Platform:
PC
Released:
April 11, 2025
Publisher:
Raw Fury
Developer:
Dogubomb
It’s not even one year ago that Lorelei and the Laser Eyes blew us away with its incredibly complex web of narrative and puzzles, and it didn’t seem like anything would hold a candle to it for a long, long time. But Blue Prince, the debut game from film (and now game) studio Dogubomb, threatens to snatch its crown. Despite being 60 hours in, I have not even come close to finding all its hidden secrets, and even as I write this, the call of those buried secrets compels me back, begging me to open just one more door, to draft one more room. But just like the ever-changing manor on Mt. Holly, Blue Prince contains hidden depths. Get a pen and paper ready.
I highly recommend playing Blue Prince knowing as little as possible. Not because of spoilers or because there’s some kind of twist, but because this is a game about discovery, and I wouldn’t want to rob you of a single moment of it. Consider this my statement of recommendation: Blue Prince is amazing. Phenomenal, honestly. If you’re in any way a puzzle lover, it’s a must-have. It’s best enjoyed alongside a Discord group of friends, so that you can scream at each other whenever one of you finds a new secret or clue. So, don’t read any more of my review, and don’t watch a gameplay video. Go and play it, force all your friends to play with you, and thank me later.
Rooms and rooms and rooms and…
The premise is simple yet tantalising: You, a youth called Simon, have been bequeathed an extensive 45-room manor and its surrounding grounds on Mt. Holly in your uncle’s will, with one condition. Before you can receive your inheritance, you must find the estate’s 46th room. The manor, it’s explained, has a mysterious mechanism that changes the structure each day, meaning that the door you opened yesterday may not lead you to the same room today. Anything you find inside, such as coins, keys, and other useful items, can’t be taken with you the following day. This, your uncle’s will explains, is the challenge you must overcome before you may inherit the estate on Mt. Holly and the title of Baron.
“Just like the ever-changing manor on Mt. Holly, Blue Prince contains hidden depths.”
Each day, you begin at the Entrance Hall, which has three doors facing in different directions. In a manner reminiscent of a board game, opening a door will present you with a selection of three rooms to place within the estate (an action the game calls ‘drafting’). Once the room is drafted, you can enter it, inspect the room’s contents and clues from a first-person perspective, and then move on to the next door. The day comes to an end when you either run out of your limited number of steps or accidentally box yourself into a dead end. Given this, you’d be forgiven for thinking that this is a simple mechanical puzzler similar to The Witness or The Talos Principle, where the challenge is presented to you in the form of a literal puzzle to solve with the tools you’re given — in this case, a set of randomised rooms to arrange on the mansion’s 5-by-9 grid. But the longer you play, the more you will slowly come to realise that you are not playing a mechanical puzzle game but a fantastically realised environmental puzzle narrative with enough hidden secrets and lore to rival Myst.
The way your progress resets with each new day makes Blue Prince a bit of a roguelike, although it doesn’t describe itself that way. Regardless, it has that same satisfaction you get from learning from your mistakes and looking forward to doing better next time. Mastering the dozens of different rooms, along with their functions and number of exits, is engrossing and addicting, always enticing you to do just one more run to see what you find next. And while most of your progress rests each day, there are permanent changes you can make to the manor and your ability to traverse it, so you never feel like you’re getting nowhere, even as room 46 eludes you.
The real reason to keep going is the clues that are littered literally everywhere around the manor. Handwritten notes, memos, emails to staff, hidden letters, and redacted books are just some of the world-building lore you’ll find. Some of them just further the story, some of them are hints and clues to existing puzzles, some of them open up a rabbithole under your feet; all of them are important.
A house full of secrets
Blue Prince tells its story entirely in these readables (and sometimes the occasional mystical prophecy via fortune teller machine). This makes the narrative very non-linear, as you likely won’t find things in chronological order. It’s up to you to fit all the pieces together, noting down the names and keywords you find until you can assemble it into something that makes some sense. I will leave the nature of that story for you to find out, but I will say that it expands beyond the immediate family members of the manor and is intrinsically linked to many of the house’s secrets.
Punctuating each discovery is the atmospheric soundtrack, which changes subtly depending on what areas you’re in. It’s such a deft touch that I hardly noticed any change, just that the closer I got to room 46, the more the soundtrack matched my excitement. The graphics are slightly less masterful, mainly noticeable on the character models. This is probably a result of keeping development costs low, and not truly a problem since you hardly ever see any character models, but whenever you do, it stands out as a strange contrast against the otherwise beautifully rendered world. A brilliant touch: a room drafted on the outer perimeter of the manor will feature windows on the appropriate side, but the same room drafted in the middle of the manor will not.
Solving the manor’s secrets is often just a matter of noticing the things hidden in plain sight. Things that I initially dismissed as an odd bit of decor I later came to recognise as vital clues, allowing me to solve some mysteries, which in turn revealed more rabbit holes. There is seemingly no end to it, which, as a lover of lore-rich puzzlers, just made me all the more obsessed. Which puzzles delight you and which ones frustrate you will always be subjective, so all I can say is that while none were what I would call ‘unfair, ‘ there are many puzzles that will require experimentation or having noticed a clue on the other side of the map. I thrive on this stuff and felt very rewarded for having noticed the clues and having done the experiments, but it’s not for everyone. And because different people are good at different things, there’s no right or wrong answer to a question of puzzle difficulty; this is the reason I highly recommend playing Blue Prince among a group, so you can collaborate and help each other.
“The moments of discovery, where your jaw drops and you realise that you’ve found something brand new, is what Blue Prince excels at.”
In my opinion, no amount of mild frustration comes close to overriding the immense sense of wonder and excitement that comes with successfully solving one of the puzzles, or even finding a new secret or clue. Some puzzles are entirely contained within the room they are in, so you just have to poke around a bit to find answers. But more often than not, puzzles require you to find clues or interact with separate rooms to solve them, sometimes needing to be done in the same day. Various tips and tricks will help you rangle the RNG in your favour, so the random elements form part of the challenge. Searching for these clues will send you on a journey inside the house and out, inspecting all the rooms for a clue on what to do. The moments of discovery, where your jaw drops and you realise that you’ve found something brand new, is what Blue Prince excels at. You are greatly rewarded for your curiosity. If you see something strange and wonder to yourself, “I wonder if that’s anything?” The answer is usually yes!
Contributing to the challenge is the lack of any in-game hint system to help you if you’re stuck. The hints that do exist are entirely diagetic, meaning they’re canonical to the events of the game. They are hidden in the letters, notes, and books strewn around the mansion, left by characters in the narrative. Emails to the Baron from a worker explaining the concept of the puzzle, notes between the estate staff telling them how to access a hidden area to clean it, or unknown notetakers who are just as confounded by the place as you are. Like everything else in Blue Prince, you have to find these tips on your own.
The exclusion of a hint system seems very deliberate and in keeping with what I believe to be a goal of near-complete immersion, and probably a desire to emulate the tough-as-nails games of old. Also missing is an in-game note-taking feature or a way to re-read letters and documents you’ve already found, and you can’t even save your game in the middle of a day to return to it later. Your only way of saving is to call it quits in your current day and try again tomorrow. But there is a logic behind this that, in my mind, serves as a good justification: the Baron’s own rules. The challenge stipulates that Simon cannot sleep overnight in the mansion, so you cannot save and quit during a run. He cannot take anything out of the mansion, so you cannot permanently collect the letters and documents you find there. The hints and solutions that do exist require you to find them first, or else they’re useless. Simon does not have access to a lower difficulty, and neither do you.
I respect the hell out of this, but there’s no doubt that this pursuit of immersion naturally sacrifices player convenience. Blue Prince pulls it off so brilliantly that I came away impressed instead of frustrated, but it’s a huge caveat for anyone who doesn’t have the kind of time or patience that Blue Prince demands. Not even a guide or walkthrough will completely eliminate this, as even if you know exactly what to do, whether or not you have the correct room drafted or even the correct item is at least partially determined by the RNG. The game plans around this fact — if bad RNG foils one objective, there are so many objectives that you can easily switch focus to another — but I expect that this type of challenge won’t be a hit with everyone. Even so, I highly recommend that everyone gives Blue Prince a chance to show you just how much it has to offer. Just come prepared for the challenge of your life.
10
Masterpiece
Positive:
- Room drafting gameplay loop is extremely addictive
- A lore-rich story revealed through the clues and secrets
- A truly astonishing amount of depth
- Completely immersive
- One of the most unique puzzle games in a decade
Negative:
- Won't be for everyone as many puzzles require time, patience, and good RNG
I cannot overstate how much Blue Prince blew me away. With an addicting gameplay loop and an expansive mystery that appears bottomless, it’s the kind of game that makes you want to nuke your memory of playing it so that you can experience it all over again. Every time you think you’ve surely seen it all, it will prove you wrong with a new challenge that’ll test your powers of observation like never before. The sense of discovery you’ll feel time and time again is nothing short of phenomenal, making this debut game from Dogubomb something truly special.
About the Author
Edie W-K
she/her
If it isn't video games, Edie doesn't care about it. She's been playing games since the N64 era, and only spent enough time away from her 3DS to earn a Bachelor in Games Design from RMIT.
