Blue Prince was provided by Raw Fury for review. Thank you!
It was back at GDC in 2024 where I first tried Blue Prince, and I was blown away. It wasn't that the game was doing something incredibly new or pushing boundaries in any direction; it took a concept I had seen over and over and turned it into something very interesting. Now, after playing it, I still have that feeling of wonder and curiosity in my eyes, and even with some minor inconveniences here and there, this is an experience worth having.
The best way to describe Blue Prince would probably be calling it a "roguelike puzzler." Your goal is to get to the 46th room of this mansion, and to do so, you need to draft rooms, essentially building the layout of the mansion as you progress. There are multiple different rooms that all have unique traits, with some containing items to help you get deeper in, while others may include puzzles that need to be solved or a detrimental effect that will harm your run. You have a limited number of steps you can take each day, which go down when you enter a new room, and when you run out of steps, you will end the day/run, and the mansion will reset.
The rooms in Blue Prince all feel significant, even if it doesn't seem that way on the surface. For example, a bedroom can give you 2 extra steps, but with a keen eye, you can find extra items like coins or keys, or even a note to give you a hint for a puzzle in a different room (like the Billiard puzzle). Towards the end, it feels like every room has something important to find to help you progress. It makes choosing the rooms you draft more meaningful than just managing your steps or getting new items. Play your cards right, and you can trigger a domino effect that gives you permanent changes that stick with you, like a coin allowance or an outside room that can give you extra buffs or items for the current run.
On top of that, you have to manage the doorways each room has. The mansion is placed on a 9x5 grid, and all the rooms have specific doorways that lead to new grid squares. So, choosing your rooms becomes even more of a strategic decision to account for both the doorways to make sure you don't get to a dead end, and what the rooms can provide.
This was probably the most fun I have had in a puzzle game in a long time. The amount of strategy and thought to pick and choose the rooms and solve puzzles was so much fun, and I ended up scouring each room to make sure I caught everything. The game opens up by recommending having a notebook to jot down notes on, which is not an exaggeration. There's a lot of information to remember, and with how each room can interact or contain information to solve puzzles, open safes, or power on other rooms, it makes everything feel so much more connected.
However, there are some puzzles that are just a bit too difficult. The Billiards puzzle I had to figure out through trial and error, and the Parlor puzzle, while easier to comprehend, did have some variations that I couldn't figure out. There's also a lot of information, so trying to memorize and remember how every different room functions is difficult without having a notebook to write things down in. I would love to remember which room has the safe code for the Boudoir, but I completely forgot, as I encountered new rooms that I had to learn about.
It was also a bit of a nuisance to backtrack through the mansion. With all the twists and turns, I had to constantly pull up my map to remember which hallways to go down to get to a specific room I needed to. Since going into a new room can reduce the step counter, I had to be careful to only go into the rooms I needed to, especially when Red rooms were placed. You can run, which helps a little, but I still had to stop and check the map often, killing the momentum and making it take longer to get to the room I needed to.
The good still very much outweighs the bad, but I wanted to take breaks from the game after playing through a couple of days/runs.
Blue Prince does have an interesting story as well, but it's told more through documents and text you find throughout the mansion. You inherit a mansion, and to claim it, you have to find the rumored 46th room in the house. Learning about the history of the estate and all those who were there previously was way more interesting than I expected. Paired with the simplistic visual style and solid soundtrack, it's a joy to go through the mansion and investigate what happened.
I didn't think I would go into the game expecting a story like this, but I was pleasantly surprised. I was also pleasantly surprised by how great the game feels to play on the Steam Deck.
Blue Prince is a joy to play on the Steam Deck and is my preferred way to enjoy the game. It can run nicely at 60 FPS for the most part, but there are a few problems that stop me from enjoying the experience. The battery drain is a bit on the high side at times, and the minor drops that do happen when turning around in crowded rooms and running through the house fast feel more impactful.
So, to fix both of these problems, I recommend setting a 45 FPS limit within SteamOS. It still feels smooth, reduces the noticeable stuttering to being near non-existent, and keeps battery drain averaging around 9W - 11W. There aren't any other settings to change, so there's a limited number of options to save on performance, but it still feels great, looks great, and is so wonderfully smooth.
I did also notice some minor bluriness in the distance that vaguely looks like anti-aliasing issues, but it doesn't impact gameplay.
There are a lack of accessibility options in the game, but there is a space for them. Developer Dogubomb is working on controller rebinding, widescreen support, and color assist modes. But you can change the volume, camera sensitivity, and whether it's inverted or not right now.
The game doesn't support 16:10 resolutions, but it has solid controller and cloud save support. There are no HDR settings.
Blue Prince is an outstanding game that feels like a fantastic mesh of roguelikes and puzzle games. The layers of strategy piled on each other, coupled with the puzzles and the way each room has information for another, make this an addictive experience. I found it hard not to come back to. It could get a little obnoxious having to backtrack, and some puzzles are a bit too difficult, but once you get the hang of things, it's an experience like no other. It's absolutely worthwhile to experience this for yourself, and I really recommend having a notebook to jot down notes on.
It's also a blast to play on the Steam Deck. There are no settings to change, but with a framerate limit of 45, we can curb minor drops and save on battery. This is a great game to play on the go, and I can't recommend it enough!
Our review is based on the PC version of this game.
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Blue Prince is a fantastic blend of roguelike and puzzle that keeps me coming for more, and it's a blast on the Steam Deck!
