Blue Prince is the debut title from L.A.-based studio Dogubomb. A first-person puzzle game, Blue Prince sees you take on the role of Simon Jones, the fourteen-year-old nephew of the late Baron Sinclair, whose residence was the mysterious and isolated Mt. Holly Manor. Far from being a regular rustic old house, the Mt. Holly Manor changes its layout of 45 rooms on a 9 by 5 grid every day. Each morning, Simon must draft each room one by one, with the goal of finding the elusive Room 46. The Baron’s will specifies that Simon can only inherit the manor and its surrounds by locating the 46th room, and so your initial goal is set.
Each time you go through a door, you can draft from one of three rooms in your directory. These rooms have different puzzles and items to find, but they can also have further utility. Some have two or more doors to continue on through, while others are dead ends. There are a number of resources to gather from keys, to coins, to gems. The deeper into the house you venture, the more likely you are to come across locked doors. The gems are used to draft more complicated, or resourceful, rooms and the coins are spent on a variety of in-house shops you can draft.
There are different colour-coded categories of rooms, too. Violet adorns bedroom plans, orange is for hallways, yellow for shops, and so on. Each category of room has different rules, and most rooms have multiple items, clues and even secret functions to find. Of course, all of these rules and secrets are for you to uncover yourself by finding letters, notes and other documents. Very little is explained to you up front. Gaining knowledge is a key part of this experience, and keeping notes is a must.
Each morning, Simon starts out with a set amount of steps, which decrease as he moves from room to room. When this step counter reaches zero, you are forced to call it a day, and your progress starts over. There are, of course, many opportunities to unlock permanent progression, but the specifics of these and how to unlock them would be delving into spoilers, so you’ll just have to take my word for it!
Temporary assistance comes in the form of the various items Simon can find or purchase. The shovel allows you to dig up dirt patches for extra coins or keys, holding the rabbit’s foot will make it more likely for rooms to contain items, the key card can be used for the high security electronic doors, and so on. You will lose these upon starting a new day, so planning out your run is essential, but so is adapting on the fly. Perhaps you were really hoping to get into a certain room with a magnifying glass, but are also rapidly running out of spots to draft rooms. In this case, it might be best to progress something else and save that goal for another day.
Before long, while reaching Room 46 remains the main goal, you will have an extended list of things to investigate or test out. What was that note in The Office referring to? What happens if I approach this particular room from this particular direction? Who the hell is the woman in that portrait? These questions demand answers, and before you know it, several hours have passed in the blink of an eye.
Blue Prince sets a strong tone. The music, the direction, the art, all of it comes together to create this meditative, vaguely ominous atmosphere that makes every run feel momentous, and every new discovery an absolute revelation. Upon entering certain rooms, the soundtrack will shift, bringing in crooning saxophone or a brooding clarinet. There is a huge amount of world-building here too, and it’s all directly tied to rooms you draft, and the puzzles you’ll need to solve. It’s these “above and beyond” elements that elevate Blue Prince from being clever to being something utterly singular.
I lost count of the sheer number of times this game had my jaw on the floor, when a hunch I had turned out correct, or when I managed to draft the required rooms with the required items just before running out of steps. The euphoric triumph of making permanent progress in Blue Prince is second to none. It’s been some time since a game has consumed my every waking moment so comprehensively, and I’m not quite sure what to do with myself now that it’s over.
Not spoiling things is at the forefront of my mind with this review, and it’s at this point that I feel I have rapidly run out of specific, gameplay-related things to say. Rest assured that if you like games like The Outer Wilds, Chants of Sennaar, Tunic and Animal Well, then believe me when I tell you that you have found your next obsession and then some. Blue Prince defies genre, sure, but it also defies any attempt to understand its scope and complexity. This is an interactive, labyrinthine puzzle box to end all puzzle boxes and undoubtedly a masterpiece, by every definition of the word.
Rating: 10/10
Blue Prince was reviewed on PC with a code provided by the publisher.