Blue Prince is one of the many games that snuck up on me. At the time of writing this, it is on Game Pass, and that is how I’ll be playing it. I’m looking forward to this one since I’ve heard some good things about it.
It is a pretty cool puzzle game with a fun mechanic. The story isn’t anything special, but it doesn’t need to be. The gameplay is what really shines.
I did hear quite a bit about this game before playing. Most of it was good, and I did my best not to let that impact my opinion. Blue Prince is a very good puzzle game, and while the story isn’t all that great, it doesn’t have to be.
TLDR: A fun and challenging game that looks great.
Narrative
The story for Blue Prince is very simple. The main character’s grandfather died and left his estate to them. There is a catch!
Like any good horror story, you have to find your way to a secret room. It is like other stories where you have to spend the night in a haunted house or something similar to that. This is a fun way to do a story like this.
The story alludes to there being a time limit, but I haven’t experienced that. The intro also explains how you can’t bring anything with you into the house, it will reset when you leave, and you have a stamina counter.
For a simple story, it sets up a lot of replayability and does a good job of disguising how hard it is. Blue Prince has a very fun story. It is a very flexible story.
Gameplay
Blue Prince’s gameplay is a lot of fun. The house resets each day, making each day unique. The rooms, items, and challenges are always different while the goal is the same.
You’re given a counter of 50 at the start of each day. When you enter a room, the counter goes down by one, with some exceptions, which I’ll get into later. If you eat food, you’ll get more steps. Here is the food I found lying around as well as at the store:
- Apples
- Bananas
- Oranges
- Eggs and Bacon
- Club Sandwich
- Salad
When you open a door, you’re given the option to draft one of three rooms. Each room is a little different, and not all of them are beneficial to you. There are a few opportunities to make changes, more on that later.
I ran into one room that was persistent from day to day. You can also find a room that will allow you to save an item from one day to the next. It’s great that there are features like this in the game.
Bedrooms will give you more steps. Some will give you more than others. The gyms and weight rooms will take more steps away from you.
There are a few items that you’ll need to get through the game. Some can be picked up and used repeatedly, while others are single use items. Here are the four single use items:
- Dice – These will allow you to obtain a new set of rooms to draft.
- Keys – Unlocks normal doors. You may encounter a few special keys along the way.
- Gems – Some rooms require these to be drafted
- Coins – These are used to buy other items
There are other special items in the game. These are randomly dispersed throughout the house. I haven’t found all of them, so here is a list of the ones I’ve come across:
- Shovel
- Sledgehammer
- Metal Detector
- Lockpick
- Garden Key
- Spare Car Keys
- Running Shoes
- Coin Purse
- Keycard
- Sleeping Mask
On top of all of this, there are a few puzzles in the game for you to solve. Some are easy, while others still confuse me. It was also cool to see how some of these puzzles required you to have different rooms available to you. It is one of the cooler parts of the game.
I like how this game changes things up every day. At first, I thought this was a simple game that would be easy to beat. Then I started playing and found out that it was much harder.
Visuals
I like the way most of this game looks. Blue Prince has some nice visuals, and it looks a little like an art project. This is a beautiful game when it needs to be.
There are a few cutscenes in the game. The opening video is good, and a few of the cutscenes for specific rooms are okay. The character models are fairly generic.
You don’t normally see them during the game. The only times you see your character are during the cutscenes, which is more than enough for me. I don’t normally like first-person perspectives, but it is better than seeing your character in this game.
I do like the little details in each room. It makes the house feel like it has been lived in. There are even a few rooms that appear to be under renovation, and several rooms that give me the impression that something sinister is happening in the game.
Overall, I like the way the game looks. For a game like this, I feel that it tries to relax you at the beginning and then becomes creepy as you approach the goal. While it can be simple at times, I like how the house looks different each time you play.
8.5/10. This is a great puzzle game. It has a simple story that works well for a game like this. The gameplay is good, and the graphics are hit-and-miss for me.
Pros
- Good Story
- Fun Gameplay
- The randomness works well for me
Cons
- Hit-and-miss graphics
- Might be a little frustrating for some
Conclusion
I liked the gameplay more than the story or graphics in Blue Prince. Normally, I don’t like games like this one, but it’s much better than I was expecting. When I started, I thought it would be a horror adventure game, but it turned out to be something better.
For a game like this, I was expecting more from the story when I started. What is there happens to be good enough to get the job done, and there is enough mystery to keep me engaged.
I still prefer other games to this one. For me, this wasn’t as good as Lost Records or Road 96. I felt like those were more complete games than this one.