Blue Prince

---- tl;dr Graphics/Art: 8 Sound/Voices: 8 Gameplay/Controls: 6 Story: 10 OVERALL: 9 ---- It's hard to describe why Blue Prince is so great and addictive without spoiling it, but I'll try. It starts off innocently enough, with you trying to get to the mysterious Room 46, as you were told to do so in a letter addressed to you. The Manor is a blank slate, aside from the beginning entrance hall and one other room, the Antechamber, and you need to fill in the blanks using blueprints (nice pun, get it?). You do this by drafting a room any time you open a door in the room you’re currently. You get 3 choices of what room you want to draft each time. Some rooms have nothing of interest, others contain secrets, currency in the form of coins or gems, random bits of equipment, and so on. Some rooms are dead ends, some are shops, others provide you with guaranteed rewards, or have special features in them. You can't predict which 3 rooms are going to be presented to you each time. You have a limited number of ‘steps’ you can take each day, and moving from one room into another via the doorway costs 1 step, in either direction, and there are a limited number of rooms you can draft at the beginning. When you reach zero steps, you pass out and start the day again with a blank slate. You will eventually get power ups to increase your steps permanently. Worry not, there are no jump scares in this game, although the cutscenes with a certain talking box might creep you out. The frustration within you will build up, but you will get the hang of it, and finally you get to the Antechamber, but then again, that's not Room 46 (since the map is a 5x9 grid, making it room 45). What happens once you reach the Antechamber for the first time will blow your mind, as you're forced to turn around to find something else. During your drafting of the rooms, you slowly uncover the history of the world, which isn't our planet surprisingly, and this is a game where 'show, not tell' is literally portrayed. Clues learnt from each room help you unlock a secret in another room later. Hidden keys, secret holes, powering up rooms (literally), upgrading rooms permanently, unlocking or finding new blueprints, using the magnifying glass on everything. You really do need a notepad with you to write down the clues, like old-school passwords for SNES games. Another protip from me, unlimited screenshots. Learn that Steam hotkey for screenshots, and just do it for anything, like books, photos, and even cutscenes! You will be going back into your screenshot folder to decipher more of the clues you were given much later down the line, things which seemed odd at the time are now vital in the future, and you don't know when you'll see that clue again, given the randomness of the rooms. The reason I listed the gameplay/controls as 6 is that the gameplay itself is fairly basic, as are the controls, WSAD + mouse, to move and so on. The real gameplay is the story and the puzzles you uncover gradually, and your notepad is going to grow with each new discovery. Once 'the map' expands, your mind will expand, and you begin to wonder just how much thought, love and care was put into this game. When you also look at it from a practical perspective inworld, you're thinking how any of this was possible. Once you think you've seen it all, another bit opens up and you're gobsmacked. For me, the best track in the game is located near a room you won't get to immediately, and is associated with one of the most visually impressive areas I've ever come across in a game. The deep lore, the history, the family, the politics, it hits you suddenly, the music changes depending on which room you've drafted... God, I still haven't finished it, because obviously, Room 46 isn't 'the end' of the game... Please, buy the game, it is unlike anything you've experienced in your life.