Blue Prince review - a high bar for roguelikes and puzzlers

It takes a special kind of puzzle game to gently inform you that you’re baffled without defining the edges of that bafflement – a subtle waft of confusion, a hint of feeling stumped, a sense of deja vu. Blue Prince is an exploding riddle with a delayed fuse, and it blew me away.

roguelike first-person head-scratcher from developer Dogubomb. It’s like if Myst and Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture got together for an intimate dinner to talk about the menu system of Vampire Survivors (who is otherwise locked out of the party for being too raucous).

You play as a young lad with a wealthy grandfather. He’s dead now, sadly, and you’re set to inherit everything, provided you can find the hidden 46th room in his mysterious Mt. Holly estate. Finding a room in a house isn’t usually an issue; I can find all the rooms in my flat no problem. The problem is that the Mt. Holly estate changes every day, with each room being created the moment you enter it.

The estate has an ethereal quality, with the cel-shaded aesthetics aiding a sense of heightened removal from reality. It’s all normal on first inspection, then you realize that the entire thing is an unknowable space, appearing out of thin air with a click of your mouse. The music adds to this, with the ambient soundtrack filling in the area between rooms, swelling with the construction of the ballroom, growing sinister when you’re snooping in a long-forgotten space. The sights and sounds made me feel safe, alone, and uneasy more than once.

Exploration and experimentation are the main thrust of Blue Prince. You enter the house, approach a door, and draft a room from three options. Some rooms contain overt puzzles, like a dartboard that doubles as a mathematical problem, and some act as shops that sell items to help you on your run. Some are classified as Red Rooms and are mostly there to ruin your day by obscuring your options or reducing the number of steps you can take during that run. There is an eye-watering number of blueprints, and the challenge is figuring out which combination will get you to the hidden room.

The concept is easy to understand but, as is often the case with these things, difficult to execute. Follow along with me: I spend my first few days pottering around the house, drafting new rooms, trying to get a feel for what’s possible. I draft a cozy den, fire crackling in one corner, and some comfortable-looking chairs in the other. I draft a pump room, with pipes governing the flow of water through the house, penetrating the walls like so many tentacles. There’s an antechamber at the tip of the map, which seems like a good place to aim for.

Turns out that reaching it is a lot more challenging than I thought, with several obstacles stalling my progress. Although there are no overt threats in Blue Prince, I’m often assaulted by the absence of things. I have a limited number of steps I can take each day, with the number ticking down by one every time I enter a room. Drafting the well-stocked and delightfully airy kitchen, I can purchase food that increases my steps, but to do that, I need coins, which I might find discarded on a side table or locked in a safe.

Doors are sometimes locked, requiring you to find or purchase keys; drafting rare rooms like the laboratory, which lets you craft modifiers, costs gems; and I’ve just picked up a battery pack. What does that do? Your guess is as good as mine. I’ve so far relied on memos left dotted around the house but just found a note saying red memos are lies unless written by hand. I get comfortable with one thing, then another three pop up. Blue Prince is a hydra, but its heads are question marks, and oh, would you look at that, I’ve just drafted a dead end. We go again.

Rather than disappointing me, the daily reset spurs me on. It’s all about the incremental gains. I figure out where a particular lever might be, and I can work towards drafting that room. I read a note last time that gave me the for something. Excellent. There are times when I’m close to frustration, but the cyclical nature of Blue Prince always gives me a fresh start full of opportunity.

It isn’t long before I have my favorite rooms: the nook is great for turning corners on my circuitous path around the map, and it comes with a guaranteed key. The courtyard costs a gem to draft, but it has a lot of dig spots if I can somehow find a shovel. It all starts to come together, and I feel I have some control. Soon, I’m breezing through days, always with a secondary goal in mind. One day, I draft a garage and notice that the garage door has a switch. If only I could get power to this room…

Those early days soon vanished, as I found I’d spent 40, 50, 60 days exploring my inheritance. Like a babushka doll layered with head-scratchers, one mystery in Blue Prince often led me to another; I had to earn my way to being stumped by the next part of the house. There are a few permanent changes you can make to the Mt. Holly estate, and each is a significant progress marker. Even after I had found that elusive final room, I discovered other mysteries in the house calling me back.

After rolling credits, I had more questions than answers and more things on my to-do list than there should be for a game I’d notionally finished. There’s a safe in the boudoir, a nuclear bunker, and my mother’s history remains murky at best. Not to mention the creepy coin-operated fortune teller in the rumpus room.

Explaining what Blue Prince is without stealing the experience away from you isn’t easy. It just goes and goes, increasing the scope of the puzzle with each revelation. Even though I start every day from the same spot before the entrance steps, the blank canvas of a house ahead of me, I’m different, just as the house will be. I know what I have to do, and I know how to do it. I think.

I wholeheartedly recommend Blue Prince for those with even the slightest inclination toward brainteasing puzzle games. The mysterious, almost creepy house demands investigation. The breadcrumb trail often transforms as you follow it, becoming a needle hidden in a series of haystacks. But we must move on. Another day begins.