As much as I love a good roguelike, it’s hard to deny the genre has become rather stale over the past few years, out of an overall lack of creative and sheer excessive amounts of titles released at a weekly basis . I didn’t expect much from Blue Prince, considering the small marketing campaign and, well, the fact it is a roguelike, but have to say I’ve been blown away by what’s on display here. It’s genuinely creative and engaging rogue experience that has so much more than what’s shown on the surface.

Story

After inheriting the Mt. Holly Manor from your deceased uncle, you head over to the mansion to claim your inheritance. However, in order to do so, you must find the 46th Room in the apparent 45th Room estate that shifts every day that passes. Does the 46th room even exist? What secrets does the manor hold? This is how the store begins to unfold.

What secrets does the mansion hold?

The game plays its story close to the chest. Outside of the opening and closing narrations, there’s not a lot in the middle. Instead, you’re left to resorting to breadcrumbs found in various letters, notes and images scattered around the mansion and its various rooms.  As you’ll see when I start talking about the gameplay, Blue Prince has a lot of layers. One that starts of simple but has a lot of mystery to uncover. Anyone who loves reading all the notes and piecing together the story themselves will love this game.

Gameplay

The basic premise has you exploring the grounds of a hotel. You start at the entrance hall of the mansion and have to progress through each room to get to the mysterious 46th room. The catch? Every time you interact with a door, you have to choose from one of three different room layouts. These are picked at random from an initially small set of blueprints, and expand further the further you get.

Whilst it may be tempting to just put a hallway one after another to attempt to reach the end, it’s not that simple. The rooms generated might not be facing the direction that you want to go or may even be dead ends, providing puzzles or items that can be used in different parts of the mansion. It ranges from a metal detector to detect nearby valuables, a magnifying glass to really find the hidden details in notes, or even a set of dice to re-roll rooms if the selection you’ve been given doesn’t work with your plans.

But what does it mean?!

In another twist to the gameplay, you start with only fifty steps to complete the puzzle and make it to the antechamber; run out, and the day resets. Once that happens, you are sent back to the start of the mansion, and everything is totally reset. All the progress you made, all the rooms that you have crafted, have completely disappeared. This is a roguelike after all. And going back to the start is a key part of progressing.

I admit, my initial few runs didn’t impress me too much. The game just felt like a basic roguelike. Oh boy, I was wrong; Blue Prince is much more than that. After the first five or six runs, you’ll start noticing patterns and having ideas for how these rooms interact with each other. The hidden objects are often scattered throughout the rooms. Each failed run isn’t a failure, but a learning experience as you slowly figure out different ways to use rooms and recover from bad rooms. Each run, no matter how bad it was, may eventually take you one step closer to the end. It encourages a level of experimentation and exploration, taking chances with certain rooms to gain a great understanding of what’s happening.

Early on, I found a note suggesting that I myself should be taking notes about what I’m seeing and I did. For the first time in ages, I had a pen and a notebook, scribbling down the clues to refer back to later. Blue Prince has a long form of puzzle solving, with every smaller puzzle connecting together in a way to solve the bigger problem. It’s clever design that is only occasionally hampered by the harsh realities of roguelike RNG. With some frustrating roll dice that killed what could have otherwise been excellent runs. But going back on my previous point, failure is part of the experience and it still progressed me to the end, some 20 hours later.

Rooms provide unique challenges.

As a whole, Blue Prince is a game that really needs to be experienced with as little outside help as possible. A unique spin on roguelikes that weaves its puzzle-solving in perfectly. I wasn’t expecting much going in and those first couple of hours didn’t impress me too much. But sticking with it really showed how many layers this game has for one of the best roguelikes since Hades.

Sound and Visuals

The visual design of Blue Prince can be best described as “simple”. Its simple aesthetic won’t be for everyone, but it keeps the game feeling kind of chill and laidback. Something I can boot up, do a couple of runs and just chill out on. Its minimalist design means you won’t need to really dig through room after room. Similarly, it is also very minimal. It’s almost unnoticeable in many instances as you explore the mansion grounds. All in the sound and graphics come together for a more relaxed experience, there’s never a lot going on, no matter what’s happening.

Different rooms can actually interact with each other in interesting ways, but in logical ways.

Even if you aren’t a fan of roguelikes, Blue Prince feels much more like an elaborate puzzle box. There’s a satisfying feeling in making it further than you did before, finding clues to a puzzle, then stumbling onto another piece of that puzzle a few runs later. Blue Prince is certainly one of the most interesting games of this year. It takes a fairly novel concept in a roguelike puzzle game, adding elements of deckbuilding and base crafting. It all comes together for a gameplay experience unlike anything else out there today.

Blue Prince is available now on PC, Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 5.

Reviewed on PlayStation 5.

A copy of Blue Prince was provided by the publisher.