So I Tried… Blue Prince

Each edition of So I Tried… I will try a game that I have never played before. Will I find something new to love? Will I find something new to despise? I'll take a full half hour, no matter how bad it gets or how badly I do, to see if this is the game for me. This time around, I went with the recently released puzzler, Blue Prince.

What I thought it was

After hearing about the game being a day-one release on PlayStation Plus Extra last month, I didn’t look too much into what it was about. I knew it was a puzzle game, and the few screenshots I saw made me think it was a sort of escape room-style game akin to Escape Simulator. Now, that’s a title I absolutely love and have spent many hours in, so surely Blue Prince would be a great game for me?

What it actually is

Blue Prince’s main objective is that our main character, Simon, must uncover the hidden 46th room hidden in the mansion of his recently deceased great uncle in order to claim his inheritance. There’s a catch, though (there always is!), as the stately manor’s layout is completely blank, meaning you’ll need to fill in a 9x5 blueprint grid to get ever closer to the antechamber room at the end.

Each door you reach allows you to choose what the room on the other side will become, be it a room with a puzzle, a closet with helpful items inside, a four-way corridor to better utilise the grid space, and so on. Everything is randomised, so you can’t just make a beeline straight to the end. With three room drafts available to you each time you attempt to open a door and a limited number of steps (that decrease by one each time you enter a room) before you must end the day, it’s a difficult enough task to get far enough into the manor!

My first run ended after finding myself without any keys left to unlock doors (not every door is locked, but this happens more often the further in you go). My second run ended the same way. Then, the third attempt ended because I wasn’t paying enough attention and drafted a bedroom without a second door, leaving me trapped. Whoops! These roguelike elements encourage players to try just one more time in the hopes of reaching the end, but there are many, many obstacles in your path to keep that from happening!

Will I keep playing

Honestly, I’m both slightly underwhelmed and incredibly intrigued. 30 minutes certainly wasn’t enough to get to grips with this mystery, but I also wasn’t sure I was even enjoying myself. There certainly weren’t as many traditional puzzles as I had expected, which was a tad disappointing. That said, Blue Prince has something about it that I can’t quite explain. It’s wholly original and unlike anything I’ve played before, and yet I’m not completely sold on it.

To answer the question, though, I think I will keep playing! It may not be for too long, as I do prefer more traditional puzzle games, but I do intend to push on in the hopes of reaching the mysterious 46th room!