Blue Prince

[one-armed dwarf]

I played 4 hours of this last night. Premise is you inherit this mansion, I think from your grandfather or something, I forget. You 'draft' rooms randomly and create a floorplan which can lead to different things. Some rooms have several exits, or none. They might have currency you can use to open doors, buy things and so on. They might also contain some lore in them. Some rooms have debuffs, eg you might spend more steps going into them. You might have ways to workaround this though, either in the floorplan or in some other strategy.

 

What's more interesting is the ways in which certain rooms can be combined with each other, like the security room has specific interactions with other rooms. There's no reason to go into detail on this cause the game is about accumulating these details yourself and learning how to combine them to unlock secrets, solve puzzles and figure out how to progress to the antechamber. At first anyway, maybe the game changes later but I've no idea

 

Being real about it, I feel like the 'eureka' moments have been spread rather sparsely across the playtime so far and I'm not loving it, I'm sort of giving it the benefit of the doubt. But due to the nature of it it's guaranteed to be one of those delayed gratification type of experiences cause you need to learn lots of tricks and gimmicks before you can really synthesise it into something clever, and I'm not quite there yet, tho I did figure out something rather cool about the security card system which I won't spoil. But from what I see lots of the rooms and unlocks have multiple applications so it's probably a game about rewiring your brain to these multiple possibilities. You should definitely take notes, I have notes saved in a text editor.

 

Best analogy I can use to describe is that it's like starting off a 1000 piece jigsaw, you're just kinda feeling a bit aimless. I'm sure it turns into something else entirely eventually though. Its pace is definitely an issue so far though

[mfnick]

Yea I’ve given it a bit of time now. It’s just not for me. Spending far too long going through the same rooms (slowly) making zero progress. I also missed that it was a roguelike so you see these same rooms a lot. I dont get on with Roguelikes anyway but this one feels particularly annoying. 
 

Progress comes far too infrequently for me to put up with doing the same shit over and over. Having to redo puzzles like the dart board got incredibly tedious straight away too. I know what the colours mean now, I’ve proven it lots of times just give me access to the reward please. 

Bored. Sacked off. 

 

[one-armed dwarf]

It sort of makes me wish reviews would speak more plainly about what is special about it, or do so in the form of a spoiler review or something. Cause it turns into a feeling of opportunity cost when there's other things to be doing. I don't really understand if this will transform into something incredible later or if the reviews are cause the people writing them will always just intrinsically enjoy this type of loop.

 

The roguelike part isn't a problem for me as such cause it's not an action game, so it's not as frustrating. But I also don't find it that interesting either. But with something like Balatro, for instance, the core design of the game itself was so good that it did not matter how I felt one way or the other about the roguelike aspect. Here the core design is so incredibly slow, so it's not elevated in that same fashion. The parameters you're passing around each run feel like the same ones you will see in other genre titles

 

My assumption is that it eventually turns into something where you have to closely inspect non-interactables and develop solutions to puzzles that are less straightforward, but I've no idea how many hours I'd have to sink into this current boring form of the game to get to something that interesting. But I'm just making guesses here.

 

edit on the last bit

Spoiler

Yeah I think that's what it's going for, as I've now started to read notes and notice that the pictures in every room are paired. You'll get a picture of a bat and a bath, so the letter is 'H' for that room or something like that. That same bath picture might get recontextualised as 'tub' with a picture of a 'tube' and so forth. 

 

[radiofloyd]

I’ve played it for 2 hours, enjoying it so far. Let’s see if my brain can handle the workout!

[shinymcshine]

2.5 hrs and I'm quite liking this so far - gone through 4 day cycles and feel the I'm making some progress / discovery, and liking the couple of puzzles so far too.

[one-armed dwarf]

I am enjoying it more as the puzzling develops into something more lateral than just 'get to the end room'. 

 

This is what the preview tab looks like on my text editor for all my notes (no spoilers as the resolution is too low to read)

 

[Maryokutai]

I wonder how they went about translating and localising this considering dwarf's spoiler further up. That only really works not only if you play, but also think in English.

 

Not that I'll ever find out, this sounds like a game 100% outside the boundaries of what I find enjoyable.

[shinymcshine]

I'm enjoying this, gone through 6 days so far, and unlocked some permanent bonuses too !

[one-armed dwarf]

I got to the final room, but there were other things blocking me.

 

I think though I've played enough at this point to sort of put it down now and as I find it pretty boring work with an uninteresting mystery. It sort of feels like a version of (major spoilers)

Spoiler

the Rosebud mystery from Citizen Kane or something, the way you're piecing together the fragmented history of these rich fucks. But it's all just empty lore nuggets as far as I see. Maybe it comes to something else later on, I don't know. But I don't care about lore without meaningful story and themes and I haven't found any of that.

 

There's a bit in there about a conspiracy, something about the crown jewels being stolen. Someone faked their death. I don't care.

 

I just don't like narrative-focused video games I think, I don't find their writing good enough or something.

 

The disconnect I feel with the game and its critical reception is like Red Dead Redemption II. It's like a Matryoshka doll of underwhelming experiences, one after another

 

edit have uninstalled it now, to avoid myself starting it back up again expecting it to turn out different.

[shinymcshine]

My missus saw me playing this and got drawn in - so now it's a co-op experience - which is great in terms of having an extra mind to work through it all - but slightly disappointing as I'll hang off playing it until she's around (which is usually 2-3 hrs after I get up at stupid o'clock).

 

What seems quite familiar about the game is that it feels it was inspired perhaps by the tile drawing mechanic used in the "Betrayal at House on Haunted Hill" boardgame, as pictured below:

 

[shinymcshine]

Loads of progress this morning - Day 10 - and revealed 44 rooms + 1 outside (did around 100 steps too).

[one-armed dwarf]

Yeah I played that before when I went to boardgame meetups, not sure why I didn't make the connection but laid out like that it's pretty obvious. 

 

I think the way you are playing is the right way, smaller sessions. It's not really the kind of thing you can just marathon cause the pacing is so slow and it becomes much harder to maintain patience with it. 

 

edit this is the largest discrepancy I've seen with a game WRT its critic reception and audience, not counting games which get dogpiled by culture wars of course. Reading the thread on resetera it makes sense but it makes me wonder how it turns out that way (I'm not saying one is right or wrong either, it's just more a comment on the nature of how reviewers will probably naturally tick most of the "this will appeal to you" boxes in a way general audiences won't)

[spatular]

Played this a bit, on day 5, it’s not really grabbed me but will stick at it a bit longer, probably won’t read anything about it for now as I’ve already accidentally read some (small) spoilers.

[shinymcshine]

I've done 15 hrs so far and we're really enjoying it.

 

I suppose you get a bunch of people who just bounce off it, esp. if it's on GP - and as I said myself, it could have been like Obra Dinn (poor) or Talos Principle (great), for me, and fortunately it's the latter - loving it.

[spatular]

I like puzzle games but the problem with this one for me is how it’s random if you can solve certain things depending on what rooms you get etc. which makes it a bit of a faf. Although I did just have a run where I found out/unlocked some stuff so enjoyed it a bit more.

 

also the left trigger is a run button which I wish I’d known earlier

[radiofloyd]

I’m loving this. Around 4-5 hours in and discovering new things every time. Someone mentioned the slow pace of the game, I don’t find that at all. I find the pace of the game is very zippy. The kind of game that lives in your head while you’re at work.

[shinymcshine]

Loads more progress, 18.5hrs played, including now lighting up all 4 of the blue flames outside and exploring on from there.....

[radiofloyd]

I’m way behind you so please be careful what you talk about lol.

 

One of my favourite puzzles (obviously it’s one that anyone ahead of me will have solved already) is this one:

 

Spoiler

The “with/without” puzzle

I love this kind of stuff. It’s simple but fun.

[shinymcshine]

I'm pretty surprised at how big the game seems to be, as each session we're still uncovering new things (rooms, items, permanent abilities etc).

 

It does seem remarkably stingy on giving out Achievements (if anyone still chases those) haven't had any so far !

 

[one-armed dwarf]

I (stubbornly, despite giving out that I was done lol) unlocked room 46 yday, I think with that mono-focus out of the way I can be a bit more relaxed and have a better time with the game, especially as I have about 5 threads that are unresolved that can be investigated parallel (and accidentally spoiled the existence of another one from reading a different forum thread). I have about 90% of the puzzle in rf's spoiler solved except the last bit so I am curious to see what that is.