Blue Prince Review — OH! Blueprints! I Get It Now

DISCLAIMER: This review contains spoilers for the puzzles in Blue Prince. For the full experience this game can offer, it is highly recommended you go into the game with as little information as you can.

Some of my fondest memories from my childhood are searching all the nooks and crannies of my Nan and Pa’s house interstate. I’d visit every school holiday and go wandering when no one was watching me, picking the sour grapes off the vine that covers the back fence, playing with the fish in the pond near the chicken coop, swinging off the hills hoist until I bent the frame.

Out of all these activities, sneaking down into the basement and rifling through all the spare rooms was my favourite. All filled with various hoardings of furniture and knickknacks, Christmas lights rolled up into massive spools. Aside from the fear of being bitten by a snake (we’re currently in the Outback), my imagination ran wild with the potential discoveries I might find.

Blue Prince made me reminiscent about those times, despite some obvious differences. My grandparents weren’t rich beyond measure, I’m no heir to a wealthy estate, and the house I endlessly searched through didn’t change every day I visited. Still, the wonder I felt back then is comparable to what I felt drafting the halls of the Mt. Holly mansion.

As I started my journey to claim my inheritance, I expected this game to take roughly 10 hours to roll credits and an extra 5 for bonus content. Oh, how I was wrong. Blue Prince’s marvellously meddlesome rooms threw me around and around, run after run, until I looked at my playtime and I had already hit eight hours, twelve hours, twenty.

Playing a lessor game, I may have started to feel disheartened or even given up, but Dogubomb has built such a wonderful and subtle sense of progression into the game’s core. I came across rooms that aided me after a certain number of times drafting them, solving a puzzle hinted in notes around the mansion netted me some extra starting goodies to help with each day. Even if I felt like I was nowhere near finishing the race, I knew that the distance from the finish line was ever closer.

Blue Prince’s stellar core design doesn’t stop at progression. Its limitations set each day up perfectly. Resource management adds depth, with a delicate balancing act determining how successful a run ends up. Despite only having 50 steps at the start of the day, runs can still last over 30 minutes when planned correctly, and once you’re experienced enough, luck becomes less of a factor when drafting. These constraints forced me to not only plan my next step, but two or three ahead and maybe a couple behind at all times.

This continuous feeling of progression mixed with the sheer number of puzzles and secrets woven into the fabric of Blue Prince compelled me to push on, to uncover everything I could. Thirty hours in and only just rolling credits, I uncovered a secret hidden in plain sight since minute 1 of my playthrough. I am still astonished at just how deliberate every detail of this game is, with each room adorned with potential clues to any number of grander riddles.

Room synergies provide another avenue for progress. Learning when and where to draft rooms became second nature as I grew with the manor. There are many rooms that affect others in ways that you come to understand and others that make you ponder further. Mt. Holly became my childhood home, familiar yet exciting, just as if I were the Blue Prince myself.

The mansion almost seems otherworldly at times, with its endless variety of rooms and replenishing items upon returning each day. The lack of atmospheric music makes your footsteps that much louder, accentuating the lack of life in this gigantic estate, the only remnants being the odd memo or notice found around the halls.

As an absolute sicko for puzzle games that require physical note-taking, Blue Prince absolutely delivers. There’s no hand-holding here, the game provides you with straight information and dares you to decipher it. With over 170 screenshots and 7 full pages of illegible ramblings, I feel like a mix between Sherlock Holmes and Charlie Kelly searching for Pepe Silvia.

As I ventured into the mansion time and time again, its history unfolded before me. Political dissidence, blackmail, sabotage. Piecing these snippets together was the hardest part of this game, and I’m not quite sure I have the full picture yet still. I’m looking forward to seeing the community come together and finish the work that I couldn’t alone.