Blue Prince is a difficult one for me to review, because a lot of my points about it are based on how it made me feel. It’s hard to explain. Have you ever booked a cottage for a holiday? Bear with me. You walk in and all the doors are closed. You might know the basic floorplan but when you grab a door handle, chances are you don’t know for sure what’s behind the door. There’s a little spark of mystery, at least until you open the door and find out that it’s just a bedroom. Exploring an unknown, yet comfortable space is an odd feeling.
It’s that feeling that Blue Prince evoked most strongly in me, with a dash of something sadder, but we’ll get to that later. Every door in Blue Prince leads to somewhere strange and, often, new. When you first start playing, you might ask the question, ‘is this really it?’. I can emphatically say that the answer is no. Despite the gentle gameplay loop, there are caverns of hidden depth. Truly, Blue Prince is a game that gives back the more you put in.
Architect’s Nightmare
On the surface, Blue Prince seems bizarrely simple. We play as Simon, a young lad whose uncle – the poshly named Herbert Sinclair – has passed away. In his will, he leaves Simon his giant mansion, with one twist: to keep it, Simon needs to find Room 46. The problem being, there are only 45 rooms in the mansion. I’m just glad we didn’t play as the people who had to try and execute this will. Anyway, Simon starts his quest to pick through what rooms he can find.
In terms of gameplay, if I were to compress it into a genre, I’d probably label it as ‘puzzle roguelike’. Every day, Simon goes into the entrance hall and is greeted with three doors. Interacting with one produces a ‘draft’; a set of three rooms to choose from. These rooms are broken down into broad categories. There are bedrooms, which restore energy; gardens; red rooms that inflict negative effects; hallways, and so on. An entire mansion chopped into bits and arranged at will, which resets each morning. Ever played Betrayal at House on the Hill? It feels a lot like that.
The basic route to Room 46 is broadly simple. Draft enough room types and you’ll get there. The depth comes through pretty much everything else. There are passcoded safes everywhere, for instance, as well as a variety of other puzzles that deepen the mystery. The key being that the clues are often in other rooms. It’s an excellent way of approaching puzzles from the perspective of a video game. The clues and puzzles may not appear in the same room, necessitating careful observation and, in my case, scribbling notes down like a madman. They just keep coming too. Each run uncovers new sets of puzzles. It’s excellent.
Searching For Answers
Let me give you one (veiled) example. On one of my later Blue Prince runs, I drafted a room full of statues. I could interact with the statues to put them in different states, but after poking around the room for ten minutes, I was out of ideas. Frustrated, I drafted another room and, idly glancing at the walls, found the solution. It had been staring at me for hours in previous runs. It’s very organic. Add to that the need to manage energy, as well as juggling keys and trying to avoid running into dead ends, and you often can’t dictate what puzzle you’ll solve when. You’ve got to embrace the whole, and keep moving.
Which I suppose ties in with the general themes of Blue Prince, at least as far as I interpreted it. Simon is a young kid – too young to be dealing with the things that have been put on him. I don’t want to spoil too much, but he doesn’t have a fantastic family life, and while his Uncle seemed fond of him, they didn’t seem close. The mansion, and its constant shifting rooms, feels like Simon picking through the past. At each turn he comes face-to-face with the eccentricities of his uncle and his own, sudden need for adulthood. Room 46 turns into an almost mystical challenge, that leads him through his family tree as much as through the house.
I could probably continue singing the praises of Blue Prince. Like it’s tendency to deliver powerful emotional blows on the tail of puzzle solving. But this is a review, so I must parade out the nitpicks. For one, as beautiful as the art (and music) is, the house rooms feel a touch sterile. Each type of room is in the exact same condition when drafted. I wanted little elements of Simon to break through, to shift things from his uncle. Also, while most puzzles are great, some rely on certain rooms being drafted next to each other. I have one puzzle solved in my notes, but I can’t actually solve it due to basic RNG, which isn’t great.
Blue Prince – Depth Of All Kinds
Blue Prince is best gone into with as little prior knowledge as possible. Which I guess makes this review redundant, but it’s true. The gradual unravelling of the layers is a key element. It’s very deliberately designed to make you underestimate it. My thinking ‘Is this really it?’ was perhaps deliberate, so that Blue Prince can laugh and shake its head. It’s not really it. Not by half. I suspect that attitude might turn people off, but I’m fifteen hours in and I’ve got a folder of screenshots, and a notebook of scribbles that all presumably fit in somewhere.
It remains a hard game to describe, though. You are just placing down room tiles, after all, while trying not to trap yourself. If it does interest you, my advice is twofold. First, if something looks a little out of place in a room, then for heaven’s sake, make a note of it. Secondly, don’t stop. Keep drafting new rooms, keep making new notes, keep starting new days. At some point it’ll click. Blue Prince truly understands the ‘game’ part of ‘puzzle game’, by presenting you with a beautiful mansion full of smart, out-of-the-way puzzles, and a depth that is truly staggering.
Ohh. Blueprints. I just got that.
