its april 2025 and game of the year already came out. it's the BLUE PRINCE thread

use the spoiler tags heavily for this one, it's a spoilery game!

but it needs a thread because this is an all-timer. like what if myst was also a jigsaw puzzle that felt kind of like a roguelike/deck builder/sandbox type situation.

i played about 3 hours, then played later in front of gf, and within 30 mins she was hooked. i have 6 pages of my (actual, irl, pen and paper) notebook covered in mad scrawlings trying to solve various aspects of its puzzles. so far everything has felt challenging and nothing has felt unnecessarily arbitrary and stupid, a needle so hard to thread i can't remember the last time a game has ever done it for this many hours? (i expect it to get esoteric and annoying eventually, and it keeps surprising me!)

come and discuss and one more time, the spoiler tags are like bold tags except you use an H instead of a B

also the only game i can ever think of when i shouted YES out loud at the TV because a fuckin HALLWAY showed up

Is this just for the newest console generation or is it available on PS4 or Xbox One?

looks like it's PS5, Series X/S, and windows for now! but i reckon it'd run on a modest computer. there's nothing in it that would significantly ruin your day if the frame rate was choppy anyway, there's no timing/twitch/etc stuff

Not quite hooked me yet because I was expecting more puzzles on the order of Lorelei. Probably just need to keep putting away a I've heard it opens up quite a bit more.

i haven't played lorelei but i imagine if you mean like, a collection of small puzzles, this is not that game -- the appeal imo is the many very big puzzles that you're picking away at over time! i can only think of two "smaller" puzzles off the top of my head. a lot of them you'll look at, and not be able to solve until a lot of other pieces come together later

I played the demo during that Steam demos thingy and I did really enjoy pottering around trying to make my routes longer etc, but I wasn't entirely convinced to buy the full game. There's never enough narrative in Myst-likes for me, so I end up losing momentum and eventually dropping off completely.

it hasn't fully got its hooks into me yet but i've enjoyed enough to not delete it yet either

there's a lot of narrative in this thing, a shocking amount of world building is crammed into the crevices for those who look for it (and the game encourages you to do it, it's not just a "it's there for you to ignore" kinda way, if that makes sense)

sorry if vague i am just trying to say as much as i am comfortable saying without starting the spoielr tag parade lol

Ah, that's cool - I did wonder if there might be, the set-up was immediately more narrative than a lot of those types of games, but I've been burned before! I suspect this might be one that I wait on for a ridiculous amount of time until a good sale comes up, then I'll come back to this thread three years late.

How do roguelike/randomized elements fit in?

oh i love this. stone cold addicted. day 29. still havent reached the antechamber. had a really stellar (heh) run where i got flummoxed and blocked by keycards. ive only run out of steps once, but i blockcade myself on the reg.

Surprised to discover this is free with a PS Plus sub

If I hated the Witness will I hate this?

How do roguelike/randomized elements fit in?

every day you enter a mansion. You have a set number of steps. Each time you get to a doorway, you choose between three rooms to generate, reset daily. The rooms come from a deck that is gradually buily out through successive playthroughs. often rooms are locked, or you dead-end yourself, or you run out of steps and need to reset. some rooms have small puzzles in them, some puzzles stretch across rooms, some puzzles stretch across many playthrough, some of them would be easy to solve if other rooms were generated. there’s a narrative and its confusing, and told out of order depending on the rooms you have revealed.

How do roguelike/randomized elements fit in?

the core mechanic is: you are at the bottom of a house, want to reach the top of the house, and the rest is just "blank". each time you open a door, you are dealt three rooms from your "card deck" type thing, and you pick one to place and enter based on entries, resources inside, and other considerations. it is worth noting that this is not a "deck builder," while you do fuck with the likelihood of some things appearing, this game is not a balatro or slay the spire where the goal is to make a broken deck -- it's to bend luck a little bit and mostly go with the flow. things like, "i don't want this room showing up later i'll play it now", or "i DO want this to show up later so i'm using something else" is kind of the strat you apply to the random, if that makes sense

that said each "run" is pretty much discreet, from a rogue/random POV. playing a closet 2 runs ago has no effect on this run. the strategy of the rogue elements run completely parallel to the main goals which emerge over tens of runs (30ish for me so far)

I suspect this might be one that I wait on for a ridiculous amount of time until a good sale comes up, then I'll come back to this thread three years late.

i suspect 2028 will will be jealous of 2028 emil.y because 2028 will will not get to play this for the first time in 2028

If I hated the Witness will I hate this?

can't say for sure because i was maybe in a different headspace but i can tell you i bounced off of the witness twice -- once when it came out, once a few years later -- but this one got its hooks in me and never let up. so the answer is... actually... you might like this???

sorry xpost i was doing an entire omnibus of replies lol. soda nailed it better thna i did

I played The Witness once and was never tempted to go back to it again, whereas I've played BP... twice. (Actually more than that.)

I'm on day 31. I have gotten to that white room that's on the map, and a bit beyond it, and that's my current progress. But I remembered a lot from the demo.

I solved some of the big multi-room puzzles too (Spoiler: the paintings (which were solvable in the demo but i didn't manage it then), the 4 flames, the fountain). There's one thing I remember from the demo that I've been unable to get yet: where's that damn lighter?.

The combination of Carcassonne and Myst is one that I really like, but I understand that it's not for everyone. Figuring out the solution to a puzzle but then having to wait for the rooms to come together the right way -- it's a good feeling of anticipation for me.

enjoying this a lot. day 20ish currently and i've gotten several of the permanent upgrades but still have no clue how to get into the antechamber.

i'm on day 56 or something like that, 30+ hours in, and this is one of the best games i've ever played, really scratches that la mulana itch. there's nothing about it that's really mindblowing but it's just so densely layered with puzzles and secrets to discover and i'm still finding something new nearly every run after so long. it's crazy, most games of this sort would have run out of steam long before now

it's not really that similar to the witness because while they're both puzzle games centred around gaining knowledge in order to progress, the witness is much more abstract in terms of its puzzles which are all centred around that line-drawing mechanic, and that's just ultimately not as engaging even though it wrings a lot out of that concept. blue prince is much broader

I played the demo during that Steam demos thingy and I did really enjoy pottering around trying to make my routes longer etc, but I wasn't entirely convinced to buy the full game

the demo didn't really sell me on it either but it absolutely delivers, the demo just doesn't give you quite enough time to start to really discover things. there is indeed a fairly elaborate narrative too, it's well done

for to people who have played more than 30 days

1) is it useful to draw out a family tree?
2) why is the pump room so confusing? it is the /only/ time i have used an online guide.
3) am i the only one that really likes the billiard puzzles?

not at 30+ days but i have found a family tree in one of the rooms, didn't need to draw it out

that said, i can't promise you'll find that room anytime soon, thats kinda how this game operates. different players will be tackling puzzles with different levels of explicit information based on which rooms they get to early on

Only unspoil the next paragraph if you know about the outer room:

When you start a new day, do draft the outer room first? I've been going back and forth because that's 4-6 steps I'm burning, but I guess figuring out the potential benefits at the start of your run is generally more optimal?

On Day 37 I reached an ending. But there are still some obvious things that I haven't done yet. There's one big puzzle I think I know how to solve, and one that is still a mystery to me.

Pump room: I figured it out once I realized there were more controls in the back. There's also a pump manual in the library.
Billiards room: i liked them at first but now i have these baseball shapes i don't understand. maybe i should skip the puzzles a few times and see if they gets easier.

Leee: I usually do some indoor rooms first then if I have to backtrack I do the outer room then. I'm thinking of stopping this and just going for it right away because there's at least one outer room that is very good to do before filling in many rooms.

leee that's usually the first thing i do, unless on rare occasion i want something specific from it and want to make sure i have some dice first

i still love the parlor logic puzzles but i'm a bit tired of doing all the maths in the billiards room.

enjoying this a lot. day 20ish currently and i've gotten several of the permanent upgrades but still have no clue how to get into the antechamber.

― ciderpress, Monday, April 14, 2025 10:59 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

i had 25 questions written out on my list of notes/hypotheses before that run, i still have 15 so i'll keep playing. lots of stuff left to check out

oh the postgame stuff is more structured than i thought. it's basically blue prince 2

it's absurdly expansive

one of the great things about it is that it just keeps going and going and going

reaching the credits is really just the tutorial

I figured out the darts baseball symbols from doing the classrooms. It's neat that the game gives so many clues to everything.

So this post-game stuff. I assume it's mainly the stuff that gets added to the map screen? specifically the red envelopes and the sigils.

lol

I've been playing on Steam Deck and used its built-in screenshot function on stuff, except I noticed that almost all of my screenshots have disappeared -- I could only find the two most recent ones that I took. :(

Another question (I'm on day 20ish): I've seen/heard some stray comments about certain gameplay features that in my game I haven't been able to interact with so far -- am I right to assume that I just need to keep playing and unlock certain things, or have I been ignoring an entire dimension of stuff?

that's kind of vague so i don't know what you're referring to but yes there are a lot of permanent upgrades that need to be unlocked or else maybe you just haven't drafted the room where you do that thing yet

i think steam defaults to only showing you the screenshots from your most recent play session but there should be a full gallery somewhere. on PC it's under View -> Recordings and Screenshots

my screenshots disappear and reappear on steam deck too. i dunno what its deal is.

Yeah my screenshot were back, I'm going to work on moving the important ones to another device though.

A concrete example of what I was asking: I've drafted a few classrooms now (up to rank 2, I think) and while I have an idea of what the school assignments are about, I haven't found anything I can actually do with them.

BTW I was not expecting Swim Bird to be so emotionally devastating.

there isn't anything you can 'do' with the school assignments, they're just information that will be useful later eventually in some way, like pretty much everything else in this game

looks like steam deck screenshots are a common problem. here's a possible fix, but it requires desktop mode, yuck.
https://steamcommunity.com/app/1675200/discussions/1/6895657216189910621/

I'm not sure if I'm misunderstanding, but am I right in summarizing one aspect as "There are puzzles there you won't know if you can solve them due to rogue/deckbuilder stuff?" That sounds like a nightmare to me - was the demo only during Next Fest, I can't see it on Steam right now?

s/there/where

depending on how you draft the house each day you'll have access to a different subset of the game's puzzles. the game is very dense so you'll always have something to make progress on, the people getting frustrated are the ones who like to focus on one thread at a time, this game doesn't let you do that. as you progress you gain more and more tools and knowledge to control the draft though.

Think I'm hooked now, also god do I hate the fucking pump room

There are puzzles there you won't know if you can solve them due to rogue/deckbuilder stuff?

not really

there are many things that you initially won't know what to do with because you don't have the necessary information. broadly, the game is about piecing together information. this starts out very straight forward (finding a note in one room that explains a puzzle in another room, for instance) but gets increasingly elaborate over many many many hours.

it is truly absurdly dense

i think I'm seeing the post-46 organization now. I dread piecing together all the lore. Also I haven't thawed that damn freezer yet.

current to do list:
the freezer
one wall the greenhouse, it never comes up in the draft
1 of 8 red envelopes if there really are 8
the later classrooms

postgame spoiler tasks below

a ton of stuff in the sanctum. 3 keys and 6 sigils to go.
two puzzles in a new clue.
wherever the third microchip is. also the archive account name.
the map in room 46 which i think is the main focus of the post-game.
a few loose ends like the message in the chess room.

Just had my first aha, 33 days in!

dat i think i'm roughly in the same spot as you, though i have 7 envelopes.

the freezer is still eluding me too, it has to be the rarest room in the game. i've seen it maybe 3 times in 50 days and not since i learned how to thaw it

I think they've increased the speed you run at too? about time.

I managed to get the blue tents with the blessing of the monk, drafting the freezer in the outer room. then I thought I'd see what would happen if I drafted the foundation there. big mistake! recoverable, but wasted a few days.

still don't have the foggiest idea how to open the blue door.

not very helpful info on that door: there's no clues given on how to open the blue door. do other stuff until it becomes a reward.

yeah that's what I was expecting.

Ten days in and I still have no idea what's going on with the paintings. Like I get the pattern but have no clue when it will coalesce into some sort of epiphany moment.

It will click I think, the joy of the game is the way stuff gently clicks

That said I've finished everything more or less now that we're aware of to date. Definitely looked up hints for some of the more abstruse shit towards the end cos it got too much. Still trying to complete a Curse run tho cos I do love the whole mechanic/vibe

I'm nearing the end, i think, though one part is still a mystery. if anyone completed this game without help I take my hat off to them, I couldn't do it even if it were my full time job.

I'm a bit peeved at having to do the chess puzzle twice more, and the thing with the watering can - totally random and I don't know how anyone could figure that out. maybe there's a clue somewhere.

Yeah that's my take, the early stuff is well-balanced, the later stuff falls back on ridiculousness

the only hint I know of for that second puzzle is that you can also refill the can at the kitchen sink. which i never discovered because the can is very rare and fairly useless.

I am the blue prince! Managed it on my first attempt, after setting things up (sceptre in hand, stone in the coat check). It was a dream run - hardly any red rooms, got the secret garden key, throne room drafted early and within a few rooms of the coat check, dining room and kitchen gave me more steps than i knew what to do with. I still have to open the blue doors, I've only seen the throne room again once in four or five days and it was in my last available spot to draft.

I also finally found the puzzle you get when you dig for treasure in the bedroom. Pretty sure I've got the second word. I woke up in the night and was pretty sure I had the first word - casino! 'Sin' - the sins are behind a locked door (room 8) and so is the casino! Except when it isn't. And the letters in 'sin' don't all appear in my second word.

Starting to feel annoyed with the game now that I'm not sure what else I can do without fully looking things up, aside from one thing.

- I've tried a couple times to do the classrooms thing but I've yet to get past grade 7, so I guess there's that.
- 5 inner sanctum doors opened, don't have the foggiest about how to get the other two based on that list in Room 46. I haven't really tried to get figure out the sigils yet, though.
- I've broken three walls down with the power hammer: the one into the basement, the one in the Workout room, and the one in the Secret Garden
- I have had no luck figuring out the A New Clue puzzle. I tried XYZABC -> 123456, but that hasn't yielded anything coherent yet.
- I've restored the emails to the various terminals but still haven't been able to find logins for the users who presumably can read the deleted logs
- I've defrosted the Freezer and found a note about servers, but do I need a furnace + boiler room connection to crank the heat up even more? IIRC the stuff in the cooler was still frozen.
- I see a red door in hallway off the main route into the inner sanctum, no clue what to do with that yet.

have you drained the reservoir? if so have you noticed anything that might be worth investigating, other than what's obviously down there?

I think the classrooms aren't much use except for completism - they help with the sigils but I looked up a lot of that anyway.

the power hammer will be handy again but not yet.

there's more than one puzzle in a new clue. have you used the magnifying glass?

Ledge:

I've drained the reservoir and opened all the chests, but I can probably do a better job checking it out again.
For A New Clue, yes, I've looked over it with the magnifying glass. I've noticed the anagrams on the books (which I assume were part of the XYZABC puzzle), and then something to do with homophones, and something to do with major/minor keys, but I'm completely stumped on all of those.

The rese: it's a big thing but easy to miss. It's an entrance.

A new clue: have you used the magnifying glass on *all* the pages?. And the suspect is a minor (not a minor key) and A. key - take a look at the picture above that particular note. (I didn't work that second bit out myself.)

phase (3? 4?) spoilers: holy shit the atelier - i have the clues from the blank books in the library but wtf

Yeah maybe I cd've worked that out myself but my patience was expired by that point

the only obvious thing I can think to do is try and draft the rooms as shown on the plan on the door, which means moving the foundation - again. I doubt that will be sufficient, I don't know where to start with the prism stuff though.

phase (3? 4?) spoilers: holy shit the [show hidden text] - i have the clues from the [show hidden text] but wtf

― the wrong witch roams the earth (ledge), Tuesday, June 3, 2025 5:52 AM (eleven hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

tbh this is actually where i fell off. it's just so big, and eats so many steps, and has so many subtraction picture puzzles and mora jai boxes, and i am pretty sure none of that is even the point of the atelier but i realized how exhausting it was gonna be so i took a break that never ended

and im guessing at this point they've patched out the exploit i was using to get way too many steps lol

About the Atelier, not really a spoiler, it is explicable I think using the information you should have found to get there

And more of a hint, it's about lamps, and what they tell you

looooollll I hadn't even opened the door in the atelier. I thought I tried and it was unresponsive and there was something I had to do to open it! I wondered what you meant by lamps.

now I've found it I'm here for it.

"it eats so many steps" - I am the step master. I usually have more steps than I know what to do with. I have been known to end runs with steps still in the three figures, without even using the laundry.

Yeah ledge I had a mad 15 minutes trying to get that fucking door open

rolled credits on this last night, and i'm pretty sure i'm still discovering things 80 in-game days after i'm supposed to.

I really admire how dense it is

and just how well done it all is. (impossible puzzles notwithstanding.) there are two or three professional quality children's books in there!

Help, I think I am in blue prince. The other day I found a spade leaning up against the side in our utility room. Then the same day we went into town and I saw a building called the rotunda.

Then last night I couldn't find the other picture in the pub toilet

https://i.imgur.com/jdjk0Iu.jpeg

But when I went to my airbnb these were on a shelf in the hall

https://i.imgur.com/XgjvXnl.jpeg

And inside was a combination lock with my room keys inside

https://i.imgur.com/xbRCNOT.jpeg

Haha I've also felt this leakage into irl recently

I guess I'm done. The Atelier was a bit of an anticlimax. I got so close - mapped it all out (on my fourth attempt), got most of the missing letters, solved all but one of the mora jai boxes, figured out the colours and mapped out the three paths. I just couldn't figure out the trick to the fourth path - despite there being four different ways of figuring it out (three of them very obscure tho). I haven't done the dare or curse or day or hour achievements. (How come no achievement for throne room or atelier?) I was hoping for a bit more - you never get to see the outside of the house on the east side, or that castle you glimpse through a window, or some of the places alzara showed. Great game though, amazing experience.

What about Mary then? Abandoning her child for some gesture politics and disappearing completely for no reason? Seems like a dick move. I also feel bad for the staff, apparently on permanent furlough now. And who feeds the dogs?

just started this one tonight. what a beautiful game!

How did I go over a month playing this damn game and miss the pun in the title? Blueprints!

lol it took me a few days.

Took me weeks too

this is really hard. but also addictive. feel like after gaining some sense of it i'm now just a bit more stuck at a passable number of rooms each time. tho i am still learning new bits and pieces.

love this game so much.

Finally made it into the antechamber. And used what was inside it immediately - opening up so much more to this game. Really felt like a "peel a layer back" moment.

I'm still not in antechamber tho am getting close. I can't tell if it sort of deliberately gives you things to keep you playing or has a sort of friendly curve to it, if so I approve. I do keep finding new things but also often cursing the draw.

There's very few runs where I don't progress at least something, and the sounds and music are just so relaxing that there's this meditative quality to it. Unlike other rogue-likes I tend to not care so much if a run peters out early.

I miss this game. It was frustrating and I cheated a lot and it was good for my marriage that I finished it, lol. But I miss it.

it's so amazing. and yes, so addictive. one of those games where you have to just make your peace with it delaying a few more important parts of life.

i got to the anteroom tonight at last. some of the music as the game goes on is so great, sort of languid, jazzy stuff.

it's an all-timer for me at this stage.

and it was good for my marriage that I finished it

damn how much time were devoting to this game every night?! lol

'just one more game'

another thing about this game is it's sort of like a conspiracy theorist's dream world. my coffee table is littered with mad scribblings. everything is connected!

The first game that compelled me to keep a note book in forever

I don’t think I’ve ever been so excited by a metal detector in my life

The only bit that isn't relaxing is swearing when you get three locked doors in a row

All part of the charm imo

Managed to find out where Room 46 is and how to get there.

Feels like a matter of time before I'll open that door now!

Pretty amazing run where I spent most of my time underground and very little in the house. Had to store an upgrade disk in coat check since I had no terminals at hand ugh.