Blue Prince
This game excels at three things: Wasting hours IRL like that’s its full-time job Letting RNG hijack your hard-earned puzzle solutions Making basic quality-of-life features feel like forbidden magic
Let’s break it down.
This game excels at three things: Wasting hours IRL like that’s its full-time job Letting RNG hijack your hard-earned puzzle solutions Making basic quality-of-life features feel like forbidden magic
Let’s break it down.
76561198182353497
Not Recommended48 hrs played
A Blueprint for Frustration
I have a love-hate relationship with this game. By which I mean: I loved about 25% of the experience, and hated the other 75% with the fiery passion of a thousand soft-locked suns. You know the kind of game that traps you in a toxic relationship where you have to keep playing because you might be close to beating it or getting to the good part, but deep down, you know it’s just gaslighting you? Yeah. That. One of the defenses I’ve seen from fans: “If you’ve played this for numerous hours, surely you liked it.” No. Absolutely not. This game taught me the true meaning of waiting–and not in a spiritual way, more in a DMV-on-a-holiday-weekend kind of way.This game excels at three things: Wasting hours IRL like that’s its full-time job Letting RNG hijack your hard-earned puzzle solutions Making basic quality-of-life features feel like forbidden magic
Let’s break it down.
1. A minor note to start: the game could do a better job reassuring the player that failure isn’t permanent
Between the ominous cutscene threatening that the gift will “LAPSE” and the ever-ticking day counter, I spent a good chunk of time convinced a game over was lurking just around the corner. It made me hesitant to experiment or take risks, which feels counter to the intended roguelike loop. In hindsight, you quickly realize it is safe to restart a day—but that clarity comes too late. It’s a small issue, but one that casts a long shadow in the early hours when players are trying to find their footing.2. Please add item descriptions to the Commissary
It’s a small but frustrating oversight that you can’t see what items do before buying them. When I’m choosing between a shovel, running shoes, or a magnifying glass, I’d really like to know what they actually do—especially in a game where every decision and resource counts. This exists in other shops so it’s strangely inconsistent to be missing from the shop players frequent the most.3. The Underpass is Pointlessly Frustrating
Trying to rotate paths from below with zero indication of what’s above you? It’s like playing blindfolded and being punished with the game’s slow walking speed for guessing wrong.4. Non-Persistent Key Items = Crime Against Humanity
Sanctum keys and upgrade discs that vanish at day’s end? Really? We’re already drowning in RNG and punishing mechanics—this is kicking us while we’re down.5. Real-Time Waiting “Puzzles”
Ah yes, the puzzle where you stare at a clock for 20-45 real minutes, like some kind of time-wasting performance art. Solve it? Too bad, you didn’t know the key vanishes at midnight. Back to square one. Thanks for the crippling rage.6. Let Me Save My Freaking Safe Codes
Re-entering the same 4-digit codes 50+ times per safe isn’t immersive—it’s psychological warfare.7. The Reservoir Puzzle: RNG Hell
Drawing the Pool, Boiler Room, and Pump Room in the right sequence is less of a puzzle and more of a divine lottery. It’s like the game is actively trying to punish you for buying it.8. Realizing you’ve walked past key items for hours is a soul-crushing moment.
Unless you’re blessed with the Metal Detector (which doesn’t alert you to all items), the game gives no indication when a room contains a random, usable item like a trunk, jewel, or coin purse—so it’s painfully easy to miss them, especially in cluttered environments. Four hours into my first playthrough, I learned that the coin purse I’d ignored repeatedly wasn’t just set dressing—it was a game-changing item I’d needed all along. That realization didn’t feel mysterious or rewarding; it felt like the game had been silently laughing at me the entire time. A small UI icon or earned permanent upgrade to highlight these items would massively improve the experience—and save players from the crushing disappointment of realizing their struggles could’ve been avoided.9. Power Hammer Needs More Power
Grinding out the precise conditions to craft the power hammer, only to have it disappear after one run? Absolutely demoralizing. Just let us keep the dang thing.10. Let Me Know What’s New, Please
Choosing between three rooms and having no idea which is new content with no access to the menu to check? That’s not helping exploration.11. Library: A Kafkaesque Nightmare
Want to read a book? First draw the library. Then draw it again to check one out. Then again to read it. Then again to check out another. Then again to read that. I just wanted to learn about a mechanic, not reenact Groundhog Day with a library card. Are there ways to draw the library more often in the late game? Yes, but there’s no reason to punish exploration this way. It feels like more padding for padding’s sake.12. Worthless Dirt Patches
Work hard to get a shovel, trek across the map, dig… nothing. Not even dirt. Just wasted steps and broken dreams. Give me something—a coin, a gem, a passive-aggressive post-it note—anything. I get this synergizes with the Lab but just have the Lab give credit for DIGGING. Or for digging COINS! Don’t punish players for engaging with the mechanics of the game.13. Head Meet Wall
Some of these “puzzles” aren’t clever. They’re just endurance tests. You don’t solve them—you survive them, barely. Boiler Room (cough).14. The Time-Locked Safe is a Hate Crime Against Free Time
Setting the clock, walking at glacial speed, wasting your steps, only to realize you have to reset the time and do it all again because your solution was wrong? No. Just… no. And for the love of all things sacred, put a clock somewhere in the Shelter! I beg you. At least a sundial outside if you’re determined to make me get my steps in. This wasted an hour of my real life.15. Dart Game: Burn It with Fire
We get it, the devs love math. But if I’ve beaten the dart puzzle once, stop making me redo it like some kind of SAT prep student trapped in a dungeon.16. Absurd Safe Combinations
The logic leaps required to figure these out would make a Mensa pro cry. And why are they all secretly four digits? Most people assume they’re 6. Just say the length upfront. It’s not a puzzle; it’s gatekeeping.17. Double Basement Keys? You Monsters
Nothing like barely surviving one RNG-fueled gauntlet only to learn you’ll need to do it again for another door. I weep for my poor, overworked Steam Deck. Make the basement key a permanent unlock.18. Even when the stars align, the game finds a way to say “not good enough.”
I managed to create the furnace with one room between it and the freezer—a feat of RNG luck that should’ve felt like winning the lottery. And yet, after all that, it still wasn’t enough to melt the ice around the note and key. I waited an absurd amount of time, watching the world’s slowest thermometer inch forward like it was mocking me. If pulling off a near-perfect setup doesn’t work, what’s even the point? This isn’t puzzle solving—it’s wishful thinking.EDIT: 19. The game is unsatisfying—and it pretends that’s a clever twist.
BP spends 40+ hours hinting at deeper meaning and answers. SPOILER: There are none. Just an endless tease to keep you digging.Final Verdict:
There’s a masterpiece buried in here somewhere–but right now, it’s trapped under it’s own design. There’s something special here—an unforgettable setting, compelling ideas, and the kind of layered mystery that keeps you thinking. But the game buries all of that under layers of busywork, RNG, and systems that seem designed more to slow you down than engage you. It’s a game that wants to be profound, but too often settles for punishing. If it ever gets the quality-of-life overhaul it deserves, it might just become a cult classic. Until then, it’s an atmospheric gem wrapped in a frustrating time sink.33 votes funny
76561198182353497
Not Recommended48 hrs played
A Blueprint for Frustration
I have a love-hate relationship with this game. By which I mean: I loved about 25% of the experience, and hated the other 75% with the fiery passion of a thousand soft-locked suns. You know the kind of game that traps you in a toxic relationship where you have to keep playing because you might be close to beating it or getting to the good part, but deep down, you know it’s just gaslighting you? Yeah. That. One of the defenses I’ve seen from fans: “If you’ve played this for numerous hours, surely you liked it.” No. Absolutely not. This game taught me the true meaning of waiting–and not in a spiritual way, more in a DMV-on-a-holiday-weekend kind of way.This game excels at three things: Wasting hours IRL like that’s its full-time job Letting RNG hijack your hard-earned puzzle solutions Making basic quality-of-life features feel like forbidden magic
Let’s break it down.
1. A minor note to start: the game could do a better job reassuring the player that failure isn’t permanent
Between the ominous cutscene threatening that the gift will “LAPSE” and the ever-ticking day counter, I spent a good chunk of time convinced a game over was lurking just around the corner. It made me hesitant to experiment or take risks, which feels counter to the intended roguelike loop. In hindsight, you quickly realize it is safe to restart a day—but that clarity comes too late. It’s a small issue, but one that casts a long shadow in the early hours when players are trying to find their footing.2. Please add item descriptions to the Commissary
It’s a small but frustrating oversight that you can’t see what items do before buying them. When I’m choosing between a shovel, running shoes, or a magnifying glass, I’d really like to know what they actually do—especially in a game where every decision and resource counts. This exists in other shops so it’s strangely inconsistent to be missing from the shop players frequent the most.3. The Underpass is Pointlessly Frustrating
Trying to rotate paths from below with zero indication of what’s above you? It’s like playing blindfolded and being punished with the game’s slow walking speed for guessing wrong.4. Non-Persistent Key Items = Crime Against Humanity
Sanctum keys and upgrade discs that vanish at day’s end? Really? We’re already drowning in RNG and punishing mechanics—this is kicking us while we’re down.5. Real-Time Waiting “Puzzles”
Ah yes, the puzzle where you stare at a clock for 20-45 real minutes, like some kind of time-wasting performance art. Solve it? Too bad, you didn’t know the key vanishes at midnight. Back to square one. Thanks for the crippling rage.6. Let Me Save My Freaking Safe Codes
Re-entering the same 4-digit codes 50+ times per safe isn’t immersive—it’s psychological warfare.7. The Reservoir Puzzle: RNG Hell
Drawing the Pool, Boiler Room, and Pump Room in the right sequence is less of a puzzle and more of a divine lottery. It’s like the game is actively trying to punish you for buying it.8. Realizing you’ve walked past key items for hours is a soul-crushing moment.
Unless you’re blessed with the Metal Detector (which doesn’t alert you to all items), the game gives no indication when a room contains a random, usable item like a trunk, jewel, or coin purse—so it’s painfully easy to miss them, especially in cluttered environments. Four hours into my first playthrough, I learned that the coin purse I’d ignored repeatedly wasn’t just set dressing—it was a game-changing item I’d needed all along. That realization didn’t feel mysterious or rewarding; it felt like the game had been silently laughing at me the entire time. A small UI icon or earned permanent upgrade to highlight these items would massively improve the experience—and save players from the crushing disappointment of realizing their struggles could’ve been avoided.9. Power Hammer Needs More Power
Grinding out the precise conditions to craft the power hammer, only to have it disappear after one run? Absolutely demoralizing. Just let us keep the dang thing.10. Let Me Know What’s New, Please
Choosing between three rooms and having no idea which is new content with no access to the menu to check? That’s not helping exploration.11. Library: A Kafkaesque Nightmare
Want to read a book? First draw the library. Then draw it again to check one out. Then again to read it. Then again to check out another. Then again to read that. I just wanted to learn about a mechanic, not reenact Groundhog Day with a library card. Are there ways to draw the library more often in the late game? Yes, but there’s no reason to punish exploration this way. It feels like more padding for padding’s sake.12. Worthless Dirt Patches
Work hard to get a shovel, trek across the map, dig… nothing. Not even dirt. Just wasted steps and broken dreams. Give me something—a coin, a gem, a passive-aggressive post-it note—anything. I get this synergizes with the Lab but just have the Lab give credit for DIGGING. Or for digging COINS! Don’t punish players for engaging with the mechanics of the game.13. Head Meet Wall
Some of these “puzzles” aren’t clever. They’re just endurance tests. You don’t solve them—you survive them, barely. Boiler Room (cough).14. The Time-Locked Safe is a Hate Crime Against Free Time
Setting the clock, walking at glacial speed, wasting your steps, only to realize you have to reset the time and do it all again because your solution was wrong? No. Just… no. And for the love of all things sacred, put a clock somewhere in the Shelter! I beg you. At least a sundial outside if you’re determined to make me get my steps in. This wasted an hour of my real life.15. Dart Game: Burn It with Fire
We get it, the devs love math. But if I’ve beaten the dart puzzle once, stop making me redo it like some kind of SAT prep student trapped in a dungeon.16. Absurd Safe Combinations
The logic leaps required to figure these out would make a Mensa pro cry. And why are they all secretly four digits? Most people assume they’re 6. Just say the length upfront. It’s not a puzzle; it’s gatekeeping.17. Double Basement Keys? You Monsters
Nothing like barely surviving one RNG-fueled gauntlet only to learn you’ll need to do it again for another door. I weep for my poor, overworked Steam Deck. Make the basement key a permanent unlock.18. Even when the stars align, the game finds a way to say “not good enough.”
I managed to create the furnace with one room between it and the freezer—a feat of RNG luck that should’ve felt like winning the lottery. And yet, after all that, it still wasn’t enough to melt the ice around the note and key. I waited an absurd amount of time, watching the world’s slowest thermometer inch forward like it was mocking me. If pulling off a near-perfect setup doesn’t work, what’s even the point? This isn’t puzzle solving—it’s wishful thinking.EDIT: 19. The game is unsatisfying—and it pretends that’s a clever twist.
BP spends 40+ hours hinting at deeper meaning and answers. SPOILER: There are none. Just an endless tease to keep you digging.Final Verdict:
There’s a masterpiece buried in here somewhere–but right now, it’s trapped under it’s own design. There’s something special here—an unforgettable setting, compelling ideas, and the kind of layered mystery that keeps you thinking. But the game buries all of that under layers of busywork, RNG, and systems that seem designed more to slow you down than engage you. It’s a game that wants to be profound, but too often settles for punishing. If it ever gets the quality-of-life overhaul it deserves, it might just become a cult classic. Until then, it’s an atmospheric gem wrapped in a frustrating time sink.33 votes funny
76561198052293403
Not Recommended12 hrs played
I unfortunately cannot recommend this game.
I bought it after seeing some very high praise from acquaintances and some very flattering comparisons to Outer Wilds, which is my favorite game of all time. I really enjoy the 'meta-knowledge puzzle game' genre more generally, which includes games like Lingo, The Witness and to a lesser extent Return of the Obra Dinn - games that you can really only experience once because they're about learning the overarching rules with which you can solve the puzzles moreso than the moment-to-moment puzzles themselves. Blue Prince also belongs to this category; each run is different because you draft a random collection of rooms that fit together in random places, but the real game is about discovering meta-knowledge from one run that you can use to actually progress towards the end goal in the next run.
Where Blue Prince fails compared to its aforementioned genre-colleagues, in my opinion, is in the RNG inherent in the roguelike genre. You will *frequently* learn something new and be unable to use that knowledge for a dozen, two dozen runs because you just don't draft the right combination of rooms. You will discover items, know *exactly* what to do with those items, and then end the run with a tired and frustrated sigh because you never drafted the room you needed to use that item in. You will discover those items again, and fail to draft the right room again. And again. And again. You will have runs end three rooms in because your draft pool consisted exclusively of dead end rooms and gem-cost rooms you can't afford because you failed to draft a gem-providing room. You will have a run that *almost* gets you into the final room and then fails because you got unlucky and only drafted rooms with exits that were turned away from it. You will be on the verge of reaching a long-awaited puzzle solution and get shafted in the last minute because you ran out of "movement points" two rooms too early, or have a promising run die because you ran out of keys, or because you never ran into the (for some reason absurdly rare) keycard that is the only way to open the (for some reason fairly common) keycard doors.
26 votes funny
76561198099825799
Recommended0 hrs played
Until something better comes along, this is the best there is.
(I discovered this game thanks to PS Plus and decided to give it a try. I finished it on PS5 in 20 hours.Rather than a typical review, this is more of a guide-review hybrid.) First of all, this game isn’t for everyone. It combines puzzle-solving and rogue-like elements. I started without any guides or prior knowledge, and during the first day, I could hardly figure anything out. The game takes place inside a mansion, and its owner wants us to reach the 46th room. While this is initially shown in a cinematic, the story unfolds more as you progress. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BK-6qPBhMCA&list=PLhlHjE5P3IOSC6qm3WrCLDYDz6inzQOvM&index=1 The village presents you with doors to the left, right, and center. In the center, there's a blueprint schematic. Your character picks it up, and the journey begins. Each time you click on a door, you are given 3 random room choices. It could be a corridor, a bedroom, a living room, or even a bank vault — your goal is to build your path and keep heading north toward the 46th room. While the basic concept seems simple, beyond the heavy note-taking and attention to detail required for the puzzles, the game also features several key resources. Gold (money) is used to buy items if you create shop rooms. If you happen to find the ultra-rare casino rooms, you can gamble to multiply your money. Later, when the exterior room mechanic unlocks, you can also donate gold to a mystical statue for daily buffs — such as increasing the chance of encountering rare rooms after using fruit three times. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3472564622 Then there’s the diamond (gem) resource. When drawing rarer rooms, you may see a cost of 1, 2, or 4 diamonds below the choice. Diamonds are primarily obtained by creating specific rooms that grant them or by unlocking permanent upgrades. For example, solving mysteries in certain rooms grants buffs like starting each new day with +2 gold. Once the exterior mechanic is unlocked, there are even perks that change diamond costs into "energy" (steps). Each room you visit costs 2 steps. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3463569488 At first, you might think you’re just walking endlessly, but even exterior areas always consume 2 steps per room. If you equip sneakers, sometimes you can move without losing steps. You can also solve major puzzles like the apple orchard to permanently boost your step count. Because once your steps run out, you’re forced to "call it a day" and move to the next day. Unless you visit pawn shop rooms (where you leave an item for the next run) or freezing rooms (which store your wealth for your next run), you basically start over from scratch every time. Thus, you have to plan carefully to make lasting progress day after day. There are upgrade disks you can find that let you open computer rooms and convert useless corridors into green rooms. In green rooms, if you have a watering can, you can water plants for diamonds, or see flowers growing diamonds inside pots.The game is full of these strange, creative mechanics. If you open a pool room and somewhere else open a pump room, you can even transfer water between locations. Draining the pool can reveal hidden areas below. I’ll leave the rest for you to discover. For example, the dining room automatically prepares a big meal every day after some time. If you opened the corresponding bonus room, the meal grants you 30 steps; otherwise, 20 steps. The salt shaker item can enhance this bonus even further — just like how a coin pouch gives you a bonus gold every time you collect 3 gold. There are also countless useful items: A metal detector to find more gold A big hammer to break open locked chests A lockpick to open low-rarity locked doors A compass to help you draw non-dead-end rooms (because you can easily get stuck when you run out of diamonds or keys and can't draw the right rooms.) And if you’ve unlocked the workshop room, you can combine these items to create a more useful single item. For example, a shovel with a metal detector. This can be especially helpful since the pawn shop in the game only lets you leave one item at a time. Each run feels like trying a new tactic or being forced to end the day due to bad luck. You get better with experience, and learn how to guess room layouts and design the house to progress more efficiently. Understanding the Antechamber doors properly also becomes crucial. (I deliberately won't spoil what they are.) Technically, the game looked pretty bad on PS5 Pro despite the lack of a Pro patch.It’s noticeably worse compared to the PC version. On console, there’s even a permanent mouse cursor stuck on the screen.It definitely needs a console patch.Still, the intentional retro aesthetic and simple drawings fit the game well and don’t ruin the experience. One of the game's undeniable highlights is its incredible music.It’s a strange blend — very deep, grim, and building up like the soundtrack from the first Joker movie.The moment I heard it, I thought, "yes, this is one of those games." By mixing puzzles with rogue-like elements, offering extreme replayability, and challenging mysteries (if you don’t rely on guides), The Blue Prince became not only my indie game of the year but possibly my game of the last several years. The feeling its finale gave me was something I hadn’t experienced since a masterpiece from year 2013. If you have patience and fully engage your mind — exploring everything and solving hidden mysteries — you’ll see just how brilliant this game really is. [b] +Extremely creative, genre-defining approach +The story opens up over time and blends perfectly with the theme +Fantastic music +A finale (and postgame) full of mysteries to discover +Everything you see has a purpose and meaning +The gradual sense of progress enhances the feeling of reward -Progress can sometimes rely too heavily on luck -Visual quality is poor on consoleReview Score: 100/100 🏆
25 votes funny
76561197980596638
Not Recommended16 hrs played
I just "beat the game," but I didn't need to get that far to realize something was wrong about the way this title is being marketed. Within the first hour of playing this game, I felt like I was being gaslit by statements from both reviewers and the creator. The reviewers insist that the game is complex and deep, that the story unfolds in surprising and compelling ways, that you'll gradually pull the threads on an intricate web of mystery and intrigue, and that all of this was worth the 8 years the creator spent working on it.
The implication of all of this glowing, mysterious praise is that the game is a meta-puzzler in the style of Myst, Fez, or Animal Well, with layer upon layer of secrets waiting to be discovered, and that telling you anything more would spoil the surprise, but... that's just not the case. They're not telling you more because there's very little beneath the surface.
The puzzles are few and far between. Their solutions aren't just signposted, they're often literally spelled out for you in more place than one. And, when you do find one of the few meaningful environmental puzzles strewn throughout the randomized mansion, you'd better hope you can complete it and reap the rewards before your run ends, because you'll be waiting a long time for a second try.
The reality is that this game bolted a few middling puzzles to the skeleton of an unrewarding mansion-building roguelite and called itself a masterpiece, and then convinced reviewers not to reveal any of the specific ways in which the game falls flat in the name of avoiding spoilers.
I really, really wanted to like this one, but I ended up feeling like it disrespected my time at every turn. It kept demanding that I maintain my trust in it to Become Something, because The Real Puzzle Game might just be around the next (randomized) corner. Maybe I'm missing something fundamental and fantastic, here, but after giving this game 16 hours of my time, I think I'm done waiting for it to blossom into a puzzle-filled masterpiece.
21 votes funny
76561197995565302
Not Recommended16 hrs played
I really can't recommend this game. I enjoyed the first half of the game, finding new things, learning how the mansion functions, solving some puzzles and putting together clues to solve more puzzles.
Then the space between puzzles grew larger and larger as the game went on. The puzzles were there, I just couldn't get to solve them. Not without luck and RNG on my side.
The way the rooms work, you only have a certain chance of encountering a room during a run. Some rooms are extremely rare, some are more common. Some rooms require other rooms to work or navigate around. There is one puzzle in the game that I've never had the opportunity to solve because in 16 hours, both rooms I need to even start the puzzle never spawned in the same run. This is not just frustrating, it's defeating and draining. More often than not, runs don't end with a satisfying "Can't wait to try this the next day" and instead end with limp "Oh and it's a dead end and it's over."
And you might say "The exploration is the point! Find new things and new threads to pull!" Cool, I still have to explore to get that to happen and if my fifth run in a row ended with nothing new, there's nothing to explore. Once the swell of novel rooms, story exposition, and clues turns to a trickle, the urge to and reward for exploration dwindles in kind.
RNG is fine in games, but here it feels extremely limiting with the extreme swings that rarely align to give you a genuinely good run. For every run where it ended in a satisfying way, with many rooms uncovered, a half dozen items found, and every gem and key used to the maximum, I have a dozen where I have multiple keys but no gems, many rooms but no items, or they end prematurely at Rank 3.
There's a good game somewhere in here and it was fun for a while, but it's just not very fun. A game I was excited for turned into a disappointment the more I played it.
14 votes funny
76561198028702173
Not Recommended1 hrs played
Overhyped. People claming this is the best game ever made should really quit hard drugs ASAP. It's just another boring rogue-like with broken RNG. The fact that you have to take notes to help you progress is clearly a basic flaw in game design. Runs great on Deck though.
14 votes funny
76561198014984571
Not Recommended45 hrs played
I would love to love this game, but it will not let you save mid-run WITHOUT ending your day "early".
I repeat, it will not let you SAVE.. Mid Run... In a time-sensitive ROGUELIKE.
I don't know WHY this is.
It's not as if the game needs you to end runs early, it's a roguelike! The randomization guarantees some runs will be short, some will be longer. But every roguelike I've ever had the pleasure of playing allowed me to save and quit, then come back to wherever I was in the game. Unless the game is mining crypto in the background or something, there's no reason for me to have to leave my computer on JUST because I have a good run going and I'd like to not lose it because I ran out of real life time.
I play puzzle games to relax.
I cannot relax because of this. Time stops for no man.
Devs, please. Please update this? I'll start over, from scratch, that's fine. But please allow saving.
12 votes funny
76561198151468956
Recommended17 hrs played
I have absolutely no idea what's going on but I did manage to solve the dart puzzle and eat a few bits of fruit. Art style and sound design is quite beautiful and tranquil.
12 votes funny
76561198006382843
Not Recommended0 hrs played
Honesly, meh. There are many rooms, but almost all of them useless and doesn't contain any secrets. The one room with puzzle that i found contained the same puzzle with the same answer. Also game doesn't understand if you ran out of rooms to explore and doesn't restart automatically.
11 votes funny
76561198034571381
Not Recommended16 hrs played
Blue Prince came highly recommended by critics and early fans for people who love games like Outer Wilds, Obra Dinn, The Witness, and other knowledge gated games. It also came recommended by many of those same people suggesting that the roguelike elements are minimal and would be enjoyable even for people who don't really enjoy that genre. This review is for those people, who came here curious about this game but are unsure about it being a roguelike. There is absolutely a target audience for this game, and if you are not in it, then this game isn't for you. I feel somewhat lied to by critics and fans of this game because of that. I've put about 5 hours into this game but I am done with it for now. I may come back to it, I may change my overall opinion of it with more time, but the substance of this review will not change as it won't change how bad the opening hours have been.
I've heard there are 100 hours or more worth of mysteries under the surface of this game, perhaps similar to a game like Void Stranger. There's a lot of mystery threads and lore to uncover so far which has kept me going, but I will note that many of the rules and game conceits so far do not feel 'organic'. They are rules that are primarily constructed because this is a game and because the character themselves are playing a game, if that makes sense. Why do you have to leave the mansion each day? Because that's what your grandfather said you have to do in order to play his blueprints game for his inheritance. Nonetheless, this view could change with more time, there could be more organic explanations under the surface. I can see why someone may assume any fan of knowledge gated games would enjoy this one as there is clearly a lot to uncover.
The problem is, virtually all progress so far is gated behind RNG. You need luck for finding individual rooms, you need luck for resources, you need luck for just basic progress where your run doesn't end on a whim because every path forward was met with only dead-end rooms. You need luck to get the right combo of rooms for some puzzles. You need luck to have rooms that only show up in certain places to actually show up once you are there. You can spend run after run after run not fulfilling a key few things that you would have been able to fulfill on earlier runs. Everything happens through manipulated happenstance as the strategies I can know so far only lightly mitigate the RNG.
But each run must have new things to learn right? Roughly half my runs so far do not offer new information as they are just repeats of unchanged rooms I've already been through before. Other times a couple threads may pop up, but usually nothing that benefits that run, just a theoretical future run. There are surely more secrets to decode in these rooms, but I wouldn't know, the game's RNG keeps preventing me from learning new clues. And if there is something I missed and could have figured out? It's still RNG if I even draw that room again to investigate. It is exciting to finally have the stars align when you can access somewhere new, but I don't get enough of a buzz from that to overcome the frustration of the much more frequent bad runs.
I'm sure there is some kind of logic and meta knowledge that you unlock/learn about after awhile to cut back on the RNG. There is some basic strategy to mitigate some of the luck (such as trying to reduce the deck's less desirable cards on dead ends or side paths and saving certain rooms hopefully for later), but such strategies so far still allow for A LOT of RNG, and further strategies would be gated behind either hours upon hours of trial and error to learn what I need, or alternatively deciding to look the information up to save on the hassle which defeats the purpose.
On the flipside, you could be one of the lucky few and beat this game first run within an hour if the deck happens to line up right. It almost happened for me, my very first run is still the one I made the most progress in, I built around the antechamber and had all of the needed tools but ran out of steps (this game's version of energy)...I've yet to come close to that far again despite having a couple permanent unlocks added. That is how RNG dependent this game is so far.
Lastly, this game perhaps somewhat erroneously requires you to take a lot of notes yourself. This is chiefly because none of the documents you find are tracked in any way by the game. Imagine if a game like Outer Wilds didn’t have the ship log, that’s the level of personal notetaking you are going to need to do here, probably primarily with screenshots of everything you come across. This could have largely been avoided if you could review the documents you’ve seen in a submenu like many other games already provide.
So be warned, if you dislike roguelikes, or even just roguelikes with a heavy amount of RNG, this game is probably not for you. I would recommend this game to a fan of something like Balatro long before I would recommend it to a puzzle game fan. It is not for me, it is seemingly not for a fair few other people like me as newer reviews are coming in, and the blind recommendations to all puzzle game fans needs to be curbed. This is a roguelike first, and likely only becomes the type of puzzle game I like after hours and hours of frustration and investment.
With all that said, if you like both knowledge gated games AND RNG-heavy roguelikes, then you will likely love this game as the critics and fans have. Alternatively, if a game like this intrigues you but you dislike roguelikes and/or heavy RNG elements, check out last year's Lorelei and the Laser Eyes instead.
10 votes funny
76561198007491850
Not Recommended60 hrs played
Initially, I was onboard.
A new (to me) genre combination of puzzle and rogue-like seemed like an interesting idea - how do you keep the player engaged when you don't know exactly which layout they will get each run? The developer's answer was to fill the game with puzzles and meta-puzzles. This concept of layered puzzles is brilliant on the surface; when the player realises they can't complete Puzzle X, they can move on to progressing towards Puzzle Y. Great! Makes sense. The experience starts to fall apart, however, at the exact worse possible moment. Just when the real puzzles hidden within Blue Prince emerge, I was presented a question that Blue Prince buries deeper than Sinclair's backstory: "What happens when there aren't that many more puzzles to solve?".
The game, regrettably, falls apart.
I could rant for spoiler-laden hours about the woes of attempting to find a Workshop for 15 runs straight or not getting a room with that last Chess piece or Finally retrieving a Sanctum Key, just to run out of steps in the Underground , but instead I will say that Blue Prince has a strong start; the developer figured out how to make a puzzle game filled with RNG work - drown us in puzzles such that we always have something to work towards. Sadly, after putting in many hours of puzzle solving joy, I've been burnt out on trying to get the correct combination of rooms out of a pool of possibility that shrinks as my progression continues.
The game's largest puzzles suffer for the exact same reasons that its smaller puzzles do - bloat. I don't know how many times I need to prove to this cursed mansion that I can do basic math on a dart board, or solve trivial logic puzzles. In parallel, I don't appreciate having to reroll my mansion's layout to finally find a workshop , let alone finding the pre-requisite pieces on the same run.
I respected Blue Prince while it respected my time. It no longer does, and now no longer do I.
9 votes funny
76561197981852546
Not Recommended22 hrs played
This is a good game with really clever puzzles, but it is held back by a number of really irritating oversights that can be summed up in one phrase: it does not respect player's time. I will explain what I mean by this. If developers could consider improving on these, that would be great.
Firstly, there is a lot of unskippable, unnecessarry long transitions during pretty common actions. Things like: camera flight at the start of new run, stats counters at the end of every run, digging dig spots sequence , and last but not least - everything that happens with terminal. Seriously, the terminal thing is the worst - it takes like a whole minute every run to configure security and place special order , while it can be done in 10 seconds, if menu was responsive. It would be great, if all these would not block input, could be skipped, or at least would be significantly sped up.
Second thing is about working with things and clues you gathered. Yes, I understand that some of the puzzles require pen and paper to take notes , and I do so quite often, but the amount of information that you may need to suddenly access is overwhelming. I ended up screenshoting every piece of text which is not convenient at all, and should be incorporated in game in form of some kind of permanent journal , maybe with some manual arrangement of gathered clues , so puzzles remain as difficult, as it is.
And, lastly, saving mid run, when qutting the game feature. This is a must-have and Im actually surprised that it is not implemented yet, as this is more or less standard for rogulikes. Runs in this game can last from 10 minutes to 1,5 hour. It can not be planned ahead and it hurts to be force to abandon run with great RNG just because you have to go, instead of saving it, and starting where you left off when you return.
I hope this points will be helpfull for developers, so they could improve their unique game (seriously, the puzzles are great. I wanted a HARD puzzle game for quite some time and this hits all the right spots)
8 votes funny
76561198002559216
Not Recommended12 hrs played
I spent 12 hours on this game but gave up due to RNG, as Ia lot of people did.
The setting and atmosphere is quite good and really put you in a peculiar state of mind where you're over-analyse every detail you see in all the rooms - this feeling is great and when it "clicks", the feeling of accomplishment is a very nice shot of dopamine.
Still... You're being blue-balled by the RNG way too much. You'll lose countless of hours because you don't have enough keys, or everything you planned gets thrown in the toilet because the game didn't want to give you THE room that you need.
Sometimes to move forward, you don't need just one item/room but like 3 conditions in the same run which is ridiculous.
For me, the amount of joy "Woohoo, I solved a riddle !" vs. the RNG laughing at you constantly is not pleasant enough to continue this game. This games does not reward your intelligence, but it rewards your patience and the time you're willing to spend/waste in it.
I'm sad I paid 30 bucks for it. I'd have prefered the dev receiving money in an RNG manner, from $5 to $30 - see if it's enjoyable.
7 votes funny
76561198041512882
Not Recommended45 hrs played
It's an interesting concept that ultimately gets marred by RNG. Ultimately I wouldn't recommend it, or recommend it on sale.
The game feels very much like tile-based boardgames like Forbidden Desert/Island where you are going from tile to tile (or rooms in this case) to collect specific things that will ultimately determine whether or not you succeed (no spoilers.) Unfortunately, if this was a game like Forbidden Desert it would be like playing the game, but most of the runs whoever set the game up randomly forgot to place the mission critical items on the board and it was literally impossible to win.
While the moment to moment gameplay involves resource management, like, "do I have enough footsteps, keys, gems, coins, or paths? To do x, y, or z" the major conditions of the game are pure RNG. You need a specific room that has a specific switch to open the final gate, that can mean you also need a specific item to use the Switch, AND you need a specific path to that specific door that has been opened. All of this is completely out of your control. Items are random, and if your run didn't spawn that item, you are just wasting time. Did you get that lever? Well if you are one tile outside of that door and the game gives you 3 tiles that don't go to that room, you lose. You are forced to choose a tile once you try to open the door, and if you don't get what you need you wasted your time.
While most roguelike/lites I play make me feel like I am missing something either intrinsically or extrincally (i.e. I didnt know how that works, or didnt have enoug exp.) This game often makes it feel like the RNG just is too controlling and overbearing. Resource management can be fun and challenging, but this just feels like a convoluted way to roll dice, and your resources are just the allowance you get to roll those dice. The challenge is getting a lucky streak. Further the roguelite elements don't necessarily improve your odds. You can get more steps, or more money for your next run, but ultimately it means nothing if you don't get the specific rolls you need.
6 votes funny
76561197995475725
Recommended16 hrs played
*SPOILERS* I'm mostly making this review because there are some really trite negative reviews. I'm not sure why people are getting mad at the RNG in a puzzle game that... doesn't have RNG. Its like if you played the game long enough you'd figure that out. Almost every negative might as well say "I didnt play enough because puzzle too hard".
Its very fun btw. This is one of those, don't look up anything games. Just play.
6 votes funny
76561198114783452
Recommended1 hrs played
all this is missing is ultrawide support.
game is immersive and allows you to take your time when you want to think which i appreciate. the art style and music is beautiful, the game makes you want to just explore one more day.
6 votes funny
76561198060593456
Not Recommended37 hrs played
I've gone back and forth over it, but at around 40 hours in, the juice just isn't worth the squeeze. The game just flatly does not respect the player's time. Several design decisions seem outright hostile if not just thoughtless (slow, tedious, unskippable animations for example). It was so close to being great.
5 votes funny
Blue Prince
This game excels at three things: Wasting hours IRL like that’s its full-time job Letting RNG hijack your hard-earned puzzle solutions Making basic quality-of-life features feel like forbidden magic
Let’s break it down.
This game excels at three things: Wasting hours IRL like that’s its full-time job Letting RNG hijack your hard-earned puzzle solutions Making basic quality-of-life features feel like forbidden magic
Let’s break it down.
76561198182353497
Not Recommended48 hrs played
A Blueprint for Frustration
I have a love-hate relationship with this game. By which I mean: I loved about 25% of the experience, and hated the other 75% with the fiery passion of a thousand soft-locked suns. You know the kind of game that traps you in a toxic relationship where you have to keep playing because you might be close to beating it or getting to the good part, but deep down, you know it’s just gaslighting you? Yeah. That. One of the defenses I’ve seen from fans: “If you’ve played this for numerous hours, surely you liked it.” No. Absolutely not. This game taught me the true meaning of waiting–and not in a spiritual way, more in a DMV-on-a-holiday-weekend kind of way.This game excels at three things: Wasting hours IRL like that’s its full-time job Letting RNG hijack your hard-earned puzzle solutions Making basic quality-of-life features feel like forbidden magic
Let’s break it down.
1. A minor note to start: the game could do a better job reassuring the player that failure isn’t permanent
Between the ominous cutscene threatening that the gift will “LAPSE” and the ever-ticking day counter, I spent a good chunk of time convinced a game over was lurking just around the corner. It made me hesitant to experiment or take risks, which feels counter to the intended roguelike loop. In hindsight, you quickly realize it is safe to restart a day—but that clarity comes too late. It’s a small issue, but one that casts a long shadow in the early hours when players are trying to find their footing.2. Please add item descriptions to the Commissary
It’s a small but frustrating oversight that you can’t see what items do before buying them. When I’m choosing between a shovel, running shoes, or a magnifying glass, I’d really like to know what they actually do—especially in a game where every decision and resource counts. This exists in other shops so it’s strangely inconsistent to be missing from the shop players frequent the most.3. The Underpass is Pointlessly Frustrating
Trying to rotate paths from below with zero indication of what’s above you? It’s like playing blindfolded and being punished with the game’s slow walking speed for guessing wrong.4. Non-Persistent Key Items = Crime Against Humanity
Sanctum keys and upgrade discs that vanish at day’s end? Really? We’re already drowning in RNG and punishing mechanics—this is kicking us while we’re down.5. Real-Time Waiting “Puzzles”
Ah yes, the puzzle where you stare at a clock for 20-45 real minutes, like some kind of time-wasting performance art. Solve it? Too bad, you didn’t know the key vanishes at midnight. Back to square one. Thanks for the crippling rage.6. Let Me Save My Freaking Safe Codes
Re-entering the same 4-digit codes 50+ times per safe isn’t immersive—it’s psychological warfare.7. The Reservoir Puzzle: RNG Hell
Drawing the Pool, Boiler Room, and Pump Room in the right sequence is less of a puzzle and more of a divine lottery. It’s like the game is actively trying to punish you for buying it.8. Realizing you’ve walked past key items for hours is a soul-crushing moment.
Unless you’re blessed with the Metal Detector (which doesn’t alert you to all items), the game gives no indication when a room contains a random, usable item like a trunk, jewel, or coin purse—so it’s painfully easy to miss them, especially in cluttered environments. Four hours into my first playthrough, I learned that the coin purse I’d ignored repeatedly wasn’t just set dressing—it was a game-changing item I’d needed all along. That realization didn’t feel mysterious or rewarding; it felt like the game had been silently laughing at me the entire time. A small UI icon or earned permanent upgrade to highlight these items would massively improve the experience—and save players from the crushing disappointment of realizing their struggles could’ve been avoided.9. Power Hammer Needs More Power
Grinding out the precise conditions to craft the power hammer, only to have it disappear after one run? Absolutely demoralizing. Just let us keep the dang thing.10. Let Me Know What’s New, Please
Choosing between three rooms and having no idea which is new content with no access to the menu to check? That’s not helping exploration.11. Library: A Kafkaesque Nightmare
Want to read a book? First draw the library. Then draw it again to check one out. Then again to read it. Then again to check out another. Then again to read that. I just wanted to learn about a mechanic, not reenact Groundhog Day with a library card. Are there ways to draw the library more often in the late game? Yes, but there’s no reason to punish exploration this way. It feels like more padding for padding’s sake.12. Worthless Dirt Patches
Work hard to get a shovel, trek across the map, dig… nothing. Not even dirt. Just wasted steps and broken dreams. Give me something—a coin, a gem, a passive-aggressive post-it note—anything. I get this synergizes with the Lab but just have the Lab give credit for DIGGING. Or for digging COINS! Don’t punish players for engaging with the mechanics of the game.13. Head Meet Wall
Some of these “puzzles” aren’t clever. They’re just endurance tests. You don’t solve them—you survive them, barely. Boiler Room (cough).14. The Time-Locked Safe is a Hate Crime Against Free Time
Setting the clock, walking at glacial speed, wasting your steps, only to realize you have to reset the time and do it all again because your solution was wrong? No. Just… no. And for the love of all things sacred, put a clock somewhere in the Shelter! I beg you. At least a sundial outside if you’re determined to make me get my steps in. This wasted an hour of my real life.15. Dart Game: Burn It with Fire
We get it, the devs love math. But if I’ve beaten the dart puzzle once, stop making me redo it like some kind of SAT prep student trapped in a dungeon.16. Absurd Safe Combinations
The logic leaps required to figure these out would make a Mensa pro cry. And why are they all secretly four digits? Most people assume they’re 6. Just say the length upfront. It’s not a puzzle; it’s gatekeeping.17. Double Basement Keys? You Monsters
Nothing like barely surviving one RNG-fueled gauntlet only to learn you’ll need to do it again for another door. I weep for my poor, overworked Steam Deck. Make the basement key a permanent unlock.18. Even when the stars align, the game finds a way to say “not good enough.”
I managed to create the furnace with one room between it and the freezer—a feat of RNG luck that should’ve felt like winning the lottery. And yet, after all that, it still wasn’t enough to melt the ice around the note and key. I waited an absurd amount of time, watching the world’s slowest thermometer inch forward like it was mocking me. If pulling off a near-perfect setup doesn’t work, what’s even the point? This isn’t puzzle solving—it’s wishful thinking.EDIT: 19. The game is unsatisfying—and it pretends that’s a clever twist.
BP spends 40+ hours hinting at deeper meaning and answers. SPOILER: There are none. Just an endless tease to keep you digging.Final Verdict:
There’s a masterpiece buried in here somewhere–but right now, it’s trapped under it’s own design. There’s something special here—an unforgettable setting, compelling ideas, and the kind of layered mystery that keeps you thinking. But the game buries all of that under layers of busywork, RNG, and systems that seem designed more to slow you down than engage you. It’s a game that wants to be profound, but too often settles for punishing. If it ever gets the quality-of-life overhaul it deserves, it might just become a cult classic. Until then, it’s an atmospheric gem wrapped in a frustrating time sink.33 votes funny
76561198182353497
Not Recommended48 hrs played
A Blueprint for Frustration
I have a love-hate relationship with this game. By which I mean: I loved about 25% of the experience, and hated the other 75% with the fiery passion of a thousand soft-locked suns. You know the kind of game that traps you in a toxic relationship where you have to keep playing because you might be close to beating it or getting to the good part, but deep down, you know it’s just gaslighting you? Yeah. That. One of the defenses I’ve seen from fans: “If you’ve played this for numerous hours, surely you liked it.” No. Absolutely not. This game taught me the true meaning of waiting–and not in a spiritual way, more in a DMV-on-a-holiday-weekend kind of way.This game excels at three things: Wasting hours IRL like that’s its full-time job Letting RNG hijack your hard-earned puzzle solutions Making basic quality-of-life features feel like forbidden magic
Let’s break it down.
1. A minor note to start: the game could do a better job reassuring the player that failure isn’t permanent
Between the ominous cutscene threatening that the gift will “LAPSE” and the ever-ticking day counter, I spent a good chunk of time convinced a game over was lurking just around the corner. It made me hesitant to experiment or take risks, which feels counter to the intended roguelike loop. In hindsight, you quickly realize it is safe to restart a day—but that clarity comes too late. It’s a small issue, but one that casts a long shadow in the early hours when players are trying to find their footing.2. Please add item descriptions to the Commissary
It’s a small but frustrating oversight that you can’t see what items do before buying them. When I’m choosing between a shovel, running shoes, or a magnifying glass, I’d really like to know what they actually do—especially in a game where every decision and resource counts. This exists in other shops so it’s strangely inconsistent to be missing from the shop players frequent the most.3. The Underpass is Pointlessly Frustrating
Trying to rotate paths from below with zero indication of what’s above you? It’s like playing blindfolded and being punished with the game’s slow walking speed for guessing wrong.4. Non-Persistent Key Items = Crime Against Humanity
Sanctum keys and upgrade discs that vanish at day’s end? Really? We’re already drowning in RNG and punishing mechanics—this is kicking us while we’re down.5. Real-Time Waiting “Puzzles”
Ah yes, the puzzle where you stare at a clock for 20-45 real minutes, like some kind of time-wasting performance art. Solve it? Too bad, you didn’t know the key vanishes at midnight. Back to square one. Thanks for the crippling rage.6. Let Me Save My Freaking Safe Codes
Re-entering the same 4-digit codes 50+ times per safe isn’t immersive—it’s psychological warfare.7. The Reservoir Puzzle: RNG Hell
Drawing the Pool, Boiler Room, and Pump Room in the right sequence is less of a puzzle and more of a divine lottery. It’s like the game is actively trying to punish you for buying it.8. Realizing you’ve walked past key items for hours is a soul-crushing moment.
Unless you’re blessed with the Metal Detector (which doesn’t alert you to all items), the game gives no indication when a room contains a random, usable item like a trunk, jewel, or coin purse—so it’s painfully easy to miss them, especially in cluttered environments. Four hours into my first playthrough, I learned that the coin purse I’d ignored repeatedly wasn’t just set dressing—it was a game-changing item I’d needed all along. That realization didn’t feel mysterious or rewarding; it felt like the game had been silently laughing at me the entire time. A small UI icon or earned permanent upgrade to highlight these items would massively improve the experience—and save players from the crushing disappointment of realizing their struggles could’ve been avoided.9. Power Hammer Needs More Power
Grinding out the precise conditions to craft the power hammer, only to have it disappear after one run? Absolutely demoralizing. Just let us keep the dang thing.10. Let Me Know What’s New, Please
Choosing between three rooms and having no idea which is new content with no access to the menu to check? That’s not helping exploration.11. Library: A Kafkaesque Nightmare
Want to read a book? First draw the library. Then draw it again to check one out. Then again to read it. Then again to check out another. Then again to read that. I just wanted to learn about a mechanic, not reenact Groundhog Day with a library card. Are there ways to draw the library more often in the late game? Yes, but there’s no reason to punish exploration this way. It feels like more padding for padding’s sake.12. Worthless Dirt Patches
Work hard to get a shovel, trek across the map, dig… nothing. Not even dirt. Just wasted steps and broken dreams. Give me something—a coin, a gem, a passive-aggressive post-it note—anything. I get this synergizes with the Lab but just have the Lab give credit for DIGGING. Or for digging COINS! Don’t punish players for engaging with the mechanics of the game.13. Head Meet Wall
Some of these “puzzles” aren’t clever. They’re just endurance tests. You don’t solve them—you survive them, barely. Boiler Room (cough).14. The Time-Locked Safe is a Hate Crime Against Free Time
Setting the clock, walking at glacial speed, wasting your steps, only to realize you have to reset the time and do it all again because your solution was wrong? No. Just… no. And for the love of all things sacred, put a clock somewhere in the Shelter! I beg you. At least a sundial outside if you’re determined to make me get my steps in. This wasted an hour of my real life.15. Dart Game: Burn It with Fire
We get it, the devs love math. But if I’ve beaten the dart puzzle once, stop making me redo it like some kind of SAT prep student trapped in a dungeon.16. Absurd Safe Combinations
The logic leaps required to figure these out would make a Mensa pro cry. And why are they all secretly four digits? Most people assume they’re 6. Just say the length upfront. It’s not a puzzle; it’s gatekeeping.17. Double Basement Keys? You Monsters
Nothing like barely surviving one RNG-fueled gauntlet only to learn you’ll need to do it again for another door. I weep for my poor, overworked Steam Deck. Make the basement key a permanent unlock.18. Even when the stars align, the game finds a way to say “not good enough.”
I managed to create the furnace with one room between it and the freezer—a feat of RNG luck that should’ve felt like winning the lottery. And yet, after all that, it still wasn’t enough to melt the ice around the note and key. I waited an absurd amount of time, watching the world’s slowest thermometer inch forward like it was mocking me. If pulling off a near-perfect setup doesn’t work, what’s even the point? This isn’t puzzle solving—it’s wishful thinking.EDIT: 19. The game is unsatisfying—and it pretends that’s a clever twist.
BP spends 40+ hours hinting at deeper meaning and answers. SPOILER: There are none. Just an endless tease to keep you digging.Final Verdict:
There’s a masterpiece buried in here somewhere–but right now, it’s trapped under it’s own design. There’s something special here—an unforgettable setting, compelling ideas, and the kind of layered mystery that keeps you thinking. But the game buries all of that under layers of busywork, RNG, and systems that seem designed more to slow you down than engage you. It’s a game that wants to be profound, but too often settles for punishing. If it ever gets the quality-of-life overhaul it deserves, it might just become a cult classic. Until then, it’s an atmospheric gem wrapped in a frustrating time sink.33 votes funny
76561198052293403
Not Recommended12 hrs played
I unfortunately cannot recommend this game.
I bought it after seeing some very high praise from acquaintances and some very flattering comparisons to Outer Wilds, which is my favorite game of all time. I really enjoy the 'meta-knowledge puzzle game' genre more generally, which includes games like Lingo, The Witness and to a lesser extent Return of the Obra Dinn - games that you can really only experience once because they're about learning the overarching rules with which you can solve the puzzles moreso than the moment-to-moment puzzles themselves. Blue Prince also belongs to this category; each run is different because you draft a random collection of rooms that fit together in random places, but the real game is about discovering meta-knowledge from one run that you can use to actually progress towards the end goal in the next run.
Where Blue Prince fails compared to its aforementioned genre-colleagues, in my opinion, is in the RNG inherent in the roguelike genre. You will *frequently* learn something new and be unable to use that knowledge for a dozen, two dozen runs because you just don't draft the right combination of rooms. You will discover items, know *exactly* what to do with those items, and then end the run with a tired and frustrated sigh because you never drafted the room you needed to use that item in. You will discover those items again, and fail to draft the right room again. And again. And again. You will have runs end three rooms in because your draft pool consisted exclusively of dead end rooms and gem-cost rooms you can't afford because you failed to draft a gem-providing room. You will have a run that *almost* gets you into the final room and then fails because you got unlucky and only drafted rooms with exits that were turned away from it. You will be on the verge of reaching a long-awaited puzzle solution and get shafted in the last minute because you ran out of "movement points" two rooms too early, or have a promising run die because you ran out of keys, or because you never ran into the (for some reason absurdly rare) keycard that is the only way to open the (for some reason fairly common) keycard doors.
26 votes funny
76561198099825799
Recommended0 hrs played
Until something better comes along, this is the best there is.
(I discovered this game thanks to PS Plus and decided to give it a try. I finished it on PS5 in 20 hours.Rather than a typical review, this is more of a guide-review hybrid.) First of all, this game isn’t for everyone. It combines puzzle-solving and rogue-like elements. I started without any guides or prior knowledge, and during the first day, I could hardly figure anything out. The game takes place inside a mansion, and its owner wants us to reach the 46th room. While this is initially shown in a cinematic, the story unfolds more as you progress. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BK-6qPBhMCA&list=PLhlHjE5P3IOSC6qm3WrCLDYDz6inzQOvM&index=1 The village presents you with doors to the left, right, and center. In the center, there's a blueprint schematic. Your character picks it up, and the journey begins. Each time you click on a door, you are given 3 random room choices. It could be a corridor, a bedroom, a living room, or even a bank vault — your goal is to build your path and keep heading north toward the 46th room. While the basic concept seems simple, beyond the heavy note-taking and attention to detail required for the puzzles, the game also features several key resources. Gold (money) is used to buy items if you create shop rooms. If you happen to find the ultra-rare casino rooms, you can gamble to multiply your money. Later, when the exterior room mechanic unlocks, you can also donate gold to a mystical statue for daily buffs — such as increasing the chance of encountering rare rooms after using fruit three times. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3472564622 Then there’s the diamond (gem) resource. When drawing rarer rooms, you may see a cost of 1, 2, or 4 diamonds below the choice. Diamonds are primarily obtained by creating specific rooms that grant them or by unlocking permanent upgrades. For example, solving mysteries in certain rooms grants buffs like starting each new day with +2 gold. Once the exterior mechanic is unlocked, there are even perks that change diamond costs into "energy" (steps). Each room you visit costs 2 steps. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3463569488 At first, you might think you’re just walking endlessly, but even exterior areas always consume 2 steps per room. If you equip sneakers, sometimes you can move without losing steps. You can also solve major puzzles like the apple orchard to permanently boost your step count. Because once your steps run out, you’re forced to "call it a day" and move to the next day. Unless you visit pawn shop rooms (where you leave an item for the next run) or freezing rooms (which store your wealth for your next run), you basically start over from scratch every time. Thus, you have to plan carefully to make lasting progress day after day. There are upgrade disks you can find that let you open computer rooms and convert useless corridors into green rooms. In green rooms, if you have a watering can, you can water plants for diamonds, or see flowers growing diamonds inside pots.The game is full of these strange, creative mechanics. If you open a pool room and somewhere else open a pump room, you can even transfer water between locations. Draining the pool can reveal hidden areas below. I’ll leave the rest for you to discover. For example, the dining room automatically prepares a big meal every day after some time. If you opened the corresponding bonus room, the meal grants you 30 steps; otherwise, 20 steps. The salt shaker item can enhance this bonus even further — just like how a coin pouch gives you a bonus gold every time you collect 3 gold. There are also countless useful items: A metal detector to find more gold A big hammer to break open locked chests A lockpick to open low-rarity locked doors A compass to help you draw non-dead-end rooms (because you can easily get stuck when you run out of diamonds or keys and can't draw the right rooms.) And if you’ve unlocked the workshop room, you can combine these items to create a more useful single item. For example, a shovel with a metal detector. This can be especially helpful since the pawn shop in the game only lets you leave one item at a time. Each run feels like trying a new tactic or being forced to end the day due to bad luck. You get better with experience, and learn how to guess room layouts and design the house to progress more efficiently. Understanding the Antechamber doors properly also becomes crucial. (I deliberately won't spoil what they are.) Technically, the game looked pretty bad on PS5 Pro despite the lack of a Pro patch.It’s noticeably worse compared to the PC version. On console, there’s even a permanent mouse cursor stuck on the screen.It definitely needs a console patch.Still, the intentional retro aesthetic and simple drawings fit the game well and don’t ruin the experience. One of the game's undeniable highlights is its incredible music.It’s a strange blend — very deep, grim, and building up like the soundtrack from the first Joker movie.The moment I heard it, I thought, "yes, this is one of those games." By mixing puzzles with rogue-like elements, offering extreme replayability, and challenging mysteries (if you don’t rely on guides), The Blue Prince became not only my indie game of the year but possibly my game of the last several years. The feeling its finale gave me was something I hadn’t experienced since a masterpiece from year 2013. If you have patience and fully engage your mind — exploring everything and solving hidden mysteries — you’ll see just how brilliant this game really is. [b] +Extremely creative, genre-defining approach +The story opens up over time and blends perfectly with the theme +Fantastic music +A finale (and postgame) full of mysteries to discover +Everything you see has a purpose and meaning +The gradual sense of progress enhances the feeling of reward -Progress can sometimes rely too heavily on luck -Visual quality is poor on consoleReview Score: 100/100 🏆
25 votes funny
76561197980596638
Not Recommended16 hrs played
I just "beat the game," but I didn't need to get that far to realize something was wrong about the way this title is being marketed. Within the first hour of playing this game, I felt like I was being gaslit by statements from both reviewers and the creator. The reviewers insist that the game is complex and deep, that the story unfolds in surprising and compelling ways, that you'll gradually pull the threads on an intricate web of mystery and intrigue, and that all of this was worth the 8 years the creator spent working on it.
The implication of all of this glowing, mysterious praise is that the game is a meta-puzzler in the style of Myst, Fez, or Animal Well, with layer upon layer of secrets waiting to be discovered, and that telling you anything more would spoil the surprise, but... that's just not the case. They're not telling you more because there's very little beneath the surface.
The puzzles are few and far between. Their solutions aren't just signposted, they're often literally spelled out for you in more place than one. And, when you do find one of the few meaningful environmental puzzles strewn throughout the randomized mansion, you'd better hope you can complete it and reap the rewards before your run ends, because you'll be waiting a long time for a second try.
The reality is that this game bolted a few middling puzzles to the skeleton of an unrewarding mansion-building roguelite and called itself a masterpiece, and then convinced reviewers not to reveal any of the specific ways in which the game falls flat in the name of avoiding spoilers.
I really, really wanted to like this one, but I ended up feeling like it disrespected my time at every turn. It kept demanding that I maintain my trust in it to Become Something, because The Real Puzzle Game might just be around the next (randomized) corner. Maybe I'm missing something fundamental and fantastic, here, but after giving this game 16 hours of my time, I think I'm done waiting for it to blossom into a puzzle-filled masterpiece.
21 votes funny
76561197995565302
Not Recommended16 hrs played
I really can't recommend this game. I enjoyed the first half of the game, finding new things, learning how the mansion functions, solving some puzzles and putting together clues to solve more puzzles.
Then the space between puzzles grew larger and larger as the game went on. The puzzles were there, I just couldn't get to solve them. Not without luck and RNG on my side.
The way the rooms work, you only have a certain chance of encountering a room during a run. Some rooms are extremely rare, some are more common. Some rooms require other rooms to work or navigate around. There is one puzzle in the game that I've never had the opportunity to solve because in 16 hours, both rooms I need to even start the puzzle never spawned in the same run. This is not just frustrating, it's defeating and draining. More often than not, runs don't end with a satisfying "Can't wait to try this the next day" and instead end with limp "Oh and it's a dead end and it's over."
And you might say "The exploration is the point! Find new things and new threads to pull!" Cool, I still have to explore to get that to happen and if my fifth run in a row ended with nothing new, there's nothing to explore. Once the swell of novel rooms, story exposition, and clues turns to a trickle, the urge to and reward for exploration dwindles in kind.
RNG is fine in games, but here it feels extremely limiting with the extreme swings that rarely align to give you a genuinely good run. For every run where it ended in a satisfying way, with many rooms uncovered, a half dozen items found, and every gem and key used to the maximum, I have a dozen where I have multiple keys but no gems, many rooms but no items, or they end prematurely at Rank 3.
There's a good game somewhere in here and it was fun for a while, but it's just not very fun. A game I was excited for turned into a disappointment the more I played it.
14 votes funny
76561198028702173
Not Recommended1 hrs played
Overhyped. People claming this is the best game ever made should really quit hard drugs ASAP. It's just another boring rogue-like with broken RNG. The fact that you have to take notes to help you progress is clearly a basic flaw in game design. Runs great on Deck though.
14 votes funny
76561198014984571
Not Recommended45 hrs played
I would love to love this game, but it will not let you save mid-run WITHOUT ending your day "early".
I repeat, it will not let you SAVE.. Mid Run... In a time-sensitive ROGUELIKE.
I don't know WHY this is.
It's not as if the game needs you to end runs early, it's a roguelike! The randomization guarantees some runs will be short, some will be longer. But every roguelike I've ever had the pleasure of playing allowed me to save and quit, then come back to wherever I was in the game. Unless the game is mining crypto in the background or something, there's no reason for me to have to leave my computer on JUST because I have a good run going and I'd like to not lose it because I ran out of real life time.
I play puzzle games to relax.
I cannot relax because of this. Time stops for no man.
Devs, please. Please update this? I'll start over, from scratch, that's fine. But please allow saving.
12 votes funny
76561198151468956
Recommended17 hrs played
I have absolutely no idea what's going on but I did manage to solve the dart puzzle and eat a few bits of fruit. Art style and sound design is quite beautiful and tranquil.
12 votes funny
76561198006382843
Not Recommended0 hrs played
Honesly, meh. There are many rooms, but almost all of them useless and doesn't contain any secrets. The one room with puzzle that i found contained the same puzzle with the same answer. Also game doesn't understand if you ran out of rooms to explore and doesn't restart automatically.
11 votes funny
76561198034571381
Not Recommended16 hrs played
Blue Prince came highly recommended by critics and early fans for people who love games like Outer Wilds, Obra Dinn, The Witness, and other knowledge gated games. It also came recommended by many of those same people suggesting that the roguelike elements are minimal and would be enjoyable even for people who don't really enjoy that genre. This review is for those people, who came here curious about this game but are unsure about it being a roguelike. There is absolutely a target audience for this game, and if you are not in it, then this game isn't for you. I feel somewhat lied to by critics and fans of this game because of that. I've put about 5 hours into this game but I am done with it for now. I may come back to it, I may change my overall opinion of it with more time, but the substance of this review will not change as it won't change how bad the opening hours have been.
I've heard there are 100 hours or more worth of mysteries under the surface of this game, perhaps similar to a game like Void Stranger. There's a lot of mystery threads and lore to uncover so far which has kept me going, but I will note that many of the rules and game conceits so far do not feel 'organic'. They are rules that are primarily constructed because this is a game and because the character themselves are playing a game, if that makes sense. Why do you have to leave the mansion each day? Because that's what your grandfather said you have to do in order to play his blueprints game for his inheritance. Nonetheless, this view could change with more time, there could be more organic explanations under the surface. I can see why someone may assume any fan of knowledge gated games would enjoy this one as there is clearly a lot to uncover.
The problem is, virtually all progress so far is gated behind RNG. You need luck for finding individual rooms, you need luck for resources, you need luck for just basic progress where your run doesn't end on a whim because every path forward was met with only dead-end rooms. You need luck to get the right combo of rooms for some puzzles. You need luck to have rooms that only show up in certain places to actually show up once you are there. You can spend run after run after run not fulfilling a key few things that you would have been able to fulfill on earlier runs. Everything happens through manipulated happenstance as the strategies I can know so far only lightly mitigate the RNG.
But each run must have new things to learn right? Roughly half my runs so far do not offer new information as they are just repeats of unchanged rooms I've already been through before. Other times a couple threads may pop up, but usually nothing that benefits that run, just a theoretical future run. There are surely more secrets to decode in these rooms, but I wouldn't know, the game's RNG keeps preventing me from learning new clues. And if there is something I missed and could have figured out? It's still RNG if I even draw that room again to investigate. It is exciting to finally have the stars align when you can access somewhere new, but I don't get enough of a buzz from that to overcome the frustration of the much more frequent bad runs.
I'm sure there is some kind of logic and meta knowledge that you unlock/learn about after awhile to cut back on the RNG. There is some basic strategy to mitigate some of the luck (such as trying to reduce the deck's less desirable cards on dead ends or side paths and saving certain rooms hopefully for later), but such strategies so far still allow for A LOT of RNG, and further strategies would be gated behind either hours upon hours of trial and error to learn what I need, or alternatively deciding to look the information up to save on the hassle which defeats the purpose.
On the flipside, you could be one of the lucky few and beat this game first run within an hour if the deck happens to line up right. It almost happened for me, my very first run is still the one I made the most progress in, I built around the antechamber and had all of the needed tools but ran out of steps (this game's version of energy)...I've yet to come close to that far again despite having a couple permanent unlocks added. That is how RNG dependent this game is so far.
Lastly, this game perhaps somewhat erroneously requires you to take a lot of notes yourself. This is chiefly because none of the documents you find are tracked in any way by the game. Imagine if a game like Outer Wilds didn’t have the ship log, that’s the level of personal notetaking you are going to need to do here, probably primarily with screenshots of everything you come across. This could have largely been avoided if you could review the documents you’ve seen in a submenu like many other games already provide.
So be warned, if you dislike roguelikes, or even just roguelikes with a heavy amount of RNG, this game is probably not for you. I would recommend this game to a fan of something like Balatro long before I would recommend it to a puzzle game fan. It is not for me, it is seemingly not for a fair few other people like me as newer reviews are coming in, and the blind recommendations to all puzzle game fans needs to be curbed. This is a roguelike first, and likely only becomes the type of puzzle game I like after hours and hours of frustration and investment.
With all that said, if you like both knowledge gated games AND RNG-heavy roguelikes, then you will likely love this game as the critics and fans have. Alternatively, if a game like this intrigues you but you dislike roguelikes and/or heavy RNG elements, check out last year's Lorelei and the Laser Eyes instead.
10 votes funny
76561198007491850
Not Recommended60 hrs played
Initially, I was onboard.
A new (to me) genre combination of puzzle and rogue-like seemed like an interesting idea - how do you keep the player engaged when you don't know exactly which layout they will get each run? The developer's answer was to fill the game with puzzles and meta-puzzles. This concept of layered puzzles is brilliant on the surface; when the player realises they can't complete Puzzle X, they can move on to progressing towards Puzzle Y. Great! Makes sense. The experience starts to fall apart, however, at the exact worse possible moment. Just when the real puzzles hidden within Blue Prince emerge, I was presented a question that Blue Prince buries deeper than Sinclair's backstory: "What happens when there aren't that many more puzzles to solve?".
The game, regrettably, falls apart.
I could rant for spoiler-laden hours about the woes of attempting to find a Workshop for 15 runs straight or not getting a room with that last Chess piece or Finally retrieving a Sanctum Key, just to run out of steps in the Underground , but instead I will say that Blue Prince has a strong start; the developer figured out how to make a puzzle game filled with RNG work - drown us in puzzles such that we always have something to work towards. Sadly, after putting in many hours of puzzle solving joy, I've been burnt out on trying to get the correct combination of rooms out of a pool of possibility that shrinks as my progression continues.
The game's largest puzzles suffer for the exact same reasons that its smaller puzzles do - bloat. I don't know how many times I need to prove to this cursed mansion that I can do basic math on a dart board, or solve trivial logic puzzles. In parallel, I don't appreciate having to reroll my mansion's layout to finally find a workshop , let alone finding the pre-requisite pieces on the same run.
I respected Blue Prince while it respected my time. It no longer does, and now no longer do I.
9 votes funny
76561197981852546
Not Recommended22 hrs played
This is a good game with really clever puzzles, but it is held back by a number of really irritating oversights that can be summed up in one phrase: it does not respect player's time. I will explain what I mean by this. If developers could consider improving on these, that would be great.
Firstly, there is a lot of unskippable, unnecessarry long transitions during pretty common actions. Things like: camera flight at the start of new run, stats counters at the end of every run, digging dig spots sequence , and last but not least - everything that happens with terminal. Seriously, the terminal thing is the worst - it takes like a whole minute every run to configure security and place special order , while it can be done in 10 seconds, if menu was responsive. It would be great, if all these would not block input, could be skipped, or at least would be significantly sped up.
Second thing is about working with things and clues you gathered. Yes, I understand that some of the puzzles require pen and paper to take notes , and I do so quite often, but the amount of information that you may need to suddenly access is overwhelming. I ended up screenshoting every piece of text which is not convenient at all, and should be incorporated in game in form of some kind of permanent journal , maybe with some manual arrangement of gathered clues , so puzzles remain as difficult, as it is.
And, lastly, saving mid run, when qutting the game feature. This is a must-have and Im actually surprised that it is not implemented yet, as this is more or less standard for rogulikes. Runs in this game can last from 10 minutes to 1,5 hour. It can not be planned ahead and it hurts to be force to abandon run with great RNG just because you have to go, instead of saving it, and starting where you left off when you return.
I hope this points will be helpfull for developers, so they could improve their unique game (seriously, the puzzles are great. I wanted a HARD puzzle game for quite some time and this hits all the right spots)
8 votes funny
76561198002559216
Not Recommended12 hrs played
I spent 12 hours on this game but gave up due to RNG, as Ia lot of people did.
The setting and atmosphere is quite good and really put you in a peculiar state of mind where you're over-analyse every detail you see in all the rooms - this feeling is great and when it "clicks", the feeling of accomplishment is a very nice shot of dopamine.
Still... You're being blue-balled by the RNG way too much. You'll lose countless of hours because you don't have enough keys, or everything you planned gets thrown in the toilet because the game didn't want to give you THE room that you need.
Sometimes to move forward, you don't need just one item/room but like 3 conditions in the same run which is ridiculous.
For me, the amount of joy "Woohoo, I solved a riddle !" vs. the RNG laughing at you constantly is not pleasant enough to continue this game. This games does not reward your intelligence, but it rewards your patience and the time you're willing to spend/waste in it.
I'm sad I paid 30 bucks for it. I'd have prefered the dev receiving money in an RNG manner, from $5 to $30 - see if it's enjoyable.
7 votes funny
76561198041512882
Not Recommended45 hrs played
It's an interesting concept that ultimately gets marred by RNG. Ultimately I wouldn't recommend it, or recommend it on sale.
The game feels very much like tile-based boardgames like Forbidden Desert/Island where you are going from tile to tile (or rooms in this case) to collect specific things that will ultimately determine whether or not you succeed (no spoilers.) Unfortunately, if this was a game like Forbidden Desert it would be like playing the game, but most of the runs whoever set the game up randomly forgot to place the mission critical items on the board and it was literally impossible to win.
While the moment to moment gameplay involves resource management, like, "do I have enough footsteps, keys, gems, coins, or paths? To do x, y, or z" the major conditions of the game are pure RNG. You need a specific room that has a specific switch to open the final gate, that can mean you also need a specific item to use the Switch, AND you need a specific path to that specific door that has been opened. All of this is completely out of your control. Items are random, and if your run didn't spawn that item, you are just wasting time. Did you get that lever? Well if you are one tile outside of that door and the game gives you 3 tiles that don't go to that room, you lose. You are forced to choose a tile once you try to open the door, and if you don't get what you need you wasted your time.
While most roguelike/lites I play make me feel like I am missing something either intrinsically or extrincally (i.e. I didnt know how that works, or didnt have enoug exp.) This game often makes it feel like the RNG just is too controlling and overbearing. Resource management can be fun and challenging, but this just feels like a convoluted way to roll dice, and your resources are just the allowance you get to roll those dice. The challenge is getting a lucky streak. Further the roguelite elements don't necessarily improve your odds. You can get more steps, or more money for your next run, but ultimately it means nothing if you don't get the specific rolls you need.
6 votes funny
76561197995475725
Recommended16 hrs played
*SPOILERS* I'm mostly making this review because there are some really trite negative reviews. I'm not sure why people are getting mad at the RNG in a puzzle game that... doesn't have RNG. Its like if you played the game long enough you'd figure that out. Almost every negative might as well say "I didnt play enough because puzzle too hard".
Its very fun btw. This is one of those, don't look up anything games. Just play.
6 votes funny
76561198114783452
Recommended1 hrs played
all this is missing is ultrawide support.
game is immersive and allows you to take your time when you want to think which i appreciate. the art style and music is beautiful, the game makes you want to just explore one more day.
6 votes funny
76561198060593456
Not Recommended37 hrs played
I've gone back and forth over it, but at around 40 hours in, the juice just isn't worth the squeeze. The game just flatly does not respect the player's time. Several design decisions seem outright hostile if not just thoughtless (slow, tedious, unskippable animations for example). It was so close to being great.
5 votes funny
