Blue Prince - Review Thread - 95 OpenCritic (Xbox Game Pass, PS+ Extra, Steam)

So this was a game I was considering. I absolutely adore puzzle games. They've become like my favorite genre now. Talos Principle, The Witness, other puzzle based games I love like The Entropy Centre. From looking at the reviews though this doesn't seem like what I'm looking for. I absolutely loathe roguelikes. And I heard some people say this is a game that moves really slow and requires a lot of replaying rooms and trial and error.

So, I love puzzle games, but I hate roguelikes, I'm impatient and not in the mood for a slow methodical experience right now or redoing the same shit over and over.

Should I pass on it or would you recommend it anyway due to my love of puzzles?
 
I'm impatient and not in the mood for a slow methodical experience right now or redoing the same shit over and over
90% chance you won't like it unfortunately.

I don't think it's as RNG heavy as many make out, but there is a time tax involved in almost everything you do. After figuring out what you need to do, it still might take you an hour or so to actually implement it (early on you have a lot of different things going on though, so it's not like you're only working on that one thing).

Consider 'The Return of the Obra Dinn' if you haven't played that.
 
How does the story compare to Obra Dinn? I absolutely loved the nonlinear story of Obra Dinn.
Here you are also trying to piece together events which have already happened, but it's mostly in the form of letters, and it's concerning generations of your family history and coming to understand the wider setting. It's not particularly dense and is drip fed very slowly, but what there is is done well enough to make me want to keep going.

I don't think Blue Prince is one to play just for the story alone - the volume of gameplay in between is far too great to put up with it if you don't also enjoy that part.
 
Unlocked room 46 again on the next day after the first clear. Got the blue crown and first sanctum key but then realised Id wasted too many steps on just goofing around before going into room 46. So I gotta do that again I didnt know there was something in there, and it would just end the game there. Behold, a whole other dimension of puzzles to solve!

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34 soil patches dug up lol

But its a lot easier now with the basement doors permanently unlocked. This time I went down the elevator in the foundation and opened room 46 before the ante chamber door was even open. It only costs a few steps to pull that sanctum lever from there, and youre set.

Got to make the power hammer and smashed the broken wall in the Secret Garden. Whats up with that sigil?
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Unlocked room 46 again on the next day after the first clear. Got the blue crown and first sanctum key but then realised Id wasted too many steps on just goofing around before going into room 46. So I gotta do that again I didnt know there was something in there, and it would just end the game there. Behold, a whole other dimension of puzzles to solve!

Blue-Prince-2025-04-25-20-16-09.png


36 soil patches dug up lol

But its a lot easier now with the basement doors permanently unlocked. This time I went down the elevator in the foundation and opened room 46 before the ante chamber door was even open. It only costs a few steps to pull that sanctum lever from there, and youre set.

Got to make the power hammer and smashed the broken wall in the Secret Garden. Whats up with that sigil?
Blue-Prince-2025-04-25-19-12-49.png
Did you
light the four blue flames
yet?
 
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Made it to room 46 again, and opened sanctum door #1 (black realm) with a few steps left. Also got all flames lit and read up on the sigils. I guess they are not directly linked to each sanctum door, since I entered the values from the sigil in the Secret Garden, and it worked. So any sigil works with any sanctum door?

So now its a bunch of different threads going on and I need to sort out what goes where. Chess puzzle should be doable, for starters.

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So any sigil works with any sanctum door?
If you look by each Sanctum door there is a core (realm) symbol on the ground. In each room you will be solving the sigil for that core. You just happened to open the door for the full sigil you already had. A couple are easy, most of them require a bit more deduction from various sources.
 
If you look by each Sanctum door there is a core (realm) symbol on the ground. In each room you will be solving the sigil for that core. You just happened to open the door for the full sigil you already had. A couple are easy, most of them require a bit more deduction from various sources.
Yeah I figured that was the case, after posting. Got lucky with the door and sigil.
 
I'm in the mid 20s and finally unlocking some real progression items and rooms. It took a long time to get going but now it's a lot better. I still think it's unfair to put the experience so much in RNGsus's control.
 
Played for an hour earlier on gamepass pc. Think im going to buy it on steam. Definitely my type of game and perfect for steamdeck (I assume it runs fine on deck anyway)
 
I decided to shelve this after getting to room 46. There are puzzles that require specific combinations of rooms in specific locations to connect them to power supplies, and that's going to take countless aborted runs.

There's no reward for getting to room 46. After getting there they should at least give you the showroom item that lets you rotate rooms, and the option to redraw or walk away from a door if you don't get a good selection. I'd play it again if there was a mod for that.
This was me. Game is interesting and more stuff I wanted to explore. But I found out there are MULTIPLE rooms that I still needed to do to get power from the boiler room and that's too much of a pain.

And agree 100%, you should get a massive reward for getting to room 46. Some type of awesome permanent upgrade. Seems pointless to have to continue following the same rules after you beat the main objective of the game.
 
I'm in the mid 20s and finally unlocking some real progression items and rooms. It took a long time to get going but now it's a lot better. I still think it's unfair to put the experience so much in RNGsus's control.
Good you are making progress. It really is about keep playing and learning.
 
I feel like this game doesnt respect my time, which for gaming, is rare.
Is that the case with outer wilds? Might have to start playing that. I am huge fan of puzzle games but this aint my type of game, at least nowadays when i have a child and time for gaming is more rare.
 
I feel like this game doesnt respect my time, which for gaming, is rare.
Is that the case with outer wilds? Might have to start playing that. I am huge fan of puzzle games but this aint my type of game, at least nowadays when i have a child and time for gaming is more rare.

Outer Wilds has a broadly similar structure (hopefully learning something on each run, and then applying it to the next run), but there is no real time tax baked into each run like there is with going through the building process in Blue Prince.

There is however a skill requirement involved (piloting of the ship can be difficult for some, and there is occasional annoying platforming) with Outer Wilds which doesn't exist in Blue Prince. It's not a very high skill requirement, but you will probably have instances where it takes a few attempts at a run to achieve what you were trying to achieve. The successful run itself will rarely take more than 5 minutes or so, but how much time you wasted will obviously vary depending on how many failed attempts there were.
 
So this was a game I was considering. I absolutely adore puzzle games. They've become like my favorite genre now. Talos Principle, The Witness, other puzzle based games I love like The Entropy Centre. From looking at the reviews though this doesn't seem like what I'm looking for. I absolutely loathe roguelikes. And I heard some people say this is a game that moves really slow and requires a lot of replaying rooms and trial and error.

So, I love puzzle games, but I hate roguelikes, I'm impatient and not in the mood for a slow methodical experience right now or redoing the same shit over and over.

Should I pass on it or would you recommend it anyway due to my love of puzzles?
I am asking the same question. I am considering the game but I'm the exact opposite of this poster. I love roguelike and I can't fucking stand puzzlers. I just recently refunded a critically praised VR game called Ghost Town because the puzzles got too frustrating.
 
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