A spoiler free but brief critcism of Blue Prince reviews/recommendation to play
PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD USE EXPANDABLE AND WELL LABELED SECTIONS WHEN REPLYING ABOUT ANYTHING THAT COULD BE CONSIDERED A SPOILER IN THIS TOPIC. IF NOT JUST FOR OTHERS READING IT THAN FOR MYSELF AS WELL
As tildes formatting help isn't stellar, here's how to do it from the docs:
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Here's all the hidden text.
It can have **markdown** in it too.
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Actual Content:
This game necessitates discussing in only the vaguest of terms. I cannot recommend it highly enough if you like puzzle games at all. To that point I'll keep the rest of this succinct:
I have gotten to Room 46 of Blue Prince. It is, by far, one of the best puzzle games I've ever played, maybe one of the best things I've experienced. I am in awe of just how much work this must have taken.
The vaaaast majority of the discourse i'm seeing (while avoiding the HELL out of spoilers) is about the RNG. Reviewer after reviewer focusing solely on the RNG.
Some small % of this is because yes, it's a very hard game to discuss, but the rest of it is literally because it seems that everyone hits a bad run or, what they feel is, a bad streak of luck and says "oh lol nice try, but i guess this game sucks".
The straw that broke the camel's back and prompted this brief writeup was a "minimal spoiler review" (i disagree, don't watch if you haven't been to room 46, don't even listen) from Tom Francis. Tom is probably most known for the "defenestration trilogy" of which most recently had Tactical Breach Wizards, a well liked game.
What blows my mind about this review is that at some point he says "I just feel like I wasted my time for those 25 hours", in relation to X not occurring which prevented him from doing Y.
I cannot IMAGINE playing this game, and somehow feeling like that was your only goal at that point. The laundry list of stuff I have had to investigate and try has been basically constant, and I am CERTAIN he did not exhaust all of that before X happened, no matter how late in the game it was. ESPECIALLY not in 25 hours (my room 46 time for reference was just shy of 20 hours).
If you're reading this, and you liked Myst, Riven, Tunic, Outer Wilds, Animal Well, La Mulana, Environmental Station Alpha, or any of the many other great puzzle games, you owe it to yourself to at the bare minimum wishlist this game and pick it up on sale. To me it's absolutely worth the $30.
Major Edit/Caveat:
I wanted to mention the one legit criticism of this game i've seen that's also not remotely spoilery. Once you start a run, your only option is to finish it. You cannot save and quit in the middle of a run. This is not the huge problem it might feel like it is, if for some reason you have to stop and turn off your computer rather than leave it running, but the fact people are just leaving their machines running to not lose a run shows how silly the limitation is.
As such it's worth noting that since runs can be nice and quick, or can sometimes take an hour +, you kinda have to block out your time in such a way that you commit to a longer run without knowing if it will be. I do hope they fix that, because obviously yes we all have real lives and this game really doesn't gain anything from this limitation.
I'm on mobile so I'm going to try to keep this brief and won't even try to go into spoilers for fear of messing up the formatting.
I loved Outer Wilds and after hearing Blue Prince compared to Outer Wilds I was excited. I really wanted to like this game but the RNG honestly killed it for me.
I spent twelve hours hitting road block after road block before giving it up. The last couple runs it felt like the game was actively trolling me in how unlucky I was.
After throwing in the towel I started watching a streamer's playthrough of the game and in the first few hours of them playing they had a run way better than any I had so that just felt like salt in the wound.
I'm genuinely jealous of people who can get into this game but it isn't for me. I've basically never liked card deck based video games and that's essentially what Blue Prince is. I just wanted to solve puzzles, not hope that the numbers would align to allow me to engage with the game.
I love both Outer Wilds and Blue Prince, but I don't really think the comparison holds up super well. They are very different games in almost every respect other than the very broad label of "puzzle game," and they scratch quite different itches for me.
I agree but I didn't want to get into that on mobile.
As someone who doesn't like RNG in my puzzles, having Blue Prince compared to Outer Wilds set me up for disappointment.
Outer Wilds and minor Blue Prince spoilers
Outer Wilds is incredible to me because (nearly) everything is the same each time so you can meticulously learn how everything plays out and plan out what you are going to do each cycle.With Blue Prince being RNG based it's basically the opposite of that. Sure, you can eventually maniuplate the RNG in some small ways but at its core, you are still beholden to the randomness.
I think the puzzles themselves were pretty meticulously designed, which I suppose is technically the case in both games, but even without taking into account the RNG elements I think the types of puzzles in each game are very different.
Yeah, Outer Wilds is really focused on the anthropological and physics side of what's going on; I think the comparisons kinda attracted the right crowd but set the wrong expectations. It's also a lot closer to the narrative, and Blue Prince... is, but not nearly as deftly.
Using this, once again, as a chance to recommend Riven: The Sequel to Myst to anyone who loved Outer Wilds...
Funnily enough, I think Myst is by far a better point of comparison for Blue Prince than Outer Wilds is -- you can absolutely see Myst seeping out of the game's pores inspiration-wise. I think I remember the creator of Blue Prince saying Riven was his favorite game in an interview, but I may be misremembering. He certainly spoke of it fondly, in any case.
But I think part of why it's a tough place to make comparisons is that they're both doing quite novel things that haven't really quite been done before, and that makes comparisons tough more generally. Outer Wilds and Blue Prince have had some similar influences in their lineage, but their branches of the gaming tree go off in their own directions. And I absolutely adore both games, so there's definitely still plenty of overlap in their appeal! But I find the things I like them for are very different from one another beyond loving a good hand-crafted puzzle game with a strong creative vision.
Riven is much more integrated with its narrative, but the original Myst I absolutely agree is a great comparison. There feels like a big divide in the narrative and puzzles in both Myst and Blue Prince, even though they're very clearly developed and very separately coherent. The special thanks in Blue Prince's credits include Cyan, so I was wondering if they provided any input.
I haven't actually had any experience with Riven, so I didn't realize they differed in that respect! Even Myst I haven't ever fully played through in its entirety (I'm young enough that these came out before my time). Probably wouldn't be a bad idea to go through them both tbqh.
I played through Myst for the first time a year or two ago and it was great. There's a modern-ish version on Xbox's game pass for PC.
Some of the puzzles felt a bit simplistic but the game overall still offered a challenge. There was one puzzle that IIRC seemed like it was bugged or something. I ended up looking up the solution for it and the solution was something I had already done.
I should probably go ahead and play Riven.
I also suspect every game like this has a That One Puzzle. Everyone I know who's played far enough in Blue Prince agrees on which one it is there, but I know I've heard of one from Riven solely by this reputation lol
Gonna leave a spoiler-free comment bc I'm on my way out the door.
I've played for over 100 hours now. I've reached the end of what the community has discovered in the game so far (though I haven't 100%-ed the achievements yet), so I'm definitely an outlier -- but I knew I would be going in, since puzzle games were how I got into gaming in the first place. The creator said that he made this game pretty much entirely for his own personal taste, and I think that showed as a game with a very strong vision that's really well-designed in an opinionated way. People are different, so some of his decisions won't jive perfectly with every player. But I really admire the creator for sticking to his guns and making something new and truly his rather than trying too hard to pander to a particular audience, imaginary or otherwise.
I think the game is good in that it has a couple early "stepping off" points for players who are growing tired of the game or the increasing difficulty of the puzzles. You can end the game at a narratively satisfying place without doing literally everything, and if you've reached one of those places and aren't hungry for more, ending there makes sense -- or at least taking a break. If you've gotten stuck on a particular puzzle, go do something else (either in game or out of game) and come back to it fresh later.
i do think this is a different scenario than what’s being echoed and complained about.
Having issues with the RNG when you’re content complete almost makes some sense.
Having 25 hours in and gotten to 46 and complaining about the RNG is just…extremely hard for me to swallow if you’re paying attention at all.
Oh yeah I absolutely agree with you about that review. I think someone who thinks the game was a waste of time up to reaching 46 is either not engaging with the core of the game, or it's just not the right type of game for them. My comment here was mostly tangential to that.
I think the RNG/puzzle combo is simply very offputting for some people, and it's totally fair to point that out. I haven't played the game, but I watched a good chunk of gameplay, and I know I wouldn't enjoy this as much as the current hype suggests.
I'd simply feel like I'd waste my time when I couldn't progress with a certain room/puzzle for X runs because I'm not lucky enough. And there seems to be a lot of repetitive going-through-the-motions gameplay (draw room, pick up collectibles, solve a variation of a simple puzzle) which is also a big turndown for me.
The game is well made, and I can see how people can obsess over it, but if you want a structured/planable experience that gets to the point without too much busywork Blue Prince doesn't look like a good time.
This is the exact opinion i'm trying to dispel.
You basically never get a run where you don't accomplish or learn something new, often multiple new things. If you think "oh i want to ONLY do X" then yeah you're going to have a bad time, but the game is literally screaming at you constantly that there's 1000 other things you can be doing/trying/learning/solving.
If you don't like RNG, i get it. If you think the game is just waiting for the rng to line up, you're misunderstanding this game.
Sure, but from what I've seen you play ~10-15 minutes for let's say 2-3 new clues (maybe more in the beginning). It's not a "1000 other things", it's typically just a few things that open up a little per run. And for these clues you often need an item (magnifying glass, spade, etc.) or you need to combine different rooms, but the right pre-conditions are often not available and when you want to get them it also shortens the current run because you waste steps. So most of the time is filled with rooms you already know, clicking on collectibles, solving the simple puzzles (darts, three boxes, etc.).
That just doesn't feel satisfying to me, since it constantly limits what I can do because of its randomness, and it is mostly filled with doing busywork. When I have an idea how to solve XYZ I don't want to run around for 2 hours until the conditions are right.
I like roguelikes, but in this setup the formula just doesn't click for me. I think it's fair to point that out.
This is a big part of the "problem" with the game for me.
A dev of a puzzle game (I think Portal but it's been a while) once said something that stuck with me - the challenge in a puzzle game should be in figuring out the solution, not in implementing the solution. While there are sure to be execeptions to this, it has held true for any puzzle game I have enjoyed.
For me, this wasn't quite true. The first couple of hours had some quick runs where I felt like I didn't accomplish anything. Sure, there were things that I could in theory have worked on, but I hadn't seen enough of the game yet to realise that. This was fine for me as I went in fairly blind on release day and just assumed that things will evolve, as they tend to do in games. But I can imagine that someone who has read reviews that criticise the game for its RNG can in the early game conclude that the criticism is valid and then repeat that criticism, or maybe even have their entire experience coloured by it.
Things opened up for me after a while and it felt like I accomplished something with every single run. It was fun, it was exciting, it was obsessive. So much to do! If X didn't happen, there were always a handful of other things to deal with.
After somewhere around the 20 hour mark, which is also when I decided to go to room 46, things started to change. The number of clues that I knew to investigate or attempt to solve quickly narrowed down, to a point where my last game session lasted, I think, something like 3 hours and I managed to accomplish absolutely nothing. That's when I made the decision to stop, around the 30 hour mark. I think I have somewhere around a dozen ideas that I would like to solve or investigate, but getting to them just takes too much time.
Now, I am sure that there is a lot that I haven't noticed. And it could also be that I am unlucky in that the things that I am aware of and trying to solve are not connected, so if the randomness spoils me trying to do X, it doesn't leave me with the option to do Y.
I do like that the game is both opinionated about what it wants to be, and I was impressed how good it was at guiding me. But if it was my game (and if my experience is representative of a general experience with the game, which it might not be because of the randomness), I would try to adjust the early game a little to avoid some of the dead ends for new players, and in the end game, I'd give the player more power over the world.
Like I wrote in my other comment here, I love the game. But it did annoy me a bit too much at times. I'll probably go back to it one day, and I'm pretty sure to pick up the designer's next game on launch day.
Sure, but the scale of that "something new" really matters! As someone who wasn't enamored with the game, ending a half-hour run having found just a single new letter (that just got added to my ever-expanding screenshot folder because it doesn't mean much to me in the moment!) was just not sufficient to keep me interested.
The game itself tells you in no uncertain terms that the goal is to reach room 46. As you play, it quickly becomes apparent that you can only get there if the RNG lines up. I don't think this is a misunderstanding. It sounds like what you're saying is that the game misrepresents itself?
Reaching Room 46 is very much not remotely close to the end of the game (and it's early enough in the game that claiming it's "misrepresenting itself" by there being a bunch more stuff afterwards is a little silly imo). It's like claiming Skyrim is misrepresenting itself because there's stuff that comes after fighting your first dragon Whiterun. Reaching Room 46 is a goal, but it is wildly far from the goal.
Reaching Room 46 is also absolutely not just waiting for the RNG to line up. While RNG is a factor in drafting, there is a large skill-based component that a lot of people tend to write off because they, frankly, haven't engaged with it and aren't very good at drafting. The room RNG is pretty tightly constrained (and can thus be predicted/manipulated to a surprising extent) even before you're given tool by solving puzzles around the manor that allow you to more directly manipulate the RNG. Bad RNG can definitely doom the occasional run towards Room 46, but the principle barrier at that early stage in the game is absolutely the player's own, but the vast majority of runs that I've had, especially early on, that could be blamed on RNG were really me being bad at drafting strategy and resource management -- and there are even in-game guides you can find to get advice on improving these things! My Slay the Spire runs have all ended early, but that's not unilaterally the fault of RNG despite RNG being an element, and Blue Prince is no different in that respect (especially early-game like this).
There are also so many puzzles around that do not require you to have even reached the antechamber yet and provide rewards that make doing so easier. You could not miss all of them unless you're extremely inexperienced with the conventions of similar puzzle games and playing the game with blinkers on. The game prior to reaching room 46 is so full of new puzzles, many of which are large meta-puzzles that you can gather more info on even in a "failed" run, to the extent that it's literally just better to end the day but see a new room and thus its associated puzzles/clues at that stage of the game. Refusing to engage with anything that isn't obviously a direct path to reaching Room 46 is approaching the game the wrong way and is going to make you far less likely to actually reach Room 46 in a timely manner. If you don't enjoy the absolute buffet of puzzles available prior to Room 46, that's fine, but in that case the game really isn't for you, and allowing you to reach Room 46 more easily by rigging the RNG or something would set you up for failure in a game whose approach you clearly don't jive with as the game continues.
Some of the puzzles closer to the mid-game after room 46 are a little more tedious RNG-wise, so I understand complaints about RNG from people who have reached that stage of the game, but complaints about the RNG prior to reaching Room 46 that go beyond personal preference is indicative of either a skill issue or unwillingness to engage with the game's core mechanic (its puzzles), possibly both. It's okay to see a wildly successful game, try it, and not really enjoy it much, but too many people who have played very little of Blue Prince behave as though their criticisms are objective truth and not indicative that they just don't like the kinds of puzzles on offer here. If you're complaining about RNG before Room 46, that's ultimately why you're complaining -- because the RNG is not what's preventing you from enjoying the game's pre-Room 46 puzzles the way I and many others have.
I agree that drafting is ultimately a skill to develop, and that there are probably a lot of people who would agree it was more in their hands if they saw some of the curtains drawn back.
But I also think the game is particularly awful at pacing itself; it doesn't consistently reward well, it doesn't often communicate what the player has done wrong well enough to stymie the feeling that RNG ruined the run, and I think it's all by design that kinda invites the criticism.
Right now I'm pretty disappointed in two particular mechanics which can interact with every room in the manor.
mechanic spoiler
#1 is The Blessing of the Monk (and in my specific scenario I was curious about the Garage, the Veranda, and the Secret Passage), #2 is the Conservatory.With #1, the game rewards you for trying to get funny about something in particular rooms. It's a super fuckin cool idea. The mechanic itself has no RNG, something happens or doesn't. Unfortunately I have no idea whether the game cares or not. Sometimes there's an actual lead, sometimes there's a cute little quirk, sometimes it's fuckin nothing. The solution to this, without looking it up or asking anyone which rooms I should do, is to go waste time doing all the rooms. Which don't even always show up because RNG, meaning I had to waste a day searching for it. Then it showed up. Then mechanic #1 didn't do anything. My solution now is looking it up and asking people which rooms.
#2 does something beneficial in every room, but it doesn't let you just choose which ones because you roll randomly which rooms to influence. Technically I can just reload over and over until I get the rooms I want. Why not? I get that it limits the extent to which you have control over the manor, but is that really the best way they could implement this?
I wish I had a bit more time to dig into the rooms and ask what the chances of people running into dead runs is early on, but the info you get via new rooms is... absolutely never not nothing, if that makes roundabout sense. You can draft certain dead end, day-ending rooms way before you can actually do anything about them or way before their info or mechanics are remotely useful. Whether or not that's "new info" it just does not feel good or worth it. Plus when you spend all that time, it's doing all this stuff which advances zero narrative after Room 46. The plot crumbs are, at least apparently, kind of irrelevant to your actions. There's one obvious active question which the game hinges entirely along, I'm finding, without seeming to care if you're particularly interested in it anymore.
Also, I'm finding some interesting ways in which the game would sort of allow you to find a lead on some of this info by different means. The dartboard in the Billiards Room has a number of explicit solutions, as does the picture puzzle. That's cool. Unfortunately that also means the reward for paying attention is sometimes something you already know. It's a risk for giving the player a bit more of a bone, and it sort of finds ways to give those in groups so it's not the only thing. But it's all just inconsistent.
Also, apparently I've heard that the deck is determined at the start of the day? So whether you can influence the deck, you have no idea if you can get a particular place you're trying to do by lining something else up. There's no way to look at what your deck is, which itself would probably give you the chance to pivot if you were allowed to look at the damn thing. Not sure how accurate this is.
To me what this all amounts to is a lack of respect for the player's time. RNG or no RNG, that's the criticism I don't think the game does enough about. At worst it comes across as sort of predatory at times; it leans on a Skinner Box of inconsistent rewards and promises of something bigger, and it feels like it's stringing you along. In an age of gacha bs and gambling mechanics - to where there's like a hyperpop of Balatro or Vampire Survivors giving a safe space to shamelessly let people go nuts in the fantasy - it doesn't really overcome the negatives of the RNG, and it doesn't reinforce that what the player does is right/wrong enough to make things ever feel in their control.
If that's all a narrative decision to make it annoying, Herbert can go fuck himself and keep the manor lol
Anyhoo, I'm gonna go keep looking for the post-Room 46 stuff because abusive relationship is my favorite video game genre
This is just completely untrue and absolutely not how this works, fwiw. Most of the rest of the stuff you criticize comes down to differences in taste, and I'll talk more about that generally below, but I did want to correct this here because it is just incredibly inaccurate. You do have a limited deck consisting of certain rooms at the start of each day, from which you draw rooms when drafting. But idk what you mean by "look at the damn thing," as it's just a list of the rooms that exist, and I have no clue what you mean by "you have no idea if you can get a particular place you're trying to do by lining something else up" -- with the exception of the first draw on Day 1, which afaik is set in stone, as long as a room fulfills its placement requirements (typically most relevant on edges and corners), you have a chance of drafting it (and that chance is related to its rarity and what rank you're at). Once you've discovered all the rooms for the first time, you know what's in your deck at the start of the day, because it's just one of every room (minus a couple special rooms that can only be added mid-day, but the game does communicate that clearly on the things that trigger those). There are also a number of mechanics that change what's in your deck mid-run (adding rooms to your deck, adding back already drafted rooms, etc.) and the game is quite transparent about when this happens so you can choose whether or not to do it depending on the needs of your run.
You're free to criticize the game, but I just don't think most of that criticism is particularly apt for the portion of the game leading up to Room 46. I think the game is phenomenally well-made in general and particularly well-paced at that early stage. I have criticisms of the game, but they're largely for small QoL things or puzzles that occur later in the game. I can see why the game wouldn't gel with someone pre-46, but I cannot agree that the game does not respect your time prior to 46, because I think it's phenomenally well-structured in that portion of the game. It is slower-paced on average for sure, but I disagree that this indicates a lack of respect for the player's time -- not every game needs to be blisteringly fast-paced. I think some of the post-46 stuff does get more frustrating for sure, and I have some criticisms there, but I just flat-out cannot agree with a reviewer who believes the pre-46 game is wasting their time.
Ultimately we'll have to agree to disagree on most of your criticisms. Tonda Ros has explicitly said he designed the game with only his own tastes in mind, so I suspect his response would be something similar. A lot of people really vibed with the game as is, and some people didn't. Those who didn't are free to articulate why, but that doesn't make them any more objectively correct than those they disagree with. Games are ultimately a matter of taste.
The latter explanation is exactly what I'm talking about, so I'm still unclear here. Is it a specific number of the rooms out of that pool predetermined to make the deck limited? Or is the entire pool always being drawn from at all times? When the game adds my extra Aquarium, does it nix a different room in doing so? Is there some kind of predetermination in the RNG sequence that "decides" my picks for the day, or is it constantly changing based on my actions within the manor to change the seed behavior? There are well over 44 rooms; the main issue I'm trying to highlight is that if you're just generally looking for a specific room but can use good drafting skills to get all 44 available slots rolled to get it, you may still not have a chance of getting it that you simply do not know about if anything is predetermined, including the RNG itself. If the deck does not contain the (as my example) Secret Passage, I'd like to know that before setting out so I don't waste my time.
That itself would sting less if I knew that via some unlock, and I think simultaneously could be more interesting game-wise if I used that opportunity to pivot to something else in the deck.
Which leads me to:
I entirely disagree.
Grandly, you can state that it's up to opinion whether a baseball game objectively needs a pitcher; I don't think it does anyone much good to cut the discourse there. While Blue Prince may be much more abstract than that, it's ultimately a puzzle game that puzzle game people are put off by. Humans are humans; there are human factors decisions that have convention, and breaking those requires some kind of clear thought or intention. Blue Prince, while enjoyable to me, is not convincing me it's doing that for worthwhile reasons.
I find digging into a more objective why is extremely important for the genre, because bare minimum I am put off by the game and I would like to do my best to voice exactly why I (plus a bunch of friends who feel similarly disappointed) do not, for posterity. Dogubomb can develop what they want, but I wouldn't buy a second game that I find flows as poorly. Whether it's opinion or not, I have people asking me whether they should buy it and I'm telling them to wait for a sale - people vibed with it, people didn't, and there are others with $30 and dozens of hours on the line. I'd like to really get a feeling on why for them, so I'm doing the best with my grasp of English to get that feeling down.
Alternatively, if someone can convince me to enjoy it more, I'm good on that too.
I thought it was clear enough from my previous paragraph on this topic, but your "deck" at the start of each day always contains all the rooms, and there is no room that you could otherwise draw on a given day that you are somehow predetermined not to draw. There are one or two rooms that can only be unlocked by finding certain items, the rooms you can only add to the pool mid-day like the Morning Room and Pump Room, and some rooms that only get added once you've found the way to permanently add them to the draft pool. But there is no room that you can draw on the start of one day but cannot on another due solely to RNG the way you describe. If you add the aquariums to your deck, it just adds more of them and shuffles them into the deck. This decreases the probability of drawing other rooms, but it does not remove other options from the pool. It very much is equivalent to a deck of cards in this respect. If you had an infinite number of dice to re-roll, there is no room that would be locked out from appearing unless its placement conditions weren't valid for where you were trying to draft it. I don't think there's anything in the game that indicates the type of predetermination you describe, and whoever told you that was wrong or lying.
As for the rest of your comment, you're free to describe why this game fails to suit your tastes and cite the specific reasons why, but insisting that it isn't a matter of taste is kind of rude -- all that does is deny that it's possible for someone to not be put off by the things that put you off without being somehow objectively wrong.
The objectivity in art includes what's already established in that medium to draw from. That forms technique and taste; those do not exist in a vacuum. Blue Prince brings an astounding amount to the puzzle genre, and pushes boundaries and expectations in it. I also believe it does this too aggressively to convince anyone to accept those elements when they find them subversive, and I also think this happens at the design phase, not the mere existence of RNG.
I never said there is something wrong, or objectively wrong, with enjoying Blue Prince. I enjoy Blue Prince. However there is also a much more hypothetical and accessible Blue Prince which would probably appeal to more people expecting to enjoy it without affecting much of what seems to make it appealing to people, and one which seems to me like it could exist without much compromise or implementation difficulty. As established, to some degree the ways it's frustrating to foster a mastery of the draft or to pivot to new puzzles. To a different degree, the way that frustration is implemented does not seem to add to the narrative or really any particular message. I don't see intent in it, others clearly don't see intent if they stop playing, and I question why it's necessary if it turns people off the game without adding something.
I am happy to be convinced otherwise, as mentioned, because I myself would like to find more to the game. But I have not seen a particularly good argument or interpretation of the game that does yet.
I'm sorry, but I don't think I've put any blame on people enjoying Blue Prince through any of this. Likewise you're calling me rude after you've very selectively ignored me and injected intent into my criticism. (I am certainly not calling for the game to be "blisteringly fast-paced"!) Really not sure what I can do here. It's a discussion thread, I'm discussing the game.
(Also I know we're talking about video games here, but I pretty stalwartly deny it's possible for someone to not be put off by hate crimes and be somehow objectively wrong...)
I definitely didn't do this, at least not intentionally. I responded earlier with a comment that amounted to "Let's agree to disagree, because I understand your criticisms but disagree with a number of them and thus think it's best to attribute our differing opinions to different tastes" and you responded by, at least as far as I understood it, rejecting the possibility that these differences of opinion could be a matter of taste. That's what came across as rude to me -- rejecting what I intended as essentially an olive branch to acknowledge we have different opinions of how successful certain design choices in the game were because we're different people with different subjective preferences. The alternative, in my mind, is fruitlessly shouting our different opinions at each other about things that are pretty obviously subjective, like "is the pace of the game prior to reaching Room 46 good?" I don't think either of us is going to convince the other that their experience of that part of the game was wrong.
I (and at least some others) do accept and enjoy a lot of the design elements you consider too aggressive (I would not have spent 100+ hours on the game if I didn't). Ultimately I don't think it's valuable for either of us to think that we're 100% right and the other person is 100% wrong. It can be a threshold that's different for different people. The developer has been very transparent that he didn't set out to design a game that would appeal to the broadest possible audience, and I thus don't think that turning off some subset of players is a failure on the developer's part in the design of the game. Ultimately other devs can learn lessons from what they believe Blue Prince does right and does wrong, hopefully, but there is value in admitting that a given design choice or level of difficulty or something works for some people but not others.
I don't know what the line about hate crimes is supposed to mean in the context of this conversation, so I'm just going to ignore it because it seems like a pretty complete non-sequitur from the rest of this conversation and honestly even the rest of your comment.
I didn't say reaching room 46 was the end of the game, I said it's what the game tells you the goal is, and therefore the thing it was natural for me to try to do.
Despite all of what you said, you don't seem to disagree ultimately that RNG is in fact involved and can ruin a run or stymie a player. My point is therefore still valid, even if skill is involved in manipulating the RNG. My point is also still valid that the game doesn't actually tell you that drafting RNG can be influenced somehow and therefore misled me into thinking I had to just keep trying and wait for the RNG to line up.
You speak a lot of “puzzles”. For something frequently presented as a “puzzle game”, the parts of Blue Prince that I've seen are pretty scant with actual puzzles. If you think the safe combination or the observatory are “puzzles”, you haven't really played actual puzzle games. It's entirely possible of course that better/bigger puzzles emerge if I play more (indeed I frequently commented that a lot of the decor in many rooms is clearly deliberate and likely part of a bigger puzzle), but that still doesn't invalidate the point that I had to play for hours and uncover tens of rooms just to get a couple of small introductory challenges that I consider actual puzzles (which, just for the record, were the chests with truth statements, and the boiler room).
This game has been compared to Myst (and similar games) throughout by people with much less positive opinions of the game than me. If you've legitimately failed to discover any puzzles beyond these, you haven't played actual puzzle games, because there are elements of various puzzles littered throughout the mansion in ways that lead those familiar with the genre to include them in their notes before they've even found the corresponding hints or places to use this information. If you've so little puzzle game experience that you can't even identify these early-game puzzles through observation despite playing for tens of hours, it's absurd to talk down to me as though I'm inexperienced like this.
I’m saying that there’s tons of ways to help yourself reach room 46 and you build them up across multiple runs.
Gaining knowledge, lateral permanent upgrades, new rooms, and many other things helps you do exactly that.
The issue is that people seem to think that only getting there is important and none of the zillions of other signposted mini or major objectives which help you reach it and beyond
From my perspective: 1) It's reasonable to think getting to room 46 is important because that's what the game tells you the goal is. 2) It's possible to fully notice the signposted challenges along the way and still not enjoy hours of just walking through the same rooms before getting to any actual puzzles.
I loved the game and spent some 30 hours with it, but I can understand the RNG criticism. I too felt that the game was repeatedly wasting my time through its randomness, repetition and the inability to save whenever I wanted. The further I got after room 46 and the list of things to try and explore narrowed, the more it felt like that. In the end, I just gave up and accepted that I don't have the patience to see everything, and I guess that's fine.
I hope someone will eventually make a mod that allows me to better control the RNG. It's frustrating when you know (or at least think you know) how to solve a puzzle but you just can't get to it because of the randomness.
So, while I love the game, it also left me with a strongly bitter aftertaste. I can understand how that could sour someone's entire experience. I still love it, but I have noticed that I hesitate to recommend the game to anyone.
I'd like to mention, as someone who has been paying attention to but hasn't played Blue Prince - while there is supposedly dev work going towards offering colorblind-friendly options (per Steam forum posts), the current state of the game is not colorblind-friendly and I could not see myself attempting a lot of the content present until significant improvements are made.
I say this as someone who recently got hardstuck in another game due to it having no warnings about color-specific puzzles in its late game (The Specter's Desire). Hopefully the upcoming Steam changes with accessibility tagging either push more dev teams to take colorblindness and other accessibility issues into account, or at least help players like me spot when I'm not a part of their target audience.
And as someone who is interested in Blue Prince more because of "interesting genre mashup/new ideas" and less because "puzzle game", getting stuck on a puzzle because of circumstances outside of my control isn't something I'm willing to risk.
I've played Blue Prince extensively over the last few weeks and I have never felt more conflicted about any other game. The game is divided into two halves; I really like one half (the inventive puzzles!) and really dislike the other (the dull resource management).
On the RNG: Early on, the resource management/drafting game feels bad because you have so few tools to "stack the deck" in your favor. Later on, you have some upgrades, but even those are inconsistent. These late-game unlocks should be deterministic: for instance, once I've proven that I can consistently bust the resource management part of this game wide open, just let me draft Coat Check whenever I want.
On the puzzles: For the most part, extremely fun and inventive. There were a couple stinkers that did sour my enjoyment of the "puzzle" half of this game a bit.
The puzzles that I found frustrating
Breaking the vases in the entrance hall with the hammer; not something I would ever have thought to do, even with the little sketch of the hammer from the final Mail Room letter.
Waiting around in the clock tower for the "sacred hour;" puzzles where the answer is "wait" are just bad. Also, I didn't like that this puzzle relied on "external" information from the room directory. It felt weird given that one of the puzzles in this game is figuring out what day it is; why does Simon know about "the sacred hour" but not the current date?
On the interaction between puzzles and RNG: It's unsatisfying to solve a puzzle in your head, but then be unable to try out your solution due to bad RNG, regardless of whether there are other leads to follow in the meantime. I ran into this frustration many times pre-Room 46, but after establishing the next "main" goal, I felt like clues could be anywhere, and I was excited to see every new room again! This period was the peak of my enjoyment with the game. Then, as leads and clues dried up, the game felt more and more tedious, helped in no way by the UI.
On the UI: it's bad. You have to sit through the same slow animations every time you draft a new room, pick up an item, interact with a computer, pull a lever, and so on. Since the player does these actions many, many times across dozens of hours, the game should have felt a bit more responsive. I also had an unfortunate UI-related incident that wasted hours of my time...
Why I wasted hours (late-game spoilers)
Okay, so if you've reached the Laboratory you know about the "experiments," where you mix and match 3 "triggers" and "effects". One of the effects is "receive a new letter in the Mail Room." There are only a fixed number of letters, but the UI still tells you you're getting a new letter even when you have all the letters.
Later on, you unlock a new set of triggers and effects for the experiments. One of the new effects is "remove a crate from the tunnel" (referring to the tunnel outside the manor that is clogged with crates). I took this effect every time it came up as I was doing other stuff. Over the course of my runs, I'd periodically go back down to the tunnel to check on it, but I couldn't see any change to the crates. I figured, "Hm, the UI is telling me that a crate is being removed, so it must be getting removed from the far side, where I can't see it. Maybe I'll get there eventually."
As I was running out of other stuff to do, I started min-maxing for crate removal. I'd get the Blessing of the Monk, draft the Laboratory in the Outer Room, and restart the game until I was offered "remove a crate" as a trigger for my experiment. I did this for hours, eventually removing a total of 91 crates, with the game diligently telling me I was making progress each time. Still, every time I checked on the tunnel, there was no change. I looked up guides to find out "how many crates are in the tunnel?" but the guides just say "there are a lot, keep going and you'll get there eventually."
Finally, I was like "Well, okay. There are these really big, obvious unlit torches in the tunnel. I know you can light candles in this game... it makes no sense but maybe I should try to light these torches." I lit the torches and all the crates instantly disappeared; no cutscene, no hidden mechanism, just deleted from existence. The torches were a prerequisite for "removing" the crates, but the UI was unambiguously telling me "A CRATE HAS BEEN REMOVED FROM THE TUNNEL," gaslighting me the entire time. This moment killed the game for me.
I do have to give Blue Prince props for being inventive and ambitious. If you enjoyed Blue Prince, I'd recommend giving Lorelei and the Laser Eyes a shot; the puzzles in Lorelei are a bit more formulaic, but (possibly as a direct consequence) the experience is much less frustrating.
RE: frustrating puzzles
All of the puzzles have diegetic clues rather than being outside the narrative, usually with multiple layers of specificity. The hammer clue from the letter is an exact reproduction of the drawing of the hammer and the vase in question in the pages of A New Clue, which is also given as a hint in the letter, and if you search out the first draft of ANC it specifically adds another note about the clue relating to the entrance hall.The sacred hour is in multiple places - one of the clocks in the tower is stopped on the correct time, and two clocks in Room 46 are likewise stuck at that time.
To tl;dr a review I wrote here, I don't think RNG itself is the problem. However, I think that poor implementation of RNG, the sense that you can "grind" puzzles with luck rather than careful planning, and a bad sense for a universal experience that still fits neatly into its "open" environment - or, as open as the manor system allows - all are problems that add up to a difficult recommendation. The idea is great, it personally scratches a dozen itches, but they didn't have whatever it was that wouldn't rub people the wrong way and feel so actively discouraging.
Would better signposting when you go or are going down the wrong road help? Would a less breadcrumby or more engaging narrative have helped people look past it? Would faking the RNG system to line up important rooms, better than it does already, have balanced a difficult line between a homogenous experience and an aggressive game? I'm not sure, I'm not smart enough to make a game like this in the first place. But it's clearly not for everyone as it stands.
I greatly enjoyed finding Room 46, but I'm Googling (well, Kagi-ing) liberally for extra stuff because I'm just not interested in slamming my head against it any more.
I do feel like they did themselves a disservice by pitching the game as "reach room 46" to an extent - I get why they wanted to pick a specific, achievable goal as the early focus but the more I've played it the more I've come to view that piece as effectively an extended tutorial to introduce you to the broader game. People who weren't looking for the rest of the content may end up never finding it, assuming they just missed out on a few side achievements rather than the majority of the game which occurs after that point.
I’m a big fan of this game — the structure is completely unique, and the way you simultaneously pull on multiple puzzle/story threads with each run after reaching 46 has been (mostly) very satisfying and interesting.
While it would take away from some of the personal satisfaction from solving things yourself, I strongly believe this game would benefit from something like Outer Wilds’ ship log, or Golden Idol’s “confirm what you know” modules to contextualize all the information you gather.
I took dozens of photos and took lots of notes, but I felt that would have been a less enjoyable experience than something like one of the systems I mentioned.
It makes this tough to recommend to all but a certain type of puzzle sicko like myself — but I appreciate that it’s 100% big swings, and will probably lead to some very interesting iterations on its ideas from other devs in the future.
Yeah, the way Lorelei and the Laser Eyes did it was basically perfect with regards to saving clues, in that it let you review any document you'd ever seen at any time. Though it was much more explicit about what was and was not a puzzle, and that would have worked less well in the case of Blue Prince.
The very first question in Blue Prince is not "How do I solve this puzzle?" but "Is this a puzzle?" There are a few places where you can see things that hint at whether something is a puzzle or not, but the uncertainty is (at least to me) part of the fun. It gives those moments of recontextualization where something is suddenly upgraded from background to foreground.
I had a moment of realization halfway through when I figured out that not only were the vast majority of documents useful in solving some puzzle or another, quite a few of them are necessary to solve multiple additional puzzles that I hadn't even come across yet. The amount of times I had to revisit something that I had previously written off as "complete", or found new meaning/detail in a room element I've walked past a dozen times, has made me paranoid about calling anything truly done.
I just reached Room 46 last night! I very fastidiously avoided spoilers up to that point and loved every moment of exploration and puzzle-solving. I’m still avoiding spoilers because I haven’t reached a point where I’m just stuck but I’m wondering when that moment’s going to come.
I have a ton of mysteries I still want to follow up on:
Huge spoilers in here! Maybe read if you’ve completed (or nearly completed) everything.
I found three of the four gas valves that control the blue flames. Really curious where the last one is and what happens when they’re all lit.
I discovered that I can combine the metal detector with the magnifying glass to make a firestarter but haven’t had a chance to try it out. There are so many candles to light, particularly in the tomb, not to mention that suspicious dynamite in the trading post.
What’s the big blast door in the hillside near the campsite?
I’ve solved the boiler room (easily the most Myst-like puzzle I’ve seen so far) but the next step eludes me. I know I need steam power in the laboratory and pump room, and I assume careful placement of rooms with ceiling ducts will deliver it there, but I can’t fathom how to plan that out.
I’m surrounded by locked safes that I can’t get into.
I know how to get the letter from the two pictures in each room, but I don’t know what to do with the letters.
The secret garden has a fairly obvious hidden door in the north wall but I can’t divine a way to open it.
When I tried to build all the classrooms I failed to draw more than two. Need to give that another go.
The long underground hallway to the room with the lever for room 46 has a really mysterious offshoot. That path leads to a sealed door, a cave-in, and a vista. I have no idea what to do with any of them.
Speaking of that room where the lever is, what about all those doors? I can’t do anything with them but know they’re there for a reason.
I’ve seen three of Alzara’s visions (and had the presence of mind to record them all). There’s so much in those and almost none of it makes a lick of sense to me. Some of it seems metaphorical but other bits are quite literal. I’m particularly stumped by the most recent one I saw, which shows the estate’s front gate open with both its lamps lit, and a shot of the table in the entrance hall missing the lantern, which Alzara says was taken by someone besides me.
I found a deposit box key in one run but couldn’t draft the vault that day, and I haven’t seen it again since.
I also just found the hall of mirrors for the first time but didn’t have it positioned correctly to get very far into its puzzle. The novelty of that room really surprised me.
I’m really intrigued by the blue tents for sale in the gift shop but I don’t have a clue how to save up enough coins to buy them.
I’m sure there are others I’m not thinking of at the moment! And I still have a bunch of rooms and at least two non-room permanent additions to discover. It’s totally true that room 46 wasn’t even close to the end of the game.
If anyone’s able to give me some light spoiler-free nudges about any of these things that would be spectacular! Just the bare minimum to put me on the scent.
One thing that made me happy was in the post-46 game credits seeing both Cyan (the developers of Myst) and Christoper Manson named. I mentioned both of them in an earlier comment about the game. It was gratifying to see them both acknowledged as influences, and that further confirmed that Blue Prince was created for exactly the type of gamer that I am. Apparently Manson actually contributed some artwork for Blue Prince… for a puzzle I haven’t even encountered yet!
I've finished pretty much everything the game has to offer atm (at least that we know of), so I'm living vicariously through helping you!
Spoilering the same stuff that was spoilered above, plus my vague hint responses
One of the valves is definitely harder to find than the others. One is out on the grounds, two are in draftable outer rooms, and one is in a draftable room inside the manor, but requires you to solve a puzzle to find it. If I'm correct that it's this last one you're still missing, think about the limited subset of rooms where a gas valve would make sense and whether you've seen any with a puzzle you don't know how to solve yet.
If you want to find a more direct lead on how to solve this puzzle...
Check your mail.You're on the right track here -- keep an eye out for anything where a little heat might help you out. You probably won't get the chance to do all of them at once when you have this tool, but keeping track of where you've seen things makes it easier to cover as many as possible when you get the chance to make this.
I'm actually not sure which one of two doors you mean, but either way it's one of the permanent upgrades you haven't unlocked yet. You're already in the process of figuring out the puzzles that will eventually unlock them.
This one hint is pretty much the key to avoiding frustration with the boiler room -- if you draft from a door that's powered by the boiler room (like, you've solved the puzzle and pointed the boiler's power to that door), you are much more likely to draw rooms that connect to power. Powered rooms continue to power their own doors, so you don't need to put rooms like the lab and the pump room directly adjacent to the boiler room. You just need to make a path of powered rooms that leads there -- and when tou draft from a powered door, powered rooms to draft are highlighted.
Also, take another look around the boiler room at all the stuff that can be steam powered (even if it currently isn't bc you're routing as much as possible to the boiler itself). Is there anything that you can't clearly figure out what it does?
You're already partway through solving another puzzle that will help a lot with the safes. You will also know that it's the puzzle relevant to the safes when you find it.
A bit more of a nudge once you've gotten that far
The safes can pretty much all be solved exclusively through clues in the room with the safe and the result of the other puzzle (and some can be solved by making logical leaps from clues in the room even without that result!) But the way that result applies to each safe combo might not always be super clear to you. Some are definitely more opaque than others. Herbert S. Sinclair really loved wordplay.Does each room always have the same two pictures? Or are they different between runs?
Sometimes you need a specific tool to solve a problem. The burning glass isn't the only useful thing you can make in the workshop!
Also, keep an eye out for other similarly suspicious looking walls.
Yep! Remember that classrooms let you reroll a bunch when you draft from them, so if you have enough gems it's a lot easier to draft classrooms from each other.
The vista is pretty, but the sealed door is the only one you can interact with. Pay attention to what it looks like and look out for other stuff around the manor that looks similar. It might help you figure out how to get it open.
Visit Room 46 again. The first time you just get the cutscene, but you do actually get to go inside the second time. It'll give you a very clear set-up for this puzzle.
Yeah Alzara's visions sometimes give vague hints, but they're mostly just for atmosphere imo. Don't beat yourself up for not understanding them lol. I don't think there are any puzzles that Alzara serves as the only hint for.
Yeah these are annoyingly rare. If you get the opportunity to coat check them when you find them, I recommend it, because at the end of my midgame I was basically wildly searching lol. Tbqh, the coat check comes in clutch for a lot of items that you might not find every run -- just know that an item that's in the coat check won't appear elsewhere in the house like normal.
Yeah this puzzle can be fun (and its rewards are actually pretty good) but it's tough to get set up. Make sure you've got plenty of steps left once you are able to place it correctly!
The blue tents are late-game content (you need eight trophies to even buy them, after all!) You will discover ways to earn more money by the time they're the natural next step.
You've probably already encountered two "puzzle rooms", where you get a reward if you solve a recurring puzzle in them. There is one more, which I think only shows up after you've visited Room 46 the first time. Its puzzle is different from the others in that you only need to solve it once, but it's also really annoying, like even players who otherwise jive with the hard puzzles often complain about it. So if you find it and are at a loss, you're not alone. Feel free to try and do it yourself spoiler-free, but if you find yourself similarly frustrated/confused, there's a good Steam guide aimed to nudge you in the right direction if you're struggling and liberally uses spoilers to allow you to only see as many hints as you need. If you use this guide, I recommend starting with the "Background" and "Some Side Notes" sections even though they're towards the end, before going to the more specific hint sections.
There's also a couple other guides that are good at giving vague hints if mine aren't enough. This guide is good for early- to mid-game (their mid-game covers a lot of your current leads), and this is a good guide with escalating hints for later game puzzles (I'd recommend waiting to try this guide until you've at least unlocked the permanent upgrades, but it has content for the very late-game puzzles that aren't yet covered in the other guide). Both are good at only giving you incremental hints as needed through liberal use of spoiler-tags.
Awesome, thanks so much! Great gentle nudges and I especially like the nested spoiler-within-spoiler boxes for progressive revelation. This will give me a ton of new things to try when I sit down with it tonight!
I was worried spoiler boxes within spoiler boxes wouldn't work tbh, but I'm glad they did!
Offtopic, but TIL the guy who made Blue Prince runs mythic spoiler of mtg fame. It's a small, weird world out there.
Well holy shit I never knew. No kidding about a small weird world. Would never expected that as an overlap.