Blue Prince Review – Review

Let me get this out of the way first. I am very happy that I waited to play Blue Prince until it came to the Nintendo Switch 2. One of the most renowned games from last year, Blue Prince is a game I didn’t know much about except for its structure and how it had the ability to quickly overtake a player’s life. So having it available on a system I could take with me and suspend at any time was a prerequisite. And let me be clear: Blue Prince absolutely deserves its accolades. This is a phenomenal puzzle game that will fester in your brain like a virus, unlocking key puzzles hours after you first encounter them. Blue Prince sits at the intersection of playing a game on a screen and playing a game in your mind. I cannot recommend it enough for those who love to sink their teeth into an escape room, mystery box or puzzle book. Even if it may end up overtaking any free hours you still have left at the end of the day.

After the passing of Baron Sinclair, you play as Simon, his chosen successor. His inheritance, the Mount Holly Estate and associated titles, will be yours if you can reach the mysterious 46th room of the manor. Given that there are only 45 rooms and that the layout of the house changes every day, this is a task easier said than done. Every in-game day you begin at the manor entrance and will need to open doors, draft rooms and manage your limited resources in order to figure out how to find, reach and access the 46th room. Each room is a puzzle in its own right and the game does not waste time by recommending you keep a physical notebook in order to track clues and puzzles. By the end, my notebook was almost twenty pages of scribbles, doodles and charts.

As you may have guessed, this is where the roguelike structure comes into play. Each time you open a door, you can pick from three different rooms with different connecting doors. While certain rooms are more likely to appear in certain places of the manor in a sense every door is you rolling the dice and hoping for a room that can be beneficial. A room may contain resources such as gems, which can be spent to draw rooms with additional doors or benefits. But rooms also have designated colors that indicate their type. For example, red rooms tend to have detrimental effects on your draft for the remainder of the day. Given that every room has its own layout and connecting paths, nothing is more important than keeping an eye on your resources so that you can open or access rooms in such a way that you can keep moving forward. Whether that is actively going north and reaching the Antechamber at the far end of the manor, or focusing in on a specific puzzle or key that can help you understand the manor’s layout better.

I think games are at their best when you as a player are making choices. Much like characters in films, choices are what define us. In play, a choice is what reinforces your connection to the rules of the game. Kicking a ball at a specific time during soccer has an effect on how the other participants of the game will react. The masterstroke of Blue Prince is that each choice is clearly communicated beforehand, and you as a player are forced to weigh each and every door as a choice because once you ‘unlock’ a door, you have to add a room. The game is randomized, but always determined by the player’s choice. It is subtle but key to figuring out how to navigate Mount Holly’s endless hallways and rooms. In the end that is the actual game playing out on the screen in front of you: choices and what they mean for the way in which you play the game. The thing with Blue Prince is that this is in a sense only half of the game.

Onions, as you are most definitely aware, have layers. Blue Prince is an onion, wrapped in boxes at the center of a labyrinth in an escape room. The sheer amount of things you can learn about the world the game takes place in–through the objects, letters, notes, art and much more spread throughout the drafting pool of rooms–is astonishing. Whether that is the Sinclair family tree and the inhabitants of Mount Holly, or learning more about the history of the Reddington estate. I’m fairly confident in saying that every possible room in Blue Prince contributes to this overall feeling of laying out a corkboard with red string. It can be unbelievably satisfying once you get the feeling of cracking a clue as to how to proceed. Whether that is a hidden password or code or simply understanding what a person’s relationship is to someone based on photos or notes scattered around. It may take tens of hours to suddenly realize what a machine is used for or how to interpret a cryptic message. This is the true heart of Blue Prince that will keep puzzleheads enthralled for many hours.

But I would be remiss to not mention that Blue Prince can also feel like a repetitive mess with this particular roguelike structure. Running into consecutive dead-ends, especially when you as a player have already figured out what to do next can be demoralizing. I don’t think that Blue Prince can have its cake and eat it too all the time. There are plenty of strategies one can deploy to figure out an optimal route. Only to be cut off by a no-win solution before the very end. In fact the only reason I was able to reach the end of the game, was by overpreparing for any eventuality and it still wound up being a matter of chance to reach the final destination. By that point, I had not yet solved every clue or connected every dot to one of its many other mysteries. I think that’s a flaw in Blue Prince’s design. I understand how its creators do not want to hand players the solution on a platter. But upon reaching the credits, I felt satisfied enough to not continue unraveling the layers it uses to hide its story behind. I can absolutely understand how that feels to certain players. Reaching that final conclusion will require determination, perseverance but also a lot of luck. This is where the game is at odds with itself. It is why in the end I still prefer a title like Lorelei and the Laser Eyes, which plays around with a similar design intent. But as it is a puzzle game with a set number of solutions, Lorelei allows its world and characters to grow alongside the player’s understanding of the world. Conversely, Blue Prince can often be a fight against the design of the game itself.

That having been said, even if you do not enjoy the roguelike genre, Blue Prince is still an absolutely astonishing achievement. At its heart it is a puzzle game unlike any other. You aren’t simply solving puzzles, but actively making choices and feeling their impact reverberate on the experience. The warning signs were there and they are true. Blue Prince can take over your life if you don’t watch out. But I say let it. Step into this manor over and over again. Get swept up in the mysteries of the Sinclair family and keep pushing forward. Whether you will stay long after the credits have rolled is ultimately up to you. But I can guarantee you that this is truly a unique game in every sense of the word. It will be the benchmark that future puzzle games will be measured against and that’s no small feat.