Blueprints

When I initially started this game, I was cautious. Blueprints had come to me highly recommended, with one friend talking at length about how Blueprints had consumed his life and how he had an in-depth Notes page dedicated to its secrets. At first, nothing in Blueprints seemed to warrant that level of scrutiny. How could you spend so much time writing about a game where you can barely get a ball to roll in the right direction? But all of this changes when you approach the game's ultimate challenge: The Climb. Here, you realize that everything you have experienced previously is merely practice. The Climb is where the themes of the game shine abundantly clear, a Sisyphean war against both nature (the baffling physics and lighting engine) and the divine (the dizzying camera controls). It is in The Climb where the game teaches you its ultimate lessons. Rather than fall for the trap of so much of modern gaming in leaning on "cinematic" storytelling to shore up lackluster gameplay, Blueprints allows the brutal gameplay experience itself to present its ideas. Blueprints teaches you about the consequences of failure; there is no pause or reset button to immediately restart a run of The Climb after you've fallen off. No, failure results in a necessary choice. Do you get up and start again, trying to salvage the run even knowing that you are likely already out of time? Or do you plunge yourself into the wine-dark sea, ending a life no longer worthwhile? But Blueprints also tells you the importance of evaluating yourself on your own metric, not the metrics forced upon you. The final challenge gives you a timer, but if you are not stepping with perfection in the second leg of the challenge then the ocean will swallow you long before the timer runs out. No, you must set your own vision of success, realizing that the true challenge is to simply run the Climb with perfect aim. This is symbolized best in The Climb's culmination: plunging yourself, Icarus-like, into the sun. Blueprints reimagines Camus' famous observation; in Blueprints, one must imagine Icarus happy. If being consumed by the stars is the goal, then every step of The Climb is an elation of elevation, a dream to have your wax wings burned away, leaving only the shiny androgynous shell of your player character. Everyone can step into the role of this genderless, faceless creature. We can all become Icarus, and all aim to rise above the limits this world has set ourselves. That is the lesson of Blueprints.