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

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.

lol so many spoiler tags in this thread (thank you for that though)

i just started playing a few days ago. i'm not really hooked yet, and i am concerned that this has some elements that don't match up well with my personality/game preferences, but i have made some discoveries here and there and am still interested in continuing to play. everyone upthread talks about how there are puzzles everywhere to work on but most of the rooms feel empty to me so idk if i'm missing stuff or too dumb or what

stuff i'm working on:
getting into the orchard - think i need to have a magnifying glass so i can look at the photo of the tree before it was cut down, but those things haven't lined up yet
i got into the catacombs from the tomb and found a piece of a map. it seemed like there was an elevator(?) coming out of the tomb but i haven't powered it up so i couldn't find out
i solved the puzzle in the lab for the switches but didn't have the boiler room that day to power up the machine
i wrote down which paintings were in every room for a while before figuring out it changes each day lol

ok i accomplished the first of those items in my next day

hint for paintings - they may change every day but...

I was so mad at myself when I figured out the paintings puzzle haha

One puzzle I recently made progress on was for a green room: the secret garden, and specifically, the loose bricks in the south wall.

I really had it in my head that once I opened up the wall there I'd be able to access the east wing grounds.

So I was pretty disappointed when I finally opened it up only to find that it was just another dang puzzle clue. It took so long for that to line up right.

The paintings puzzle has key clues in the Study iirc..

And that puzzle will nominally help you get in the apple orchard too

made some progress on the boiler room but i guess the lab needs to be directly next to it to get power? i ran out of steps before i could completely verify this

ok i found the room with the clue about the paintings so now i have a better idea what's going on there. my original notes might still be of use there.

i'm fully in on this now lol, i think i was just frustrated that i was slow to figure anything out at first but now i feel like i'm making some progress each day

re the safe in the bunker: it's embarrassing how many attempts it took for me to get it open despite knowing what "day one" is - i kept miscounting the days or putting AM instead of PM for the time. i think it took me like five attempts over two days.

Ha, yeah, I did that a few times too.

feeling a little stalled out again, i've got a few avenues i'm working on but having trouble getting the rooms or items i need for them
i made it into the antechamber but had already gotten into the area that it provides access to so it was a bit anticlimactic

i have most of the "clues" from the paintings but can't think of a logical way to ... interpret them that isn't going to be a pain in the ass

I was convinced for ages that the paintings appeared randomly and I'd just have to do a giant anagram - and I was prepared to do that, I really was. However, they don't appear randomly.

Not sure if that needs a spoiler tag but I figure better to be safe than sorry.

I am currently trying to fill the house up with classrooms, I've only got to 5 max so far, I think. Did manage an 8 aquarium house once thanks to the wonders of experimentation. I don't think there's any point to doing that, I just like aquariums and it was fun.

the paintings puzzle was the first thing I latched on to - I think I spent my first 20 or so runs just focused on that, and missed so many other things in the process

oh thanks for the paintings clue, duh

I think my biggest problem in solving a lot of the puzzles is overthinking them. I get convinced they must be harder than they are. Some examples (this really is spoilery so don't click unless you've completed the areas):

Tomb: convinced myself that surely it couldn't be as simple as doing the statues in the order of the numbers in the chapel, we must have to go back to the chapel and look for MORE CLUES. Bf had to convince me to at least try the easy answer first. Oh yeah, it was that simple.

Room 8: spent ages trying to find Roman Numerals in the words to solve the penguin clue, then adding and subtracting the numerals I could see, then just doing any numerical thing I could think of. Oh right, it was the number of letters, I just had to count that. Duh.

Study safe: so much trying to count the numbers on blueprints and make them make some sort of date. Then wondering if there'd be another chess set somewhere to match the queen. You're telling me D=December? It's really THAT simple??? Noooooooo.

i do feel kind of dumb for not figuring out that thing about the paintings. but tbf part of what's hard about the game is you're constantly trying to figure out 5-10 things at the same time

From what I remember I started writing down stuff to do with the paintings then got it completely wrong, I think for that same reason, then realised what was happening at some stage.

It's funny how you work yourself up about what some location will be like only to find it's just a room with a new blueprint in it

beat the game in that i got to room 46 but there are still a bunch of things i haven't finished so i'll be playing for a bit longer:

- want to see where the boat tunnel out of the reservoir goes
- haven't logged into the grotto computer or found the third microchip
- i know what i'm supposed to do with the chess pieces in the underground room but circumstances haven't lined up yet
- i only have three red envelopes? i haven't opened the office or study safes yet

reaching the credits is really just the tutorial

― ufo, Wednesday, April 16, 2025 5:27 AM (ten months ago) bookmarkflaglink

the souvenir shop is cute

which three envelopes do you have?

hints for those two safes btw

study: you will need the magnifying glass

office: the foyer has some helpful info

i actually got this office safe this morning, it was pretty simple lol

i have boudoir, drawing room, shelter, and now office

oh wait i do have study. boudoir, study, shelter and office.

no i don't! ugh sorry. boudoir, DRAFTING ROOM, shelter and office

have you heard the great alzara's prediction about them?

made it down to the safe house finally but not really sure what i'm trying to do now. it seems like maybe i need power down there but i can't tell how to make that happen. maybe it's related to the grotto, which i haven't progressed on - still missing a microchip and the admin login

i have seen several references to rooms and objects that have never appeared as options for me in like 70 days of play, weird

i was doing such a good job of not googling for answers but i finally did for the gallery. not even that hard, i just was impatient and didn't feel like dealing with it. the ultimate reward wasn't even that good.