I pretty much never play the hot new game while the hype train is still in motion. I’ve not touched Clair Obscur or Metaphor: ReFantazio or Tears of the Kingdom. By the time I got to Elden Ring they’d already announced Shadow of the Erdtree, by the time I got to Cyberpunk 2077 it wasn’t even the same game everyone else had played, and by the time I got to Pong we already had other video games. And of course insert obligatory joke about how I’m still in Act III of Baldur’s Gate 3. (By the time I finished Baldur’s Gate 3 I’d already written this review.)
When I saw people talking about Blue Prince I thought, “Seems interesting, I’ll probably get to it in a year or two.” But then a couple of coworkers mentioned they were playing, and, and here’s I think the key factor, that it was free on PS Plus. I figured might as well download it and poke around a bit—and I was immediately hooked.
Probably the number one driver of success for a roguelike, at least for me, is the pace of discovery. Mechanically, this would be, e.g., how often do you unlock a new mechanic or encounter new types of challenges or discover new synergies? Narratively, this would be how long do you have to go before the next main story beat, how often do you find/progress the side stories and lore?
Blue Prince has an almost intoxicating pace of discovery. Unless you are incredibly unlucky (or, I guess, incredibly bad at the game) it will be difficult for you to go an in-game day without finding something new, be it a room you’ve never drafted before, an item you’ve never picked up before, a new clue to the story, or a new piece of one of the many puzzles. I’ve rolled credits on the game and I’m still reasonably confident that if I do another run I will get all of these and more.
And at the start of the game, while you’re still figuring stuff out, that discovery is absolutely enough to keep you going. Once you actually have some idea of what you’re supposed to be doing though, that’s when you might start to get frustrated. If you’ve seen any of the discourse surrounding this game you know that much has been made of such an intricate puzzle game relying so much on RNG. And it’s true that the RNG can be very frustrating once you start to have specific goals you’re trying to accomplish (for example, trying to get the Magnifying Glass into the Darkroom which took me like 5 runs at least).
There are, however, ways to mitigate this. One is to not get too hung up on any one goal but have several you can pursue at any given time, and just go for the one the house seems to lend itself to that day (by the way, when the game tells you to take notes, TAKE NOTES. TAKE NOTES ABOUT EVERYTHING. Also I’m gonna save you some heartache and tell you to screenshot any sheet music you happen to find; you’ll thank me later.)
There are also often multiple different ways to find the same clue. For example, if you’re trying to figure out how the dart board puzzle works, I can think of at least 3 different places (maybe 4?) that either give hints or outright explain it. There are even multiple ways to access certain key areas (and for one of these areas 2 of those ways can be unlocked permanently which is helpful because blocking off the 3rd way lets you do something very useful).
There are also various items, upgrades, and effects throughout the game that can help to reduce or exert some control over the RNG, from being able to choose the color of the next room you draft to being able to rotate the directions of the doors to being able to carry items from one day to the next (or even store them for some future day that may not be the next even if you want it to be.)
Hopefully, for future players, these will be enough. But there’s one thing that I found to be the most effective at mitigating RNG frustration, and you can only get it when other people are also playing the game. I call it “talking about the game we’re all playing,” and it’s great. There were so many days I would be feeling frustrated by something in the game and then I’d come into work and start talking to my coworkers about all the new things we’d found, and it got me so excited about the game I didn’t feel frustrated anymore and I just wanted to jump back into it. Most of the time we weren’t even giving each other explicit information, it was usually just, “Did you figure out the thing in the Drawing Room?” or “Have you found the Workshop yet?” or “What the hell is up with all of these chess pieces?” (we still have no idea what is up with all the chess pieces.) At most we might give little hints about “Oh, if you’re stuck on that you need to draft this room and you’ll figure it out,” but usually just knowing there was something one person had found and the other person hadn’t, or something we’d both found but hadn’t figured out the larger implications of, was enough to get us excited. I finally got what I’ve been missing out on every time a new game dominates the conversation, and I can’t think of a better game for me to get it with than this one.
So, if my biggest recommendation for this game is to take notes, my second biggest is to find someone you know who hasn’t played it yet and get them to play it too. Games are more fun with more people—who knew?
p.s. To date I have only looked up one thing in this game, and only because I’d actually already solved it but the way I thought I solved it wasn’t working. Turns out I’d solved it a completely different way (which is to say, the only way) by accident and without noticing. There’s probably at least one clue to every puzzle somewhere, so I’d avoid looking things up if you can and just go exploring. Also the Magnifying Glass is probably the most important item in the game.
p.p.s. It took me I think at least 2 real-world days to figure out there’s a sprint button.
p.p.p.s. I’m not gonna give any more advice on how to play because there are literally multiple in-game books that give advice on how to play.
Certain of Eventual Failure 