I hate Blue Prince. I love Blue Prince. I'm not sure if I played through it or if it played me. What I do know is that I spent hours drawing maps in my head like a madman, memorizing color codes, noting gem combos, and at one point in the middle of the night, a sighing "Aaaah, you clever bitch!" expelled. No game has sucked more brainpower out of me this year. Why Blue Prince is an unexpected indie hit this year, I reveal in this review.
Getting started: Like a dream that threatens with math
Blue Prince starts out as harmless as a walk through an abandoned castle. 5×9 fields. You always start in the entrance hall. 50 steps. Doors in all directions. Rooms that are randomly generated from your own map pool. It sounds like an escape room roguelike with board game flair, but what unfolds is an atmospheric mental movie with pitfalls. You don't just move through a floor plan - you design it, build traps for yourself, recognize them too late, curse, learn, repeat.
And that's exactly where the appeal lies. Or the madness. Often both.
All coincidence, or what?
Blue Prince thrives on the compromise between planning and chaos. You can strategically build, draft and prepare your room cards - and then suddenly there's a key room you don't need, a safe without a code, or a door with a color you've ignored so far. Your brilliant preparations? All for naught. The game trusts you to learn how the kit works over time. It gives you no quest markers, no menu with "active objectives", no hints. When you solve a puzzle, it's because you've worked it out - not because a pop-up told you to: "You need three red jewels."
The mechanics of Blue Prince is almost cheekily minimalist - until you realize that a complex cogwheel system is hidden behind it. Each room can be anything: a clue, a dead end, a resource store or a switch in another part of the house. Everything is connected, but in a coded way that can only be deciphered through long-term observation.
At some point, I wanted to switch to a real notepad because the internal mapping function simply couldn't keep up. Not because it's bad, but because at some point my notes looked like a conspiracy net from the last season of True Detective.
Roguelike meets detective work
What Blue Prince is how it combines roguelike structures with investigative gameplay. You don't die, you restart - and take knowledge with you. This is reminiscent of classic immersive sims or Return of the Obra Dinn. Except that you're not debunking ghosts here, you're debunking mechanisms. You are the debugging tool of this game. With each run, you gain a little more understanding, until at some point you no longer enter rooms, but see how they work.
It's hypnotizing. And sometimes frustrating as hell. Because yes - you can obstruct yourself. Not metaphorically. In a very real way. You can make entire rooms inaccessible with one wrong drafting decision. And that's not a mistake. It's intentional.
Frustration is a feature
There will be moments when you hate the game. Not because it's unfair - but because you thought you were smarter than it. Spoiler: You're not. Blue Prince is not a game that wants to "defeat" you. It wants you to outsmart yourself. And if you manage it, it rewards you not with a cutscene, but with a silent "aha" - somewhere between two rooms, when you realize that an earlier detail suddenly makes sense.
It can be intoxicating. And toxic. I completely messed up a run because I accidentally activated a tool that makes certain room types rarer. Two hours later, I was looking for one of those rooms. I could have screamed. Instead, I restarted. And was grateful.
Graphics just decoration? Not at all.
The cel-shading style of Blue Prince seems like a nice bonus at first glance - stylish, but secondary. In fact, it contributes massively to the atmosphere. The clear lines and rich colors help with the recognition of rooms and symbolize the clear language of the game - even if it gets lost in hints and puzzles.
It looks like an interactive mystery comic designed by a design faculty on drugs, just to make you feel the same way. And that's meant in a positive way. Really: And the game feels like you're riding an endless wave. Simply marvelous!
Blue Prince conveniently appears as part of PlayStation Plus Extra and Premium. The final argument for plunging yourself into this madness.
Conclusion
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