Being the old git that I am, I’ve played a lot of puzzle games in my time, whether we’re harking back to a Day of the Tentacle-type point-and-click adventure, or I’m utilising my grey matter on the latest Wordle or nonogram. The geek in me isn’t afraid to admit, I like a mental challenge. Blue Prince from Tonda Ros’ Dogubomb promises a “genre-defying” puzzler, so seems like as good a place as any to flex my noggin once more. After my (relative) success with Lorelei and the Laser Eyes last year, I’ve wrestled with the best of mansion-based puzzlers. This will be a walk in the park compared to that, right? RIGHT?
Blue Prince sets out its stall a little differently from most puzzlers by also being a roguelike house-builder. If that sounds weird, well firstly, that’s incredibly on-brand for Blue Prince, and secondly: allow me to explain. You are Simon P Jones, the heir to the Mount Holly estate. However, there is a single stipulation that to claim the mansion for yourself, you must discover the 46th room hidden within. No small feat considering the mansion only has 45 rooms. Cue the dramatic music, and let’s enter the Entrance Hall together.
Gameplay begins when you open your first door. As you do, you must decide which square room from a random selection of three (hence the roguelike aspect) will be placed on the other side of the threshold. You might have the option to pick a Kitchen, a comfy Den, a Lavatory, or something else entirely. Each room has different special effects, as well as layout. Many will have doors to lead you to keep building more rooms, on your 9×5 floorplan, whereas some may be dead ends, requiring you to return to an as-yet-unopened door.
The strategic element isn’t just the luck of the draw though. You have intentional constraints placed upon you as you place down your rooms and build up the mansion. You have a set number of steps you can take each day, and movement into a room uses a step. This means you can’t just keep backtracking all over the place as you’ll run out of steps and have to start again the next day. Other currencies include keys for doors that may be locked, and as you go further north, special gems are required to place down rarer special rooms, and coins can buy helpful items from shops. Run out of any of these though, and you may have no option but to try again the next day. And that’s why careful thinking over each your choices, and learning from previous mistakes, prove invaluable.
But what’s the objective here? We know we need to find Room 46, but what does that even mean? Well I obviously won’t spoil but on your blueprint map, there’s a guilty-looking Antechamber on the northernmost rank – maybe that’s the goal? Certainly seems to be something to aim for, and that is all I’ll say. But one thing to expect with Blue Prince is to have your expectations for what the ultimate goal is – and how to get there – subverted on countless occasions. When I finally did roll credits, I’d been surprised numerous times, gobsmacked even, at the unravelling additional layers that belie the original façade of the main mechanics. I was confidently strutting around like Jay from the Inbetweeners having “Completed it mate” as those credits finished, only to have the rug pulled out from under me. Turned out that this game had so much more to give, so much more it was hiding from me in plain sight. And then it did it again, and again, and again.
It’s hard to convey just how much there is inside Blue Prince. There’s an attention to detail here that boggles the mind with every little discovery. That detail also helps create an enormous sense of history, lore, and world-building. Despite never leaving the grounds of the Mount Holly Estate, I feel like I’ve travelled to all seven realms that make up its world. I appreciate the history that has shaped its present-day and can tangibly feel the political undercurrents felt by its citizens. I yearn to know more about my family’s past, their relationships and motivations, and how they may have felt trying to accomplish the task given to me. Not bad for a story told through hints and clues in books and scraps of paper. This is masterful storytelling, that gives you just enough breadcrumbs to fill in the gaps and supplement your puzzling with a rich, vibrant, and not always positive past.
The cel-shaded visual identity helps create a crisp, but almost cartoon-like vibe to the surroundings, which is often juxtaposed to the serious nature of your undertaking. But these clean visuals mean every detail is clear and well presented, as long as you look carefully enough (and in the right places). And accompanying everything is a lovely, atmospheric soundtrack that at moments almost feels akin to Breath of the Wild in its restrained accompaniment, before again arriving with melodic undertones to partner your latest round of sleuthing and it works perfectly.
I cannot ignore the argument some will make about the randomness of drawing certain rooms. And yes despite there being plenty hidden in this game to further manipulate and turn the tables in your favour, there is still a random element at play. You’ll often want to draft a certain room because it contains a piece of a puzzle you want to refer to or where your next solution lies, and despite everything, it just won’t appear. That is something you will have to endure, but where Blue Prince succeeds is that the solution pathway isn’t linear, and whilst working towards problem A, you’ll unwittingly stumble on something towards problem C you weren’t expecting, and maybe even discover a brand-new problem G to further ruminate on. A new room or clue will provide wonder and bamboozlement in equal measure, and so it continues for an unfathomable amount of time, but keeps you hooked with just enough titbits along the way.
It’s a very rare but joyful experience when a game simply enthrals you—a game that wraps you up in itself like a warm duvet on a Sunday morning. You find yourself almost unwittingly at its beck and call, as it’s the first thing you think of when you wake up and the last thing you consider before gently dropping off into a slumber on its terms. But whilst my wife may have some choice words to say about my focus and headspace priorities these past few weeks, Blue Prince deserved every bit of my attention. I’ve never played anything quite so engrossing, alluring, mysterious, and downright addictive. Uncovering the layers of puzzles and Mount Holly shenanigans like some delicious onion never became tiresome, and I envy those newcomers going in blind, unprepared for what they will uncover. Blue Prince is something truly spectacular, a new kind of puzzle game, that grabs you from the moment you place your first blueprint and never lets go.
