Found this on game pass (which I keep meaning to cancel, but here we are). Holy. Shit.
It’s a cute little cell shaded board style game. Might be fun to toy around with… Maybe just a couple more tries…wait what…?
It’s a masterpiece. It’s genius. It’s madness. It’s like Myst shot up the 7th guest and started snorting riddles.
Did anyone else stumble into this labyrinth? I’m obsessed.
Game of the year. Also, if it didn’t have the RNG component, it would be a worse game. A puzzle game that inherently prevents you from stubbornly blundering down one thread is genius design, the fact that the house forces you to look at rooms you aren’t looking for leads to so many natural “aha!” moments and encourages you to be actively tracking multiple story/puzzle threads at once.
So few puzzle games care about also being good games, and I can confidently say that if Blue Prince didn’t have the excellent roguelite-inspired gameplay loop at its core I’d have dropped it without even giving it a chance. Giving you “stuff to do” as you process the lore and puzzle hints is the secret sauce. The game’s themes of inheritance tie in perfectly to the strategic mastery curve of learning how to influence the manor. Having a source of “payoff” emotions other than “solving a puzzle” keeps the moment to moment gameplay fresh, and if you’re playing it for long enough that stuff like allowance tokens and stars stop feeling like rewards, you’ll also have access to so many luck-mitigating tools that I can confidently say it’s a skill issue if you’re still fighting the drafting system.
The natural progression from “the objective is to wrangle the house into giving me what I KNOW i want” to “the house is just like this, and I can search it to find new things to want” to “I know how to make this house sing” is perfectly executed ludonarrative harmony. You learn the rooms so much better when you’re forced to walk through them on consecutive days. Upgrades and rarity tweaks give you so much power. The drafting system isn’t a barrier to you solving puzzles. It’s a strategy game that you can be good or bad at. And a lot of people that are frustrated at that system’s existence are refusing to treat it as something you can get good at. It’s a Dark Souls boss fight - practice with intentionality, explore solutions and ideas, fail frequently, learn from failure, be rewarded with mastery.
People just aren’t receptive to the idea of “challenge” in a game that isn’t precision timing or stat sheet optimizing. The house mechanic of Blue Prince is a relatively challenging strategy game, and part of the challenge is recognizing how to interface with it at all. A lot of people come to the game ready for challenging puzzles but not a strategy game, and for those BP will feel like “RNG getting in the way of my puzzle solving”. That’s fair, but I’d liken that attitude to coming into Elden Ring and complaining that all these boss fights are in the way of the lore. Strategy games might not be your thing, and maybe you didn’t know BP would be one, and that’s okay. But for those that like challenging strategy games and intricate puzzles, there’s nothing quite like Blue Prince.
I was enjoying right up to the point where I stopped making progress and started getting frustrated at the random aspects of it. Even some of the self contained puzzles were taking a bit of trial and error.
The last puzzles are likely going to take a lot more hours than I’m willing to give it, not because they’re hard but because they require the stars to align before it’ll let you even try them. I stopped playing a while ago now, and I haven’t felt the urge to go back.
I don’t really have time for extensive puzzle games anymore, so I watch a YouTuber named Aliensrock. He’s still playing it, and I’m so invested! It’s insane that a puzzle rougelite can work so well and be so engaging with the story and mysteries. There are multiple ways to figure out each puzzle (except one so far), which is fascinating.
Fair warning: the rest of this post has mild player character capability spoilers and a judgemental tone. No mention of puzzles or solutions, just observations about how people are playing the game and some talk about my own experience with it.
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Uncle Herbie must be posthumously disappointed in so many parallel universes. Looking through this thread, many people are quitting before finding out there’s multiple methods of not just mitigating, but almost entirely removing the randomness of runs. It’s understandable to some degree, but it baffles me to see so many people not knowing about nigh infinite drafting rerolls, room rarity manipulation, items that literally do a function they’re implying isn’t in the game like automatic collection of common objects, and more.
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I had ready access to all this at 30~40 hours invested and some of the further puzzles really require them; unless you’re literally just looking up solutions to each puzzle as you encounter it I don’t see how you’d be wanting these things without encountering them outside of maybe not knowing what to do to get a magnifying glass to spawn. Patience with investigative process and understanding of the drafting pool seem to be lacking among people who heard the game was good and tried it on a whim.
Like Outer Wilds, this game involves a lot of reading and connecting the dots on one’s own. Unlike Outer Wilds, a lot of the puzzling happens outside the game entirely, providing you no in-game method of remembering things or solving some puzzles. Very early on, the game tells you to keep a notepad for it, and it quickly becomes more than a suggestion. In my hubris, I didn’t take any notes until a fair way into the game, and had to basically repeat some of my earlier forays to get information I had thought to be extraneous.
Anyway I’m approaching 120 hours spent and having a blast with it still. I feel like I’m approaching or in the late game, as some of the things I need to do involve having already solved and re-used info from previous puzzles, sometimes more than once.
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I’m aware of the electromagnet. I think it’s ridiculous you need to find a compass, a battery, and a workshop in order to make it work. By the time you have all those are you really going to run around the house to hoover up items? If you want it on another run is that what you’re waste a coat check slot on? Also, it doesn’t collect gems or dice, which is stupid. That’s something you should just get permanently at a certain point
I abandoned it.
I found some cool stuff. I even coincidentally solved a puzzle involving an ice box on my first go. But it was taking waaaaayyyy too long to find anything interesting, and I had multiple runs where it felt like there was no chance to build anything other than a straight path of rooms leading to a dead end, either from lack of doors, or lack of keys.
I actually like the dice roll of getting different encounters and adapting to what comes up; but only when the goal is generally to do well, eg dealing lots of damage or exploring new directions. But often there’s very particular objectives in BP and the UI doesn’t do a lot to help you track them.
For those interested. The game is actually based on a book from the 80’s called Maze. It was a contest offering a reward for the first to solve it. It’s only a maze in the same in the same sense Blue Prince is
By random coincidence, my wife has the book. You can definitely see the resemblance.
I got to room 46 then looked stuff up for the later more arcane puzzles. I still have some stuff to unlock but waiting until someone finds the last envelope
Blue Prince is an awesome game, but it confirmed for me that I can’t stand roguelikes. Any game that’s based on repetitive loop where you do the same thing over and over for small progress is just not my jam. That includes multiplayer grindathons, MMOs and roguelikes/lites.
I guess as I got older, time became more and more of a previous commodity and feeling like I’m not moving forward in an experience kills it for me.
Nothing against the game. Just not for me.
I love rougelites/likes, but for me the issue was the RNG. When you have the knowledge to solve a puzzle, but can’t get the resources or rooms to line up right it just feels stupid.
The game wouldnt be half the length if I could just define the layout myself each day.
I thought I was the same, but I quite enjoyed hades. Though it’s not a traditional roguelike.
It has a good mix of mindless fun that doesn’t punish you when you lose and don’t make progress. The story does heavy duty in making sure each run, no matter how successful it is, is fun/interesting.
I guess I still don’t like rogue likes that much but I do like hades.
I keep wanting to love Hades but keep bouncing off it. It has all characteristics of what is want - great art, good story, solid voice acting… I think I am not into the combat mechanics though. Diablo, at least I would enjoy until I finished all the story and quests…
I can’t blame you. I was for forced to play it before I got into it. Forced by the fact that supergiant games can be er go wrong in my book 🙌. Haha
I helped a friend with exactly one puzzle, and thought the artstyle was cool. Am browsing this thread because I’ve heard about the hype and want to see if I ought to check it out myself.
It’s not a perfect game as I’m sure you’ve gleaned from this thread. It varies from individual to individual how much the RNG affects your enjoyment but I can understand some people’s frustrations.
That being said: it’s not a full price game, it’s an incredibly interesting and unique concept and it’s put together with an incredible amount of detail and care. It’s also made by a small indie studio, and I love supporting those. If the puzzle you helped solve seemed interesting and you like puzzles and escape rooms and piecing things together then you should absolutely buy it, in my opinion.
I’m not sure if I agree on the “full price” comment, it’s not much different in quality than Myst or Outer Wilds.
Outside of that I agree, the real deciding factor is how much RNG annoys you. I loved the puzzles and gameplay, but gave up after the “first” ending because there were a ton of puzzles I knew how to solve, but couldn’t get back to or get the right resources for them. Some might argue the RNG is part of the puzzle, but for me it felt more punishing than it should be.
I meant it’s a $30 indie game as opposed to a full price $60 game, so even if you don’t end up liking it it’s not as big of a loss.
Ah my bad, that’s definitely a good point.
I loved it, but I had frustrations. I think there are two almost perfect games in here, the tile based mansion builder and the myst like mansion explorer. Somehow I found that putting them both together resulted in a slightly lesser experience than either of them functioning alone. It’s a very minor blemish on a fantastic experience though.
Hadn’t thought about it that way. I would had enjoyed it more if the rogue like aspect was gone and you could just rearrange the mansion at will, unlocking and storing rooms whenever to try things out to solve the puzzles.
I think the limited number of room transitions would stress me out, but I like the concept and love the punny name.
The idea of a puzzle rougelike is intriguing.
My mother got into it. I’m not going to.
A puzzle game that puts RNG in between the player and the ability to attempt a solution is something I’m not willing to tolerate.
how is it different from playing Riven with one of your sticks of RAM poorly seated so the computer crashes on a semi-regular basis resetting your progress?
No. Not for me. I’d be more interested in wearing the corner fire hydrant in my ass than playing that.
Do you feel the same about other games that involve random chance, such as roguelikes and RPGs?
That question is the thesis statement of a 2 hour long video essay if ever I heard one.
Most games involve random chance somehow to make the game feel more alive and less deterministic, like in an early Zelda game, should the Octorok run 3, 4, 5, or 6 tiles forward? Should it turn left or right? Should it drop a rupee or a heard when killed? These I’m fine with.
In an RPG, things like monster encounter rates might use the RNG to simulate the behavior of a dungeon master, both “roll for initiative” and “I’ll have them encounter 4 groups of low level monsters on their way through the creepy forest.” Using an RNG and lookup table for that is a reasonable low overhead way to add some unpredictability and adventure to the game. Note: I don’t really play RPGs that much.
The term roguelike has started to be overused to mean any game that features procedural generation and permadeath. By that definition I think Tetris qualifies as a roguelike. The original Rogue kind of worked like a virtual dungeonmaster, it would create an RPG campaign for you to play in, and then it played like any RPG where you have to explore a dungeon, learn the mechanics etc. with permadeath and the consequence of having to relearn everything you’ve learned thusfar generating stakes and pressuring the player to survive, no “whatever, I’ll just die and respawn.” So that’s an innovative use of a computer random number generator. Most things that call themselves “roguelikes” are more “We designed a cool primary gameplay loop but can’t really be bothered with level design so here’s some procedural generation to beat your head against over and over again, maybe hoping to find a scenario you can possibly win.” Quite often, it’s not that the game randomly re-engineers itself, it throws the same pre-scripted things at you in a somewhat different order, so they end up playing more like old arcade games than an actual adventure.
A “roguelike” I’ve spent the most time with is FTL: Faster Than Light, and its roguelike structure is by far my least favorite feature. I don’t really like beating my head against the RNG hoping a permutation of combats, 50/50 “do you help with the giant spiders” encounters goes my way so that I have enough scrap, and that it gives me a shop with a useful array of weapons so that I have a chance at the end encounter.
Blue Prince takes the randomization to a whole other level. It might be compelling if it procedurally randomized the house for each playthrough such that you do have to learn YOUR way through it, and you have limited stamina so that each day you can only explore so far, but you can get upgrades to your stamina so that you can stay in the house longer and explore deeper, but…I can’t see the way they implemented the game’s RNG as anything other than flagrant disrespect of the player’s time.
The “AHA!” moment in a puzzle game is what you’re after. That hapens in the player’s mind. If the player thinks up the solution, but the mechanics of the game make it take a long time to implement, all you’re doing is grinding the player’s teeth together. And Blue Prince seems designed to maximize teeth grinding, because the player may know the solution to a puzzle, but contriving the circumstance necessary to implement that solution requires several unlikely rolls back to back to back to back to back.
Sorry, I’m just convinced it’s bad game design pretending to be novel.
Thanks for the long reply! To me, there is another element that RNG can add: the challenge of adapting. Think of x-com: you’re immediately told the odds that a shot will succeed, and have to decide whether to take that shot based on that chance and the consequences of it failing.
You know that on average things will work out fairly, but you have to be ready to push the successes without letting failure trip you up.
During most of the game, Blue Prince poses many different puzzles and riddles to you in parallel. If you focus on one thing you’ve had a eureka moment about, you’ll be frustrated with the lack of control, but if you approach the situation holistically, and pursue all puzzles at the same time based on what is available, it’s a very different experience. Your thought processes and realizations are shaped by the randomness of the day.
Furthermore there’s always an interesting strategy element of mitigating the chance by ensuring lots of redraws in different ways, upgrading rooms to serve several purposes, piling up resources between runs etc.
I do think it’s novel and interesting, though not necessarily the best idea in the world. To properly do the holistic approach I mention you need a massive infrastructure of photos and notes to keep track of all the clues you’re pursuing. I wish it had some kind of overview of found documents and clues, though I can see how that’s not so simple to implement for this game in particular.
From what I saw of Blue Prince, it would be like playing Return of the Obra Dinn, except after you get one of the death scenes and the soundtrack blarps at you for awhile, there’s the door unlock sound, and there’s a random chance it’s going to make you arbitrarily replay the game.
I’m just not on board with all the shit they piled in front of the mystery to solve.
While there is one main goal in front of you, all the shit they pile in front of you is more mystery, the solution of which will carry you closer to your goal.
It’s more like if Obra Dinn randomly had you play an Outer Wilds loop or Chants of Sennaar segment, with all the mysteries tying together.
Could it present the player withbsmallband large puzzles/mysteries without egregiously misusing RNG?
I’m not interested in the RNG telling me I can’t work on the thing that’s on my mind.
Well… A puzzle is a challenge. In Blue Prince, part of the challenge is that you need to engage with the clues you have available, not necessarily the clues you hoped for. Removing that challenge is to remove part of the puzzle.
You’re fully within your right to say that’s not your cup of tea, but I think it does contribute something meaningful to the puzzling.
I played it obsessively for a solid month or so following its release. One of the best puzzle games ever and still a GOTY contender for me.
I know some people didn’t like the RNG, but for me it never became a real big problem. You get some control over the randomness eventually, and I also just found the drafting part of the game enjoyable in itself.
Piecing together the story and the world building bit by bit and uncovering the mystery was also super enjoyable. It’s one of the most rewarding games ever for note-takers. So much so that keeping physical notes in a journal was like half my enjoyment.
I did find a few ways to control the randomness, but I’m wondering if there are many more? I basically got:
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The Coat Check where you can leave an item, and I think the well at the entrance of the mansion where you can drop a coin per day which increases your… luck or something?
There are several more. Some examples (light spoilers):
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Pick any room upgrades that give you extra dice. There are also two items that let you reroll, though they aren’t the easiest to acquire (but can be Coat Checked!). I also recommend looking into the Sheet Music puzzle.
There are some other ways to reroll or affect RNG, but I don’t know how to hint at them without spoiling too much.
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Oh I think I’ve seen something about sheet music but have no idea about. The dice and such are indeed practical.
Thanks!
I think it’s a master piece. I played a lot of it.
I do kind of have a problem with the RNG because at some point I already know what I need to do to solve a puzzle, but I just need to get the right rooms to be able to actual make the puzzle. I don’t have a lot of time to play games, so I gravitate away from it due to this.
But aside from that, I think this is one of the most amazing games I’ve played. The lore, the design, the puzzles themselves. I’ve had quite a few moments where I was completely mind blown with things.
I felt that way a bit too, but the game has so many layers of puzzles, that even a failed run has more to solve.
It’s kind of like watching Futurama. You still catch jokes on an episode you’ve seen ten times… Except clues in this case.
Often times you do, but plenty of other times there’s nothing left, and I think that’s where the frustration sets in.
Yeah it definitely needed some way to make it less random the further you got (more than it already did). The rng ended up just being a time waste.
