that room you ask? Well it’s a place that’s been hidden from all the staff, visitors and other family members alike. It was a relatively simple task to keep this place secret over the years, thanks to the rather unusual architecture that the Mt. Holly estate employs. Your journey to find this room will be steeped in the history of the estate, the people that called it home and those who were in your uncle’s employ. It’s a rich tapestry that will unfold over the course of many days to come as the house will rearrange itself every day, much to your chagrin.
It was kind of wild to see the comic book art style that was popularised by Telltale Games coming back with vengeance in Blue Prince, the heavy stylizing helping with keeping the game’s various elements distinct and recognisable. That’s not to say that the game doesn’t also use its visuals to play tricks on you, it’ll do that with reckless abandon, but they at least didn’t try to go for an overly crowded aesthetic just to make the game harder for no reason. To that end you can tell that all the various visual elements have been done with purpose, something that becomes abundantly clear as you get to the game’s later stages. The simplistic visuals also mean that performance is great and will likely remain so even on older platforms.
Blue Prince is a roguelike exploration puzzler, one where you’re essentially working from zero again each day. You have a grid of 9 rows by 5 columns with only 2 of them filled: the entrance way at the center bottom and the antechamber at the center top. The game hints and winks that the antechamber is probably the way you want to go, and there’s no harm in doing that initially, but the game quickly evolves past that by putting numerous different objectives, challenges and puzzles in front of you that open up other objectives beyond finding room 46. They are, essentially, optional things you can pursue if you wish but all of them play into the larger narrative of the Mt Holly estate and the characters that used to stalk its grounds.
Exploration feels amazing at the beginning, each new room type an opportunity to discover some new puzzles or mechanics that you can use to uncover further mysteries down the way. There are a lot of puzzles that you’ll be able to figure out on their own, something which helps keep the pace up in the early game. After a few hours though you’ll run out of those and then you’re into the multi-room, multi-day territory and that’s where the game’s complexity starts to ramp up significantly. I mean, sure, you can complete the game on Day 1 if you’re so motivated (there’s even an achievement for it) but that particular feat is almost entirely down to the luck of your draft as even the best strategy at Day 1 lacks many of the tools you’ll need to unlock other mysteries, in a reliable fashion anyway.
It was shortly after this point that I realised this game was shaping up to be a lot like The Witness was for me back in the day. At the start everything is cool and novel but after mechanic after mechanic starts to pile up on you the puzzle solving exhaustion starts to set in. To be sure, if you’re into that kind of thing then there’s few games like Blue Prince that’ll be able to keep you occupied for as long as it can, but for me there’s definitely a point where I’m starting to get over the main mechanics and I just want to see it through to the end. I’ll wholly admit that I’d given up on actually reaching the main objective at about the 8 hour mark and was going to write my review based on that. Something kept nagging at me though, a feeling like writing a review of Balatro but never actually getting to ante 8, which would make my semi-negative review feel hollow.
So I went back and started to think more deeply about my strategy. Now I know, the point of Blue Prince isn’t just to reach room 46 as it’s more about all the other potential avenues of investigation for you to pursue but that’s what was motivating me to go back. Whilst I haven’t done a full 180 on my initial opinion I will say that the last 4 days or so I played were probably the best I’d played in a while, where I had a good sense of control even if I was still a slave to the dice rolls. I even made it to the room before the antechamber with everything set up twice before getting a bad room roll that killed it, something which has had me quitting lesser games outright and boy howdy, I got there.
Now I know there’s so much more I could be doing but, if I’m honest, there’s not enough intrigue for me to continue past this point. I’m well aware of the multiple different puzzles that I’ve left on the table but they’re just not interesting to me. Perhaps they would be if there was some additional mechanics that helped me tone down the RNG a bit, like letting me choose my draft pool but keeping the room drafting in. That’d still keep most of the core game intact whilst giving me the assurance that I could continue to pursue the objectives I wanted to. Without that I’m just not particularly interested in rolling the dice countless times to get there.
Saying all that though it’s clear that the community that’s popped up around this game is there for the long haul with this title. I’m not ashamed to admit that I went to several different forums, wikis and subreddits over my journey with Blue Prince to get me unstuck or to confirm that I was on the right track with things and each time the guides/articles/hints were all structured in a way to avoid spoilers should you not wish to see them. So for us normies who aren’t puzzle gods or code crackers there’s still a place for us among them, which is not something you see around every title like this.
Blue Prince is one of those rare games where I’ve managed to change my opinion on it by pushing through my reservations about it. The main room drafting mechanic is incredibly novel, setting the stage for the real core gameplay that is its puzzles that range from the simple to the inscrutably cryptic. Like all good games where RNG is a core factor the real boss here is always yourself, overcoming the initial unfairness of the dice to instead focus on strategy; how you can make the most out of every day you have at your disposal. Whilst my tank ran dry on this game around the first third (from what I can tell) I’m sure there are many out there who’ll find dozens upon dozens of hours of enjoyment out of it.
Rating: 8.75/10
Blue Prince is available on PC right now for $43.95. Total play time was 10 hours with 6% of the achievements unlocked. Game is also available on Xbox Gamepass.
