Blue Prince (video game)
| Blue Prince | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Developer(s) | Dogubomb |
| Publisher(s) | Raw Fury |
| Director(s) | Tonda Ros |
| Platform(s) | |
| Release |
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| Genre(s) | Adventure, puzzle, roguelike |
| Mode(s) | Single-player |
Blue Prince is a puzzle adventure game with roguelike elements developed by Dogubomb and published by Raw Fury. It was released on April 10, 2025, for PlayStation 5, Windows, and Xbox Series X/S systems. The game challenges the player to explore a mansion with ever-shifting rooms, represented by ad-hoc construction of the mansion's rooms by randomized cards, with the goal to reach a hidden 46th room. Failing to reach the 45th room after using all their footsteps forces them to leave the mansion and restart with most of the mansion reset and randomized for the next run.
The game received critical acclaim upon release.
Gameplay
[edit]The player takes the role of Simon P. Jones, who has been willed Mt. Holly, a mansion owned by his deceased great uncle. The one stipulation in Simon's great uncle's will is that Simon must locate a hidden 46th room within one day of entering the mansion as to be able to claim it; failure to reach that room in one day will cause the house's architecture to rearrange and force Simon to start the search fresh the next day.[1]
The mansion is represented by a grid of empty room tiles, starting from an entrance hall and ending with the 46th room on the opposite side of the map. In any room, a player can open a door using a key if it is locked. This then allows them to draft a new room from a random selection of rooms to place in the adjacent space. However, the doors and walls of the new room must align with rooms already placed. Traversing from one room into another costs one "footprint." The player can only use 50 footprints during one attempt to reach the 46th room, though there are ways to recover footsteps.[2]
When placing a room, the player is informed of what the room may contain. This can include gems (used to purchase keys), coins (used to purchase other items such as food that restores footprints), and tools that can help access spaces in specific rooms. Rooms may also include puzzles, some which are isolated to the room itself, while others require searching through multiple rooms to deduce the answer. Once the player exhausts their footsteps or otherwise finds they cannot progress further, they are forced to leave the mansion, abandoning all objects they have collected, and must restart again with the mansion fully reset. There are means to have items carry between such runs or gain permanent upgrades that provide extra footsteps, gems, or coins at the start of the run. Further, the player character retains knowledge of the larger puzzles in the mansion.[2]
Development
[edit]Blue Prince was primarily developed by Tonda Ros. Prior to development he had frequently held annual gatherings for his friends at different rental vacation homes, spending time to device a puzzle game spanning the home based on ideas in the 1992 board game Jewels in the Attic.[3] Around 2016, Ros started to toy with developing a prototype, intending to only spend about six months on it, but as his ideas came together, opted to quit his commercial development job to focus on the game, spending eight years to develop it further.[3][4] While the game was mostly developed solo, Ros commissioned work from others, including artist Davide Pellino and the jazz duo Trigg & Gusset, to help with the atmosphere of the game.[3]
Ros said the influence for Blue Prince came from card and tabletop games that featured drafting, where players select a card or other token from a random pool, such as in Magic: The Gathering and Agricola. He also credited "armchair mystery" books that offered readers a prize for solving complex puzzles, such as Masquerade by Kit Williams and Maze: Solve the World's Most Challenging Puzzle by Christopher Manson.[3][5] Ros commissioned Manson to develop one of the puzzles within Blue Prince.[3] Other puzzles in the game were inspired by those of Martin Gardner and Raymond Smullyan.[3]
Reception
[edit]The Blue Prince release on Windows received "universal acclaim" according to review aggregator Metacritic with an average score of 92/100.[6] At the time of release, it was the highest-rated game for 2025 based on Metacritic averages.[7]
In Eurogamer's five star review, Christian Donlan singled out the game keeping its secrets hidden and releasing them slowly as the most impressive aspect. "It's the pleasure of finding hidden aspects to things you thought you understood in full, the pleasure of coming back to something you thought was simple and finding that it's not simple at all."[8]
References
[edit]- ^ Vargas, Diana Velásquez (March 3, 2025). "How Blue Prince Devs Crafted Immersive Storytelling With Atmosphere and Aesthetics". Game Rant. Retrieved April 9, 2025.
- ^ a b Livingstone, Christopher (August 19, 2024). "Mystery mansion puzzle game Blue Prince is my GOTY, even if it doesn't come out this year". PC Gamer. Retrieved April 9, 2025.
- ^ a b c d e f Romig, Rollo (April 10, 2025). "With Secrets in Every Room, This Manor Mystery Enthralls". The New York Times. Retrieved April 11, 2025.
- ^ Ros, Tonda (April 8, 2025). "A tour of Blue Prince's shifting rooms, available April 10 with PlayStation Plus Game Catalog". PlayStation Blog. Retrieved April 9, 2025.
- ^ "A genre-defying strategy puzzle (Gamescom 2024) - Interview with Dogubomb's Tonda Ros". GameReactor. August 27, 2024. Retrieved April 9, 2025.
- ^ "Blue Prince - PC Critic Reviews". Metacritic. Retrieved April 9, 2025.
- ^ Franzese, Tomas (April 7, 2025). "The New Highest-Rated Game Of 2025 Is One You Might Not Know". GameSpot. Retrieved April 9, 2025.
- ^ Donlan, Christian (April 7, 2025). "Blue Prince review - pure architectural magic". Eurogamer.net.