Blue Prince (2025)

Developer: Dogubomb

It might sound pessimistic to say that 2025 so far has been a slow year for stand-out indie games, but I also believe there’s still a lot of time left and a lot to come. I found myself in a bit of a gaming slump the last few months, not particularly excited about any of the games I was playing, until I got around to playing Blue Prince. Giving it a try because it was on PS Plus, it became the first indie game this year that I’ve gotten very hooked on. Blue Prince is a rougelite first-person puzzle game taking place in a mysterious, ever-changing manor. Blue Prince’s unique story premise and challenging, immersive puzzle box manor will make for an experience you’ll enjoy getting lost in.

Blue Prince sees you playing as a teenage boy named Simon who is has received an inheritance letter from his recently deceased great uncle, Herbert Sinclair. In this letter, Herbert proclaims that he will pass on his giant 45-room estate to Simon, under one condition - he must explore the estate and find the elusive and hidden Room 46. If he cannot find it, he will not be able to inherit the estate. Simon is also not allowed to sleep inside the manor while fulfilling this mission, and will therefore camp out on the grounds of the estate. The situation grows more complicated when you discover that this mysterious manor changes every day - the rooms that connect to each other are ever changing – every time you walk through a door, your draft three options of room and choose one to draw. You are also limited in how much you can traverse through the manor each day - each time you cross a door, that is a “step” and you only have 50 steps per day (with the chance to earn more). Due to these unusual limitations, each day is completely different from the last and constantly full of surprises and fresh starts. As you explore the estate, you’ll not only find clues to finding the hidden Room 46, but you’ll slowly unravel long-held secrets about the history of this estate, this world, and even about your own family members, including your mother. 

Maybe it's better not to ask too many questions, or you'll start wondering how this hamster is alive and still here every time you draw this room.

The art style used by Blue Prince grew on me slowly. At first, I didn’t really have a strong opinion about it - it seemed simplistic and perhaps not exciting, just looking to me like other point-and-click games I’ve played. However, as I saw more, I liked that the character design is slightly cartoony and hand-drawn, countering the fact that the game’s world feels “old-timey” and full of history.This is a story that spans back many years into a noble, rich family’s past and yet it feels like we’re seeing a version of it depicted by youthful sketches. I was initially uncomfortable with how quiet the game felt when exploring the manor, often having nothing to listen to but the sound effects. However, it seems this game likes to “reward” you with some music when you find something particularly interesting or make permanent progression. The jazzy, somewhat ominous music makes you feel like you’re slowly starting to open the game more and more. I do wish there was a bit more fun music, especially for those really slow, repetitive moments where you’re starting a new day of drafting. As much as I enjoyed this game, the slow pace and too-soft atmospheric music put me to sleep once or twice. However, one of my favorite things about this game, although we don’t hear it often, is the voice acting. Finding the Rumpus Room is always exciting because I get to learn a little more about the world, but also because I get to hear the some of the immersive, very impressive voice acting. Even though it’s so well-done, I don’t know if I would “wish” for more voice over since I think a big part of what makes the Blue Prince so powerful is how lonely it feels in this world a lot of the time.

The occasional voice-acted cutscenes are what helps makes this game feel ominous and spooky at times, making you feel like perhaps you're not alone.

Initially, I wasn’t sure I’d really dig Blue Prince. As much as I enjoy puzzle games, I don’t play many rougelikes or rouguelites, and what I felt from the trailer was that it is a rougelite that I would have to spend a lot of time “starting over” each day. However, after going through just a few days of the exploration cycle, I was quickly hooked. At some point, I realized it was time for me to settle in and whip out the old notebook that I used when I was playing Lorelei and the Laser Eyes last year - a game with some strong similarities in premise but also quite different in visuals, story, and gameplay. I was thinking about this game so much I found myself figuring out a clue in the middle of the night, half-asleep, writing it down for the next day. I feel that most of the time, the puzzles have just the right amount of challenge, considering there’s always something else you can find in the manor that has information or clues you need if it doesn’t yet make sense. There are just a few cases where I had to look up hints - I found that some of the codes for safes were a little more abstract to figure out than others. I had the right “strategy” and I was (I thought) counting all the right numbers, but was missing some strange little detail to get to the final answer. Although there’s so much to take in during each run, in my first few days in the manor I didn’t want to pressure myself to spend a rigorous amount of time studying every detail in each room. I was just focused on just making it through as far as I could each day. Slowly, more details started jumping out to me, and I would try to find specific rooms again with the sole intent of finding the clues. 

I found myself stressing "oh gosh, how much am I supposed to know about chess to figure this out?" Turns out, not much. This game won't expect you to have a bunch of prior knowledge on any specific subject.

Finding Room 46 alone isn’t easy but it is straightforward, and as a focused mission, you’ll eventually get there - but when you finally do, you’ll realize that there’s still so much left you haven’t figured out yet. What I’m really struggling with is my “secondary” mission, now that I’ve beat the game, to try to really understand what’s going on with the story. I have enough information to form a vague idea, but I’m not completely sure I’m landing on the right conclusions yet. I want to understand more about Simon’s mother, Mary, and what really happened to her. Without being too confident of my footing, I’ll say that I like that the story tells us that breaking tradition, questioning blind loyalty, and fighting structures oppression and nationalism is a worthwhile endeavor, despite the risks. We see the effects of being too cowardly to stand up for family. The very uncle who leaves this inheritance letter for you also leaves more messages for you to find, decipher, and reckon with, as they reveal a person who has kept a side hidden from the world. After “beating” the game, I watched an interview with the creator of the game Tonda Ros and realized from his explanation of the game’s long development cycle that there is bound to be tons more secrets and story that I still haven’t found. This is a little overwhelming, as I already have over 30 hours, but at the same time it is exciting as well. After finding Room 46, I’ve had more trouble getting the rooms I “want” to draft to come out, so I don’t know if I have the patience to keep going through it over and over again. I know for a fact that there’s at least 1-2 things in the game that will come in a “later patch” which make me think that maybe it’s okay to just take a break for now and pick it back up when the eventual new patch releases.

My excitement about finding a book with history of this "country" was soon crushed when I discovered it looked like this. Nothing comes that easy, I guess.

One thing I found a little tedious in Blue Prince is how much I had to use screenshots to keep information for later. I was all in for writing notes, drawing pictures, and making diagrams however much the game expected of me. However, if I find a full letter full of useful information, I can’t write all that down - I’m going to screenshot it for later. This is one case where another game, Lorelei and the Laser Eyes, raised my standards by showing me the possibility for what could be done. That game had a document menu where you could access any you’ve found, and it sure didn’t make the game easy. It just allowed you to look at something you found 20 hours ago with new eyes and new information and go, “OH!” Sure, in Blue Prince, you’ll probably find that document again sometime, but you also might not - some rare rooms don’t appear again for a long time. I don’t know if that would’ve been right for this game, but perhaps there was some middle ground between having them accessible and having to take tons of screenshots. Also, I understand how and why the game’s save system is built around completing a day, but once you get to a point where you have runs that are over 2 hours long, it’s actually kind of frustrating that you can’t save. I hit a point where I had to rush through what was a pretty good run because I had to leave and stop playing, and I didn’t see any other way to pause my progress through that current day. That being said, when I had my longest and best run of 2 and a half hours, there was a very motivating rush of excitement and wonder in continuing to find more and more new things, discovering a series of secrets and even permanent progression that I could take into my future runs. This game is definitely at its best when you’ve managed to line up a series of wins, a perfect storm of just the rooms you need, and you feel you’re getting deeper and deeper than you imagined possible.

Don't look at this too in-detail if you want to avoid spoilers - but this gives a decent example of how far a run can go and how much can be accumulated.

Blue Prince is incredibly captivating, it is constantly surprising you with something new and breaking the limits of what you think is possible. My few complaints are only based on the fact that I do want to better understand the story but I feel like it will require me to supply myself with much more patience than what was required to beat the base game. It’s an amazingly unique combination of genres - puzzle, deckbuilding, rougelite, first-person investigation, and sometimes even horror. If you like puzzle games and you’re prepared to take plenty of notes, I highly recommend checking this one out. Your run will likely be vastly different from my own, and that’s what makes it really interesting. If you tend to play more classic rougelikes, I think this game will sort of force you to “slow down” and take in details and patterns rather than just optimizing resources (although you do some of that too) and trying to beat your previous best. So far, it is one of my favorite games this year and has left a strong impression on me.

Blue Prince is available on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S

Played on: PS5

Last Played: 4/25/2025

Playtime: 35 hrs