Blue Prince: The Popgeeks Review

The day I found out Blue Prince existed was the day before it came out. There was critical praise all over the place and it made me curious, and on the day of release someone was selling it for 25 percent off, so I dove in knowing almost nothing. From what I’d heard, you wanted to go into it as blind as possible.

They were wrong. Blue Prince is in fact NOT the kind of game you can play without first knowing something about it. There’s a right way to play the game, and a wrong way to play the game, and if you don’t know better you will most likely play it the wrong way…so for those who’ve yet to dive in, listen up.

Blue Prince is a first-person roguelike puzzle game where you are Simon P. Jones, heir to your deceased great uncle’s vast fortune. He won’t let you have it, though, unless you can successfully navigate his weird and wacky house. Every day in Mount Holly Manor is never the same because all the rooms are in different places — and YOU must decide where they go, to an extent  When you click on each door, you are presented with three choices for what’s behind there. The rooms are offered at random, they each have advantages and disadvantages, and once you choose, that’s the room — you can’t take it back, though if that room has doors of its own, you can move on and choose from the next set. You keep doing this until you can’t go any further, and then you “call it a day,” at which point the manor resets.

When I first started, I noticed there was one room already there, on top of the floorplan: a mysterious white room labeled “ANTECHAMBER.” I assumed my goal was to get to that Antechamber, because it was the way to “Level 2” or something. In reality, Mt. Holly only has one floor (kind of….it’s complicated) and aiming for the Antechamber is a big rookie mistake. I said there was a right way to play and a wrong way to play. Keep in mind the following rules before you start:

1. DO NOT PLAY BLUE PRINCE WITH A SINGULAR GOAL IN MIND.
2. YOUR INITIAL GOAL IS TO OPEN AS MANY DOORS AS POSSIBLE.
3. THE GAME WILL DECIDE WHAT YOU’RE DOING TODAY, NOT YOU.

If you come in desiring to do one specific thing, then the game is immensely aggravating, as it will NOT let you do it. You’re at the mercy of the RNG and whatever you happen to be given by chance. Often you’ll reach dead ends through no fault of your own — you simply didn’t have enough of what the game requires to continue. You can either accept that and look forward to what the next day will bring, or swear and throw your controller and vow that NEXT time you’ll get to that Antechamber, NEXT TIME.

Advancing through Mt. Holly requires three collectibles to always be on hand: keys, which open doors; gems, which allow access into “special” rooms; and steps, which are the number of remaining places you can visit before Simon gets too tired to continue. Reversing course and going back into a previous room counts as another step, so you must plot the day’s floorplan carefully, because you want to do as little backtracking as possible. Eating food you find around the house replenishes a few steps.

There are several ways to get keys and gems. Some rooms just have them lying around. Others require you to solve puzzles first. There are two main puzzles you’ll see almost every day: the boxes in the Parlor room, which utilize a “one of us is lying, one is telling the truth” logic puzzle, and the dartboard in the Billiard Room, which doesn’t actually use darts — it’s a math puzzle. I was able to do most of the math problems in my head (guess my schooling was worth it) but the box logic was quite more obtuse. You only get one shot at the boxes, while you can mess up on the dart board unlimited times before getting the right answer.

There are “Green Eggs And Ham” gamers out there who have never played Blue Prince yet have decided they would hate it, and one of the common things I hear from them is “you have to see the same rooms every day, so it must be too repetitive.” It’s not. Blue Prince is always mixing things up. It’s impossible to see every room every day. It IS possible, eventually, to permanently alter some of the rooms and change what they give you. New items will appear and you’ll keep uncovering secret documents that flesh out who you are, who your relatives were, and where exactly this all takes place (it’s a made-up country based on the UK, but what kind?)

I only ran into this item once. Who knew this game had the equivalent of a Mario Power Star?

If you keep playing, it eventually becomes easier to explore the manor more thoroughly. New sources of keys and gems can be discovered, and there’s a way to be given more steps at the beginning, but I’m not telling how. I will say one thing: if you’re ever given a room called The Foundation, plant it immediately — unless you’re on the bottom half of the map. The Foundation is a big step toward your ultimate goal, and it will remain in the same place forevermore, meaning you have to be careful where you put it (as close to the Antechamber as possible is ideal).

Blue Prince is more of an experience than a quest. You do have an overarching goal to find the location of a specific room, but finding it, whenever that happens, is not the end. The game doesn’t really HAVE an end — odds are you’ll hit the credits screen with many unanswered questions, and the only way to find answers is to keep playing and exploring. Even after the mansion is yours, it will still hold a lot of mysteries. It’s up to you how much you want to know.

Blue Prince is available now on Playstation 5, XBox Series X/S and PC via Steam.