To call The Blue Prince a puzzle game fails to acknowledge the many, many ways its intricate systems will surprise and excite players eager for secrets and mind-teasers. It’s one of the most unique puzzle games in years, and while its tricks and mechanical hurdles can trip you up, The Blue Prince is a masterclass in design for those eager to lose themselves in a mysterious, clockwork mansion.
The Blue Prince is an indie game by developer Dogubomb, out April 10. Players take on the role of Simon, the young grandson of a recently departed eccentric noble who left behind a 45-room estate — and the promise of a great reward if the elusive 46th room can be found. With the layout changing daily, the search is anything but easy, but each run through the estate uncovers new secrets.
The game itself is a first-person adventure that unfurls at your pace — what used to be called a “walking simulator” — with an art style that looks drawn in broad pencil and vivid watercolors, giving each room a dynamic appearance and distinct personality. The minimalist soundtrack adds a layer of cozy mystery to your exploration, while distinct sound effects for picking up and using items bring a sense of tactility to the otherwise empty mansion — where nothing moves unless you do.
The Entrance Hall, the first thing players see when booting up the game — and at the start of every day thereafter.
There are elements of old games — exploring a household in What Remains of Edith Finch, puzzles like in The Witness — but The Blue Prince is a unique experience, the novelty of which unfolds over time. Players start at the bottom of the mansion in the Entrance Hall and must make their way to the top, between which are empty spaces to place rooms. Much of the game involves walking up to a door and placing one of dozens of premade rooms, each with its own layout and purpose — bedrooms, gardens, hallways, workout rooms, security stations and more.
Every door presents players with three new room options, varying in rarity and based on their progress through the mansion. Thanks to this variety, the mansion’s vertical grid — five rooms wide by nine rooms tall — looks completely different each day. Since rooms also have different numbers of doors, players must carefully weigh their choices between progressing toward their goals and avoiding potential dead ends.
Three choices await players any time they open a door, though their options might shift depending on several factors.
In my first few days, I quickly learned how easy it was to run out of doors and end a run early. After eight hours of uncovering the house’s secrets, I thought I was nearing the endgame — but there was much more ahead. The Blue Prince has a knack for revealing new layers of functionality with each daily mansion reset. Even when my paths hit dead ends, a newly discovered room or permanently unlocked boon kept pulling me into another run.
As I learned how different rooms worked, I settled into a rhythm — and so did my strategy. I’d pick the Closet early to snag a special item or one of the few disposable currencies (gold, keys, gems to unlock unique rooms). Or I’d go for the Billiard Room to solve a puzzle and earn a prize, like one of the rare keys that unlock the mansion’s most elusive chambers. Big mysteries started falling into place, and I found myself muttering aloud — the only company in this strange mansion, and the only one I could trust amid its secrets and shadows.
The Billiard Room, one of the earliest-available rooms, contains a darts puzzle (not pictured) that rewards players with items if they can solve it.
There’s a randomness to each daily run that’s equally exciting and uncertain. It also sets The Blue Prince apart from puzzle house games like last year’s excellent Lorelei and the Laser Eyes, which have an established and unchanging pattern of brain teasers to unravel (you can find online guides to walk you through every part of those games). But The Blue Prince’s new daily layout remixes gameplay such that even after guides come out for its handful of puzzles, players will still need to become savvy with the mansion-building mechanics to win the game.
This unpredictability can make for frustratingly abrupt ends to days due to unlucky draws of room options or running low on keys or gems. That’s on top of the typical frictions found in “rogue-like” run-based games, such as early choices inadvertently dooming progress later on. But the room layout roulette is so deeply entrenched in the game’s design and theme that it wouldn’t be The Blue Prince without it — as a feature, not a bug, to build a strategy around. After getting steamed over prematurely-ended runs, I had to shift my perspective to appreciating little wins, even if I only reached a single new room in a day.
And then there’s the story, which slowly unfolds with every room you discover — if you know where to look.
A mountain range stretches beyond the ledge in front of the mansion, set in a royal town with its own tucked-away history revealed through the mansion’s books.
The Blue Prince’s story: A shifting mansion, a fractured family
The game opens with the player, as young Simon, in the Entrance Hall with a letter from his dear grandfather, Herbert S. Sinclair, welcoming him to the challenge of discovering the secrets of the mansion. But over the course of the game, it becomes clear there’s more to him than the jovial, fey grandsire persona he presents — and more to the strange events surrounding the family, of which Simon is one of the last remaining members.
As developer Dogubomb recommended, I started taking notes in a physical handbook (why not?), as well as a spreadsheet to scrawl larger puzzles. I logged everything I found interesting, as each new room adds some letter, document, reference or mention of various characters. A dramatis personae and their fates emerged: the disappearance of Simon’s mother, the anger of Simon’s father, the mischief of the house’s staff of servants. Scattered clues remain, like a detective checking out a book from the house library or a teacher looking for an old textbook. They must mean something.
The early-game Parlor Room has a logic puzzle that’s randomly generated each day.
It’s unclear how much of these little notes I’m taking are important to an overarching story — I’ll freely admit that, 17 hours into The Blue Prince, I still haven’t completed it. I’m close, but mechanical difficulties and lack of luck in aligning the mansion rooms just right has kept me, I hope, just one good run away from the end (or near enough to it). In the meantime, I’m still piecing together the house’s lore, leaping to unlock new rooms in hopes of uncovering just a bit more about what happened to this once-bustling home, now just a shadow of itself.
But even if I haven’t finished the game, it’s still a joy to wander through its halls and wonder how many more secrets lurk within. Each new room offers a snippet of storytelling — a family tomb, a fallout shelter — and the farther I get, the more layers unfold (like a puzzle that spans the entire mansion, making me wonder what else I’m missing in plain sight).
The Blue Prince isn’t for everyone. While most of the puzzles can be solved with whatever’s in the room, there are some intricate solutions afoot that could elude casual players. The mansion’s shifting layout and unpredictable room choices can make progress uneven — or even bring it to a halt if luck isn’t on your side. But it’s by far one of the most unique games I’ve played in years, and a true treat for puzzle fiends and mystery fans.
The Blue Prince releases on April 10 on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox Game Pass and PC.
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