Blue Prince

Tl;dr skill issue 43 hours, 11 long notes and over 150 screenshots in, I'm just ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ done. I do not care to "finish" it, whatever that means. Cold take: don't make a puzzle game heavily based on RNG for finding clues to persistent puzzles. I get a key item and then nowhere to use it or I get a lock and nothing to open it with over and over and over and over and over again THIS IS INSANITY. Why was I even doing this? I "beat" it on hour 8 because the pre-postgame puzzles are braindead and two runs with good draws allow you to just waltz into the finale and get hit with a cutscene that spells out the plot. WHY THEN DO I KEEP GETTING CLUES ON WHAT IT MEANS OR HOW TO GET THERE FOR HOURS AFTERWARDS? THAT WAS THE EASY PART What really made me drop it is that I kept finding NOTHING to help me with five of eight postgame puzzles (God, does it even "end" there? Surely, it can't just keep going like this, right?) I have enough patience in me to bruteforce safe combinations in this game, but that ♥♥♥♥? No ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ way am I doing that even if at this point I know one fourth of all solutions. What reward would even justify it? SPOILERS BELOW Rotating the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ sigil wheels broke me. I caved and looked it up, I guess I should have just bruteforced one more combination lock (yeah, the wiki says they had to datamine the solution, just ♥♥♥♥ off) to get a chance to do a logic puzzle and maybe get a sigil clue. Please. This is no different from just blindly turning three out of four wheels and hoping you land on the solution.

One of my top 10 games. TAKE EXTENSIVE SCREENSHOTS AND NOTES. Partner and I played together, no internet help for the first 80% (considering Room 46 as about 40%), and it has been amazing. I'd text her midday and go "COUNT ALSO MEANS COUNT" and we'd ramble over the possibilities forever. Serisouly try pondering and discussing before going online. What initialy feels like a deep and interesting puzzle game expands into a thorough puzzle world with levels of lore and world building that are baffling. There are numerous reviews saying that the rougelike elements result in grinding runs for a particular room, but there were almost no runs of our 80ish where I wasn't starting with 3-4 goals and ended with making progress on some or finding discoveries into others. I suspect these may have been people using online guides and who where pursuing a supposed solution in lieu of looking for more questions. There are always new avenues. One issue: a few early game hint systems and lore dumps are easily avoided. I've read a lot of notes and thought "That would've helped 40 hours ago." Priortize receiving Mail and figuring out accessing the Freezer findables early-ish. If you need help there is an insanely cool online resource called Blue Paths which tracks your progress and gives you hints guiding you towards what you're missing or needing help deciphering. I'd also give it a rave review.

This is a mixed review but this game is so RNG based that it wastes hours of your time with nothing to show for it and I don't really think that is a fun way to spend your time. The first five days were exciting exploration but after that the game has been a frustrating slog. I know what to do but it will take me countless hours to get lucky with the RNG to do those things and in the meanwhile I have to keep doing the same three puzzles again and again and again and again. When I find a new clue I only feel dread, because I know that to be able to do anything about it is not up to me or my skills, but to RNG and will take multiple multiple useless runs that will only leave you feeling frustrated. Which is a shame. I want to keep giving this game a chance but right now I would not recommend this to anyone but some masochists who enjoy doing nothing for hours at time.

Убийственно для перфекционистов, в Blue Prince можно ходить сотни часов и всё ещё не раскопать весь контент. Начинается Принц довольно спокойно: гуляешь по особняку, собираешь подсказки, открываешь комнаты, пытаешься дойти до той самой "комнаты 46". В принципе, "пройти" игру можно и с первого раза, если знать, что делаешь. Вот только на глаза начинают попадаться странные вещи. Какие-то подсказки, которые не имеют отношения к главному квесту, газетные заметки, фотографии. Открываются территории за пределами особняка, и там тоже раскиданы интересные вещи. В конце концов приходит понимание, что комната 46 - не самоцель и далеко не главное, что тут есть. И правда, дойдя до финальной комнаты и посмотрев "титры", игрок чувствует некую недосказанность. А почему всё так устроено в этом особняке? Кто такой главный герой и какие у него отношения с семьёй? Что скрывают подземелья под домом? И самое раздражающее - ответы на эти вопросы можно получить! Просто пройди игру ещё 200 раз! Тут, надо сказать, начинаются проблемы. Blue Prince - рогалик, со всеми недостатками жанра. Каждый раз надо начинать заново. Ни одна комната не остаётся на месте (за одним исключением). Все предметы теряются. Все настройки системы безопасности откатываются. Попробуй тут нажать переключатель в какой-то комнате, а потом найти другую, в которой этот переключатель что-то сделал! Постепенно от Синего Принца (или Чертежей - Blue Prince читается как blueprints) накапливается усталость и раздражение. Да, я знаю эту головоломку, я делал её десятки раз и могу её решить с закрытыми глазами, но я должен её решать каждый раз из-за дурацкого ресета. Надо воспроизводить одни и те же действия, в надежде, что на этот раз повезёт и правильная последовательность комнат поможет продвинуться дальше. И тут появляется интересная проблема. Жанр рогаликов - он про много падений, но так же и про неожиданные взлёты на удаче, когда в ранней игре попалось что-то сокрушительно мощное или сложилась сильная комбинация. И в Blue Prince такое бывает. Например, нашлось очень много денег или ключей, или комнаты выстроились в ряд, или удалось наконец скрафтить необходимый предмет. Беда в том, что Blue Prince - это ещё и головоломка. Головоломка, которая может сказать: "Ну, ты не понял, что надо сделать, так что перезагружайся". Успех игромеханический здесь не конвертируется в сколь-либо значимый прогресс в самой игре. И вот на этом моменте я Blue Prince и бросил. Для меня игры - способ самоутверждения, когда, собрав что-то сильное, я могу пробежать всю игру без проблем, а эта игра в какой-то момент говорит: "Оу, ты что, ещё не прочитал вот эту книжку? Ну что ж, перезапускайся, ты без этого знания дальше не пройдёшь", а мне такое очень уж не нравится. Для этой игры нужен особенный игрок - въедливый, терпеливый и, самое главное, заинтересованный в конечном результате. А мне так трудиться, раскапывать всю игру, вести письменные заметки и сотни часов тратить на переигрывание одного и того же ради какого-то кубка и значка "ты молодец" неинтересно.

The concept of Blue Prince seems very cool, but the practise of it is unfortunately just frustrating and boring. I love the atmosphere, the puzzles are intriguing and I want to see more, the art is very pretty; everything about the game that isn't the gameplay itself seems great from what little I've seen. The problem comes when you've spent 20 minutes walking around, waiting for tiny pickup cutscenes over and over, drafting no rooms with keys and then all your available doors require keys, or you don't have any gems, so you can't draft a room with open doors in your only remaining door, or anything similar. This sort of soft lock would be fine if there was actual gameplay in the rooms other than the occasional environmental puzzle and so you were actually doing something while building your floorplan, but as it is the average room has little to nothing to do in it other than watch an unskippable 3 second cutscene of picking up a key or a coin or other item. The end result is that of the three and a half hours I played somewhere between half and three quarters of it felt like it was spent walking around doing nothing until I arbitrarily ran out of resources or doors to draft new rooms on (or both at the same time), at which point I would be forced to reset and spend more time just holding my W key down with no gameplay going on. The rest of it was interesting and I want to see more, but I don't want to play walking simulator to get to it.

No ultrawide support, even when asked 2 years ago and confirmed it was palnned. https://steamcommunity.com/app/1569580/discussions/0/6536492607128099053 https://steamcommunity.com/app/1569580/discussions/0/830458962613684810/

its a real thinker. only buy this game if you: a) like to think b) have time to think c) have excess mental bandwidth do think with

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This generation's puzzle game

I been getting motion sick ONLY SINCE LAST UPDATE, tried adjusting settings but nothing helps :( So despite my love for the game, I would not recommend it for people with motion sickness like me can no longer enjoy it.