On April 10th, Blue Prince was released – a game that was almost immediately hailed as potentially the best title of the year. An unusual concept, interesting visuals, numerous mysteries, and assurances that adventures would never be the same again – it all sounded like something truly fresh and exciting. But is it really the case? Let`s try to figure it out below. We`ve tried to avoid spoilers, but some details, albeit without specifics, are still present in the text.
Baron Herbert Sinclair was an eccentric man, which was reflected in his will. Shortly before his death, he canceled all previous instructions and left everything to his nephew, 14-year-old Simon. However, there`s a catch: to inherit, the young man must prove that he is the true Sinclair, which requires solving the mystery of Uncle Herbert`s mansion. A strange building with a daily changing layout, at first glance, consists of 45 rooms, but Simon needs to find the mysterious 46th room, while observing the rules: it is forbidden to spend the night in the mansion, it is forbidden to bring items from outside into it, and nothing can be taken away. There is no time limit for solving the puzzle.
This is the premise of Blue Prince and the explanation of its key mechanics. It`s an unusual hybrid of a roguelike and a puzzle game, which captivated many with its unique concept. However, just as many gamers were repelled by it, and by exactly the same concept. But let`s take it one step at a time.
The “roguelike” aspect here primarily refers to the structure of the house, created in a semi-random way. Each time, opening a door, the player can choose one of three rooms that will appear next. The logic of their appearance is unclear at first, but after a couple of runs, you start to notice certain patterns: some rooms appear only near the entrance, others – on the contrary, closer to the antechamber – a room whose location does not change from run to run. Another useful piece of knowledge that is not a spoiler – each room can appear in the building only once, which should be considered when building the mansion: sometimes it is useful to put a dead-end with not what will give an immediate plus, but simply an unnecessary room, so that it does not appear later.
The rooms in the game are divided into several main types by color. For example, orange rooms are passages, purple rooms are bedrooms (giving extra steps), green rooms are gardens, and red rooms are “harmful” rooms with some kind of minuses. These can be just dead-end rooms like a restroom or, for example, a darkroom, in which the light turns off, making it necessary to choose the next room blindly.
The aforementioned purple rooms are needed because Blue Prince has something like a fatigue system: each transition between rooms spends steps, and for exploring a mansion of 45 (or 46, if you are immediately aiming for victory) rooms, only 50 steps are given at the start. Of course, the number is not fixed and can change both upwards and downwards with the help of modifier rooms.
And it should be mentioned that at first, the player will notice only obvious puzzles like a dartboard and three boxes with a riddle. The first few runs will almost certainly be unsuccessful and will not reveal even a tenth of what the game is ready to offer. Appearances are deceptive, and at this stage, judging by reviews on Steam, many gamers are already dropping out, never uncovering the true essence of the game.
Superficial and simple puzzles, mentioned above, hardly represent any interest. They are undoubtedly needed in the overall picture, but hardly reveal what Blue Prince really is. By the fifth run, the player begins to pay more attention to various interesting details scattered around the mansion: for example, it is impossible not to notice the paintings hanging in many rooms, strange inconsistencies in the images in the drawing-room, or, say, a strange photo in the boudoir, attached to the mirror. Small details gradually begin to add up to something bigger and make it clear that the first puzzles are just a teaser, and the real mystery is hidden not in a specific place, but in the mansion itself as a whole. Somewhere here, the player will probably find a note recommending keeping records, and will most likely acquire at least a sheet of paper and a pen – or start taking screenshots of everything that seems even slightly important.
Oddities begin to form patterns, and patterns lead to the search for new puzzles. And now the player meticulously records parts of notes that are scattered in different rooms, notices that the clues are interconnected, and that a common thread can also be drawn between some of the rooms. Approaching the first ten runs, the player already begins to understand that it is necessary not just to blindly pull rooms, but to try to build them into a certain chain, for which they begin to more actively use means to reduce randomness, and no less actively neutralize randomness on their own – for example, inserting “harmful” rooms into dead ends and reducing the chance of them appearing in the future. Found items start to work: the same magnifying glass at first seems like a strange appendage, but it quickly becomes clear that documents and photos often hide useful clues. The latter, for example, can easily lead to unexpected places and show that you need to study not only the mansion, and room connections can reveal secrets inside and outside.
Somewhere here, it starts to seem that the rabbit hole is much deeper, and the scope for puzzles is almost endless. A real “wow” effect occurs after the player first encounters the prediction system and finally understands how to open safes or, for example, the principle of operation of the electrical panel in the utility room. The player is getting closer to the mystery of the 46th room and…
At some point, the player accumulates a critical mass of information and understands that further progress requires obtaining a certain combination of rooms, which… may simply not appear. As an example, I can say that to get what I wanted, I needed to “knock out” a pool and related rooms: activating one increases the chance of others appearing, but… for six runs in a row, not a single one of the necessary rooms appeared for me. Of course, it was always possible to switch to other puzzles, but not all of them are as difficult as they try to seem.
Perhaps the most обидным (disappointing) moment was when the realization came: notes during the game are not really that necessary. Almost all multi-stage puzzles do not give anything truly important: for example, having finally solved the mystery of the paintings, I realized that the obtained clue gives me what I already knew for a long time. And some of these mysteries are not needed for passing at all and simply reveal some nuances of the world. Of course, if the story has hooked you (and there is a good chance of this – a quite interesting picture is formed from notes, photographs, and other documents), then this is not a minus at all, but it cannot be noted that this is superficial and not obligatory.
Ultimately, the further the player progresses, the more often they have to rely on chance, which surprisingly does not catch the eye in the middle of the game. Until it becomes possible to get at least one permanent (we will do without spoilers), part of the runs will seem boring: old puzzles have already been solved, and new ones are impossible without a high degree of luck. This leads to frustration: more than once there was a situation in which progress required getting one or another combination, which simply did not appear. The pool above – alas, not the only such example.
Somewhere here comes the understanding that the mix of roguelike and puzzle is, to put it mildly, not for everyone. Or rather, this was clear even at first, but then the game surprised and began to deepen. However, “depth” in fact often turns out to be just a veiled stretching of what is happening with the help of the notorious randomness, which seems to entertain, but at the same time repels and does not allow you to feel what you actually come to solve puzzles for.
As a result, instead of delight from an interesting concept, a much sharper feeling of dissatisfaction remains, especially acutely manifesting itself in later runs, where many processes are simply automated: the player already knows what and where they need to see to succeed, and hopes that this time everything will work as it should. Against this background, it is doubly обидно (disappointing) when from the start dead-end development options begin to fall out simply due to the fact that the rooms of interest appeared at the “wrong” angle.
Of course, there is always a chance that even despite this, interest will remain, and here everything strongly depends on the specific player. However, the very fact that gamers` ratings turned out to be many times lower than those of the first critics suggests that the experience is by no means universal and still requires a very specific mindset of preferences. Alas, even love for roguelikes and puzzles does not guarantee that Blue Prince will work for you.
Blue Prince is intriguing at the concept level, but it breaks down on it as well. The game surprises – both pleasantly and with a minus sign, and you need to be prepared for this. For the most part, the local puzzles are rather pleasant, but it cannot be denied that they lack elegance – and this is precisely due to the chosen concept. There is a clear suspicion that if the game were linear and more familiar, there would not be such loud admiration for its concept – simply due to the very ostentatious nature of the local depth of puzzles. In fact, they do not reach the adventures of the early 2000s, not to mention the Myst series, which regularly pops up in comparisons. You have to rely on the concept and hope that it will work. In general, the scheme is working, judging by the reviews.
Finley Holt