It has been a while since a puzzle game so utterly drew me in, but the puntastically named Blue Prince has managed to do exactly that. The premise of the game is that the main character’s great uncle has left him his home which is Mt Holly mansion with sprawling grounds in his will, but there is a condition to be met. The mansion has 45 rooms, but to be able to inherit it the heir must find the hidden 46th room. A tough task made tougher by the fact that the layout of the mansion changes each day.
One of the early hints that you come across in Blue Prince is to take notes, and if you dismiss this advice you will struggle. Blue Prince is a game of secrets, which you would expect from a game that has a hidden room, and there are clues spread out that will point you to the solutions of the puzzles found throughout the mansion. Due to the nature of the game, you may not come across these clues or solutions again for a while. I kept a Word document to make note of each clue, referring to it as each day was reset.
At the start of the day you have a blank canvas to work with. The only room that is in place is the entrance hall, and from there three doors lead off into the mansion. Before you set off, you should make a note of how many steps you are starting with. Every time you enter or exit a room you lose a step, even when retracing your steps, and when that counter reaches zero, the day ends.
When you select a door to open, three room plans are drawn which you must choose from. These could be basic rooms like the Den, Parlor, and Billiards room, or something a little more special. Each room has a chance to let you pick up keys to unlock doors, gems to pay for certain room plans, and gold for items like food or a metal detector. There’s also a chance to find a bedroom, which can replenish your step count. However, as you make your way through the mansion in the hope of reaching the antechamber at the far end, you will also encounter rooms that have detrimental effects on you. The weight room will take away half of your steps, while the archive room will hide one plan when you are drafting rooms.
There are so many different rooms to discover, each with their own pros and cons, which makes putting your blueprint together that bit more challenging. A lot of the detrimental rooms have four doors so you can at least continue onwards, while some rooms that do provide advantages may only have one way in and out. As you create rooms you need to keep looking at your blueprint to avoid getting yourself trapped in a dead-end situation. If you do this you have a couple of options, go out and explore the grounds or call it a day and begin again.
The grounds hold secrets too and you will come across puzzles out there. Solve these and you will unlock permanent buffs that will provide a small advantage each day. Other puzzles will lead you to clues that will be necessary to note though you can go back and review these at any time as much of the outside does not change daily.
Blue Prince’s visual design is excellent, with each room having a distinct design so you can tell where you are at a glance. A small issue is that interactive items can be tricky to spot. For example, in the Pump Room you can manage the water of the estate and it took me a little while to realise there were additional switches behind the tanks I was interacting with. Operating the pump became a lot easier once I found them.
The main sound of the game is the music and much of it is quite chill, with some slower themes in the mix too. It’s nice enough, but it doesn’t grab you. In a way, that is understandable as much of the progress will feel slow at times, but a few more upbeat beats would have been welcome.
