Blue Prince

Above this review, you will see something along the lines of "247.3 hours at time of review." But this does not come close to describing the degree to which Blue Prince has captured my attention and become my obsession. I have dozens of pages of handwritten notes for this game. I have created entire spreadsheets to keep track of patterns, clues, and hints. Even when the game isn't running, I can't help but ruminate over this game's many puzzles and mysteries, and I have a feeling that I will continue to do so for a long, long time. Solving Blue Prince's many puzzles has been a challenge, but more importantly, it has been rewarding every step of the way. Every thread can be pulled, every stone can be turned, and perhaps even every mystery can be solved. It is so rare to find a game that so thoroughly rewards curiosity the way Blue Prince does. This is without a doubt, my favorite game that I've ever played. If you love puzzles, if you love mysteries, if you love games that reward you for obsessively keeping notes on every seemingly meaningless detail you notice... get this game. You won't be disappointed.

Crowned blue KING. GG game well made.

Starting with the positives, the puzzles are INSANELY good, the storytelling, the ambience, everything was really compelling. I found myself taking a lot of notes and screenshots of a lot of seemingly odd things, and theorizing on what those pieces could be and the feeling of managing to solve them was amazing. That being said, I was getting way more frustrated that enjoying because of the RNG. I get the game has a slow start, and as a roguelite you are able to make permanent upgrades across runs. But even with that I had many situations where a very solid run was killed instantly because of one single bad luck draft on a critical square (for example, [spoiler]managing to finally draft a room with an antechamber lever, but then the square that led to that antechamber door deciding not to show a room with a door going there[/spoiler]). I am really frustrated with the fact that this game has such a compelling mystery and puzzles, and the excitement I felt for those is completely overshadowed by the RNG. Those "I GOT IT" moments you have in other knowledge based games where you connect clues and rush to test your theory, are mostly useless in this game because when you have an idea on how to crack something, you have to wait for the stars to align so you can test it.

I have just one thing to say about this game : II hate it as much as I love it. Even though I finally beat it, I feel overwhelmed with frustration.

Thanks to mods that reduce the element of randomness, I’ve saved about 10 hours. Now I realize how much time I’ll be wasting as going deeper. And I’m not sure those saved hours are worth it. Concept: 10/10 The gameplay loop built around this concept - isn’t my cup of tea.

Très bon jeu d'énigme. Il faut bien savoir parler anglais par contre.

I really find myself strongly disagreeing with some of the negative reviews and their criticisms. Everyone's focus seems to be on either the RNG mechanics or the fact that everything requires good note-taking and some screenshots. Which, I can understand frustration about RNG, but not the note-taking. I really really enjoy the fact that I get to play detective. I am a pretty detail-oriented, analytical person and getting to make detailed notes about the documents I discover, taking screenshots of documents/info I come across. Piecing together incredibly specific information from various different areas to uncover how to solve a puzzle really scratches an itch for me. I can't tell you how satisfying one puzzle was in the game that I solved because I had taken such detailed info about some previous documents I had read. Especially because so many otherwise good games with much easier puzzles literally tell you the answer before you've had 5 seconds to solve it (Looking at you God of War: Ragnarök) But, if that isn't your sort of thing, you won't like it. If you don't like having to take notes and if playing detective isn't fun to you, then this game is not for you. That's okay! I just don't like dogging on games for being what they are meant to be. A complex, layered mystery puzzle game where going back through the same areas many times is required to solve many different puzzles and in which, taking lots of notes (and screenshots when needed) is a requirement if you want to solve some of the more complicated puzzles. Yes, can the RNG screw you sometimes? Sure, and its fair to be annoyed by that. I think also, a part of my note taking has been keeping track of all unsolved puzzles or questions I have. Whenever I start a new day, I just kind of used whatever rooms I drafted to solve whichever puzzles seemed available to solve or to get answers from. I think that mentality will help you a lot vs what some commenters are doing which is "I only care about this one puzzle and will keep trying to draft to get those exact circumstances". In some cases, working on a different question I had ended up being the answer to some other puzzle I was working on, so it would be very frustrating if you aren't willing to bounce around a little. I love the atmosphere. I love that the game had *certain aspects* that reminded me of Outer Wilds. I love that you can basically go as shallow or as deep as you want to go with solving the puzzles. I mean, you can really "beat the game" much quicker than you can actually uncover some of the deeper mysteries of the game. Can't way to finish solving the remainder of the questions and puzzles I have left to solve and I'll be sad when its over!