Blue Prince

Blue Prince is a mix of a puzzle game and a slot machine, where you put in 10 hours of your life, and a random number generator will decide if you're able to solve a problem or not. Almost a third of all runs are barren, resulting in no new developments, and the ones that give you something still require you to grind the same-y math puzzles over and over. Some puzzles are just silly, like finding a number sequence for a lock on a knee-high fence gate (there's a sledgehammer item that lets you break locks, but obviosly not that one). The story is great, and makes you curious, but just learning that is barely worth hours upon hours spent repeating the same tasks, and walking the same rooms you've seen a hundred times already.

The game mechanics are really interesting and the mysteries are genuinely intriguing, but to solve the mysteries you have to rely so much on RNG and it just takes forever to advance.

For as wonderfully beauitful, well designed, and complex as Blue Prince is, it is overwhelmingly drawn-back by a number of serious problems, none of which the game addresses in any capacity. It is unfortunate, but I should list those problems before I get to the upsides of this game, which there are still many. 1st. Blue Prince is INCREDIBLY frustrating at times, the game relies on complex puzzles, many of which have overlapping hints or problems that leave you with many, many more questions than answers. The problem? The game is RNG based and many puzzles will take you hours and hours of back-to-back attempts before you even make a dent in the puzzle your focusing on. Along the way you're likely to find even more puzzles to work at, and those too will also have RNG problems and issues to work through over long periods of time. The complexity of the puzzles is not necessarily the problem. The RNG mechanics of the game however makes these puzzles incredibly unfun and punishing for absolutely zero reasons. 2nd. The game tries it's best to explain things to you and lay clues in areas you both would, and wouldn't think to look for. The problem is that despite always leaving you with the proper clues to get to the correct answers, they are almost NEVER in the right spot. You will almost always find the clue you needed to finish a puzzle hours or days after that puzzle is finished, rendering that clue useless and needlessly frustrating because the game expected you to complete things in a specific order. Guess what? The RNG mechanics of the game now render that order useless, and you've just spent 5 hours with a horribly headache trying a puzzle that the game almost wanted you to fail at, and the hint you needed was hidden behind 3 other puzzles you didn't even know existed at the time. 3rd. If you are impatient, or do not like the feeling of having your time disrespected, it is unfortunate but this game is absolutely not for you in the slightest. The RNG mechanics that are core to the game will screw you over relentlessly and never apologize or make up for it. For all the fun the puzzles are, they are horrible at respecting your time and efforts, and often times can't even be solved for several more hours of painful RNG guessing. Not to mention the game is absolutely full of small, seemingly insignificant animations and cutscenes that feel fine at first, but ultimately add up to be extremely annoying and needlessly time-wasting. The game does not do anything to fix these issues and you will be left with small 1-3 second animations each and every time you pick up an item, interact with a computer, etc. No matter what these cutscenes do not go away, and they add up to SO MUCH extra wasted time and boredom. Now, onto the positives. Blue Prince has an EXTREMELY good atmosphere, story, and does a wonderful job of pulling you in, especially if you're interested in puzzle solving games with lots of overlapping layers and a genuinely complex story that motivates you to dig deep and take notes. Naturally the games problems can make it difficult to understand the story and the story itself is based around an RNG centric game, so lots of loredrops can happen and you'll never understand any of them because the game expects you to have already found something you had no hope of finding at that point. The puzzles are interesting, genuinely difficult at times, and honestly very unique and fun, but many of them can fall into being needlessly tedious because of RNG and how often you'll be repeating them throughout the course of your playthrough. Notes. I cannot recommend this game if you are not comfortable with losing significant progress to random, oftentimes ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ RNG chances that screw you over. It is unfortunate, but this kind of frustrating loss of progress is entirely unavoidable in this game. I fully encourage anyone who does enjoy this game but cannot seem to fully immerse themselves or make progress without growing angry to cheat. Seriously. This game WILL piss you off if you are like me and the only sustainable, comfortable way to progress without losing your mind is to cheat, look up hint guides, do anything to save your mind because you will legitimately grow to HATE this game if you have bad luck. Blue Prince is an honestly phenomenal game, but I have GOT to wonder what kind of crack the Dev was smoking when they decided to make it an RNG simulator. It is rage-inducing more so than even a Dark Souls game or something deliberately designed to piss you off. You can lose hours, or entire days of puzzle progress for no reason because the game decided you just don't deserve to succeed, and it is genuinely heartbreaking. If you are like me and intended to beat the game without tainting the experience in any way, I'm sorry but it is not happening. You will sooner cry into your hands in defeat than you would beat this game organically without external help. There are even a number of puzzles that are just not reasonable for a person to understand on average, some of which would take hours of your time to finally understand, and in that time you could've just done a few more attempts and maybe made more progress somewhere else. Seriously, this game is great but every single aspect of it falls short in some degree because of RNG or unreasonable expectations from the player. Not everyone is equipped to lose their mind for a few hours a day, and this game will reveal if you are.

É difícil encontrar palavras para descrever o que é esse jogo, acho que posso começar dizendo que ele é realmente para o nicho da galera que curte puzzles games, pois tudo aqui é baseado em investigação e resolver quebra cabeças e se você gosta disso, vai ser um prato cheio, eu mesmo fiquei duas semanas indo dormir tarde, sonhando com esse jogo e anotando tudo e teorizando as coisas, você quase entra em uma paranoia quando mergulha de cabeça nesse universo. Se você quiser só ver os créditos, vai levar em torno de 20/30 horas e posso dizer que é até tranquilo, mas se quiser desvendar a história e fazer o final real, bom, ai se prepara, pois o tempo de jogo irá facilmente para 100/150 horas ou mais e a dificuldade será muito mais desafiadora, pois você terá que anotar tudo, tirar prints, ler e reler documentos, ficará perdido sobre como seguir em frente e ainda terá sempre a mecânica de rogue like pra te frustrar algumas vezes. Dito isso, o jogo é lindo, os gráficos são muito bonitos, a ambientação é uma das melhores que já vi em um jogo indie, a história é boa e você ficar curioso com o que aconteceu e quer desvendar os mistérios, as músicas são muito boa, apesar de muitas vezes o jogo fica em silêncio, mas quando você chega a certo lugar ou faz certa ação, começa a tocar sountracks que aumentam demais a imersão do game. Apesar da mecânica clichê de rogue like de “escolha 3 poderes e continue(nesse caso você escolhe as salas)”, ela não influencia tanto assim no game como alguém pode imaginar antes de jogar, pois você terá muitas maneiras de manipular esse rng, terá muitas melhorias permanentes e varias coisas desse jogo é baseado em suas anotações e descobertas, então uma vez que você chegou a X resposta, você não precisa ir em tal lugar até mesmo se for um novo save. Bom, não posso deixar de falar do level design, pois é sem dúvidas o ponto alto aqui, todas as salas e ambientes externos são muito bem elaboradores e os puzzles são um dos melhores que já vi e como disse, se for fazer o final real, você vai quebrar muito a cabeça, pois eles são bem desafiadores. Sem dúvidas esse jogo é nota máxima pra mim e se tornou um dos meus favoritos da vida, pois hoje são poucos os jogos que conseguem me deixar tão fascinado e imerso dessa forma.

this is a great game has me stuck until i solve it i wont play any other game.

Found this very difficult to enjoy but the concept is quite interesting. The RNG really gets in the way and maybe I don't have the patience but I found the puzzles far to easy and the random element annoying. Corridor after Corridor trying to progress to something new. I did the parlour room 4 times in my 0.7 hours. I'll come back to it and maybe change my review next time but for now, I don't think it's worth the money. I got it 40% off.

Took me a little bit to get into this one, but once I understood better how the game works, I was hooked. There is so much depth I felt like a madman taking hundreds of screenshots throughout my playthrough to solve the mysteries. Most of the puzzles are fair, a couple were a little farfetched but generally everything is exquisitely crafted and rewards infinite attention to detail. A lot of the difficulty is parsing through the sheer volume of information you come across and properly connecting it together. Highly recommend if you like to go deeper and spend as much time in your notes as in the game.. Couple small areas for quality of life improvement: The computer interface is painfully slow for now reason, movement speed feels limiting late game when you're testing leads and have to run around a lot, and some animations would be great to skip after the 100th time... thankfully there are mods for that

I went into this game thinking it would be a simple puzzle box, find the way to the other side of the mansion. The makers of this game went above and beyond, big time. There are so many more puzzles in this game than I was expecting! It is so much bigger than expected. Bring a notebook - you'll need it!