My first day with Blue Prince, I told myself I’d just have a little taste before turning to my usual evening K-drama. Before I knew it the sun had long since set and my lounge was lit only by my Steam Deck and a game that had fast become my new obsession. It is the sort of game that feels as though it were made just for you – and the elements that make it truly special are best discovered without forewarning, so forgive any vagueness in what follows.
In a similar style to What Remains of Edith Finch or Gone Home, Blue Prince has you exploring your character’s atmospherically uninhabited family home. But as in Outer Wilds, your exploration is limited: you are frequently forced to start afresh with little more than the snippets of knowledge you’ve gained. Each expedition is further complicated by Rogue-like randomisation: the house’s shapeshifting floor plan is a five-by-nine grid to be filled anew each day with tiles drafted by you, a feature that some players may recognise from the board game Betrayal at House on the Hill. But in this case there’s a random choice of three options whenever you open a door.
Different rooms serve different functions. Some provide resources such as keys, money, energy or gems (required to draft more interesting rooms), and these are occasionally locked behind relatively simple standalone puzzles. Others deplete your stocks, like the gymnasium that wearies you each time you enter. A few, such as the boiler room or utility closet, offer special features that affect the rest of the house, occasionally even beyond just that day. On every in-game day, you enter the house, draft rooms, and explore until you run out of energy or openable doors. Rinse and repeat.
The point? Ostensibly, to fulfil the stipulation laid out in a deceased great uncle’s will to find an elusive 46th room and thereby inherit the estate. But like a parfait dessert, this game is deliciously layered. At first the sprawling house can feel sparse, with its lifeless rooms and the game’s calming cel-shaded art style and succinct sound design and music. You’ll focus on the draft, learning as you go that the further you get from the entrance, the more likely you are to draw rarer rooms; that most rooms can only be drafted once per run; and that it’s always worth trying a room you haven’t seen before even if it doesn’t seem useful in the moment.
Before too long, you’ll start to find objects that hint at future discoveries: car keys when you’ve yet to see a car (or even considered venturing outside); notes written by different hands; larger puzzles you have no idea how or why to solve. You’ll scribble down hints and set goals for future runs, or – as I did – take copious screenshots of the letters, photographs and other artefacts found throughout. As the rooms become more familiar, you’ll notice more details and wonder if they’re background art, environmental storytelling, or clues.
In another game such repetition could feel tedious, but Blue Prince sets a gently rewarding pace, the randomisation nudging you to try new things and make new discoveries each day. Thoughtful design details smooth your way: most locked doors only require any generic key, the more convoluted puzzles remain solved even when the house resets, the use of discrete energy units consumed when you enter a room – rather than a ticking clock – means you can always take your time. I never felt in danger of not being able to solve a problem, and multiple puzzles ended up having easier solutions than I initially suspected.
And then there’s the fact that Blue Prince has the best titular homophone in video games (sorry Fortnite). It’s a game about the blueprints of the Mount Holly Estate, and naturally a magical mansion like this has a story; it’s this, the family behind it, and the fantastical wider world in which they live, that will draw you to the 46th room and far, far beyond.
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