Blue Prince is a puzzle game, with a wide-range of complexity from puzzles for dumb-dumbs (see author) and puzzles so mind-numbingly complicated that this reviewers shamelessly referred to online guides on multiple occasions. They test your memory, your observation skills, mathematics, logical deduction, strategic decision making and resource management. It is a game that rewards a slow and thoughtful approach, with tons of secrets to uncover.
And…
Blue Prince is a rogue-lite game about exploring a vast and ever-changing estate with the singular goal of reaching the fabled Room 46. You can achieve this goal using various methods, some of which are likely to reveal themselves only after several hours of playing. No one method locks you out of another. Stuck trying to get there one way? There’s many more options available, many paths to take with different challenges that test you in different ways. Sometimes the RNG will work to your favor. Other times it won’t. But, look carefully. You didn’t get the room you wanted, but maybe… maybe you got the room you need.
And…
Blue Prince is a deck-building card game in which you must balance your knowledge of the deck with the physical layouts and mechanical properties of each room card. Knowing which rooms are more likely to have certain tools/treasures/keys can be the secret to saving a doomed run and breaking through more narrative, more puzzles, and finally reaching Room 46.
And…
Blue Prince is a narrative game a la Firewatch or (perhaps more closely related) Gone Home. In it, you play as Simon P. Jones, grand-nephew to the recently passed Baron Herbert Sinclair, head of the Synka Corporation and owner of the enchanted and remote Mount Holly Estate. You are summoned to this estate via letter, and tasked by your deceased great-uncle to find the elusive 46th Room and learn the power of drafting: the creation and arrangement of rooms pulling from a predetermined pool. Should you manage to succeed, you stand to inherit the estate, the title of Baron, and all the wealth of the powerful Synka Corporation. But the story is not Simon’s alone, for as you dig through the many secrets and puzzles on offer, you find letters, clues, diary entries and memos left behind, all of which tell a complicated tale of your family’s tragic history, of love lost and lives left shattered, of authoritarian regimes and the ways in which they rewrite history and control information to serve their ends, and of a mother young Simon never got the chance to really know, until now, through the medium of her words, and the unshakable ideals which cost her everything.
Blue Prince is an astounding work of game design from top to bottom. From narrative presentation and some of the hands-down best god damned writing to be found in games, to one of the more engaging puzzle games I’ve played in my entire history with the medium. It touts incredible music, visual design, and mechanical elegance. It has many fun and challenging side-objectives to complete entirely for the fun of having done so, and it is FUN.
And…
Blue Prince is my current contender for Game of the Year.
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