Unlike metroidvanias, which are quite similar to each other, roguelikes never cease to amaze with fresh ideas. And sometimes even within the subgenre, as last year’s Balatro showed, which is not like any other card “roguelike”. It is unclear which subgenre to classify Blue Prince: it has elements of puzzles, and “board games”, and a bit of detective. Sometimes such hodgepodge become excellent games that leave a mark on the history of the industry, and everything indicates that Blue Prince will be one of such projects. But with some reservations.
⇡#The Elusive Room
Simon comes to a huge mansion that his late great-uncle left him. Upon arrival, the guy is in for a surprise – he will not be able to simply receive the inheritance. The old man’s last will is connected with the mysterious forty-sixth room, which Simon needs to get to in order to take possession of all the property. We have a rough idea of the size of the building and where exactly this room is, but you can’t just go there along the corridors – there are no corridors. And there are no rooms. The mansion changes every day, and its interior decoration depends solely on our decisions.
In this game, the door from the chapel can lead to the billiard room.
When you walk through the main entrance into the foyer, you see three doors leading in different directions. You approach one of them, and the game offers you three rooms to choose from. It could be a dining room with a handful of resources that will come in handy in the current run; or a pool room with a puzzle designed as a dartboard; or a lab with a computer and lots of notes scattered across the tables and walls; or a greenhouse with plants, pots, and watering cans. Unless you have a dice, which can occasionally be found around the house, you are forced to choose from only three options – and you can’t walk away from the door and make a decision later, you have to do it here and now.
Sounds simple — until you realize that not all rooms have doors that allow you to move further around the house. For example, the bedroom has only one door — if you create it, you will get a dead end, you will have to turn around and go to another room with two or more doors. The same is with the pantry, there is only one exit — back. But this does not mean that such rooms are useless — quite the opposite. They may contain items and consumables that will allow you to either explore other parts of the building, or gain access to valuable information that will shed light on the plot or give clues for solving puzzles. So you have to make a choice: build a corridor with four exits, in which there is nothing else, or sacrifice several passages for the sake of getting consumables?
When creating a room, check the house plan – this will help you understand whether you can afford to build a dead end, or better not.
There aren’t many types of resources in Blue Prince, but each of them is valuable in its own way. Gold coins will come in handy if you want to build a store with useful (and expensive) goods. Gems are needed to create some rooms – usually such rooms are the rarest. The already mentioned dice allow you to replace three proposed rooms with others – the main thing is not to get upset if the alternative turns out to be worse. Well, you open chests with keys, which sometimes appear in rooms (sometimes even in those where they were not before), and in some cases they have to be spent on doors.
There is another resource – steps. Each day the character starts with fifty steps, and when entering any room one of them is taken away. You can move as much as you want within the room, but as soon as you cross the threshold, the number decreases. This is a kind of energy reserve, which is not so easy to replenish: some rooms give several steps, occasionally there are apples or bananas on the tables, plus you can order a hearty meal in the canteen. But in most cases you rely only on your own strength, and there is an element of strategic planning in this.
A room with an aquarium also has its benefits
⇡#Interior designer
At first, you want to build the longest possible corridor and get to the farthest corner of the building, but I would not advise wasting time on this – it is unlikely to work anyway. It is advisable to cling to the opportunity to build rooms that you have not seen before, since there may be something there that will simplify the next attempts to pass the test. For example, the solution to a riddle in one room can be found in a completely different one. Or a hint in one of the notes will come in handy when visiting a room that you first stumble upon only after several hours. During the passage of Blue Prince, it is worth keeping a piece of paper and a pen nearby to write down every little thing – something that you did not even pay attention to at first may turn out to be useful.
The game is interesting because it remains very mysterious for a long time, and each subsequent run is different from the previous one. One of the attempts will not be very successful due to the small number of keys, but you will collect so many precious stones that you will open rooms that seemed impregnable. In another “expedition” you will easily get the tools that you previously spent the coins you had collected with difficulty on. During the third visit, you will come across a note that explains the riddle found at the beginning of the game, and you will again hunt for that room that seemed not very necessary then. Not to mention the permanent bonuses that are awarded to the most curious and resourceful – here and the appearance of new rooms in the list, and improvements to existing ones, and other upgrades that it is better not to spoil.
Resources and consumables can even be found in places where they have never been before.
The riddles in the game are mostly great – there are those for which entire instructions are written (and you still have to find them), and there are those where you have to figure out the solution yourself. Sometimes it is not enough to just find a riddle and solve it on the spot – you need to have certain items with you. For example, a magnifying glass seems unnecessary if you have good eyesight and a large TV/monitor, but in several situations it is a great help and opens up new options. And new options encourage you to start the day over and look for where you can apply this or that knowledge. Therefore, even runs that end halfway due to a large number of dead ends do not spoil the impression – you also take away something valuable from them that will be useful in the following hours.
But there are a couple of puzzles that I didn’t like, and they are related to the fact that the American developers simply didn’t think about other parts of the world. Firstly, one of the puzzles at the time of writing is impossible for those whose device has a 24-hour time format, not a 12-hour one. The puzzle can be solved by changing the Windows or console settings, although this is not a guarantee – it didn’t help me. Secondly, dates in Blue Prince are very important, and Americans write the month first, and then the day – this is an international standard, but many Europeans and Asians are used to the dd/mm/yyyy format. And different nations celebrate the same holidays on different days, and here one of the puzzles is based on this. So you can’t do without turning to a search engine in at least a couple of places.
Do we believe?
Otherwise, the game never ceases to impress and evokes mostly positive emotions. But if you spend enough time in it, the random generation can be a little annoying: sometimes you are offered bad rooms to choose from, sometimes you are forced to open the same room for the hundredth time, because there is always a key in it, and it will definitely come in handy. Fortunately, some rooms are even pleasant to visit over and over again – for example, the one with three boxes with statements, one of which is always true, and the other is false. Even after several days, I did not come across repeated phrases there. At the same time, the riddle with darts, although it also changes, gets boring because of its protracted nature and the need to remember the rules. But you forgive it when you get a handful of coins for completing it and go buy a shovel. What it is for – you will find out for yourself.
***
Personally, Blue Prince didn’t impress me as much as The Witness did, and I was already delighted with the multi-genre nature of Keep Driving this year. But it’s hard to argue with the fact that this is a great game and a new word in the genre – we’ll probably see similar roguelike puzzles from other developers more than once in the future. The puzzles are interesting (well, the vast majority), and the history of the mansion is intriguing, and it’s hard to tear yourself away from the process, since you constantly find new clues and hints, and then try to apply them somewhere. Some ideas are amazing, some are annoying, but it’s never boring – this is not just an unusual roguelike, but a master class in game design and a project that deserves the attention of anyone who appreciates originality in games.
Advantages:
- An original concept and a combination of genres that has never been seen before;
- Sufficient variety of runs thanks to random generation of rooms and resources;
- Mostly interesting puzzles, especially those where you have to guess the solution yourself;
- Excellent game design that encourages you to pay attention to every detail.
Disadvantages:
- A couple of unfortunate riddles involving (suddenly) a cultural barrier;
- Random generation sometimes takes away the feeling of control over the game.
Graphic arts
Simple stylized graphics – the budget is obvious, but everything looks very nice, and the rooms are strikingly different from each other in their decoration.
Sound
Pleasant music that does not distract you even when solving difficult puzzles.
Single player game
A symbiosis of puzzle and roguelike that you want to replay again and again to achieve the final goal. Although, as is often the case in games of this genre, the final goal is not really final.
Estimated time of completion
You can get to the desired room in 20 hours, but there will be reasons to spend about the same amount of time in the game.
Collective game
Not foreseen.
General impression
A roguelike puzzle game that will not only keep you hooked for days, but will also become the founder of a new subgenre and inspire indie developers for many years to come.
Rating: 9.0 / 10
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