Dearest Blue Prince,

I must acknowledge that your existence has left me in utmost befuddlement (*in Peter Griffin voice* “dib dib dib dib dib”). For, you see, I haven’t exorcised, as many others have, my sanity for the sake of finding masochistic joy in repetition—life, by itself, provides such splendour in excess. Although thou hast cloaked thyself in the form of a video game (of the puzzle genre, no less), my eyes are not fooled by such smoke and mirrors and can see through to thy unsightly Roguelike core! As such, I must bid thee and thou most pretentious uncle, Sinclair, adieu, as thy mysteries are far too obtuse, and gameplay much too repetitious and banal for a true gamer such as myself. Be well, and may the devil take you both very soon!

If you haven’t heard, Blue Prince is, apparently, really good. Critics around the world are clamouring about its brilliance. Jason Schreier, a man I have the utmost respect for, even says that it’s “one of the most incredible games I have played in my life.” And I, clearly a mere gaming plebeian with spaghetti for brains, don’t see it. And believe you me, I tried. As soon as I saw that 92 on OpenCritic, I jumped over to my PlayStation 5 and downloaded it. 

From the opening cutscene to the moment you take control of your character, I was hooked. The atmosphere and cinematic sensibilities that developers Dogubomb instilled in their game’s opening were brilliant and oozed an artistic flair that demanded my attention. So, off I went, slowly but surely, taking in this dauntingly massive mansion, being tickled (at first) by the core mechanic of drafting rooms, and the odd paintings and trinkets that fill them. I understood, what I believed to be at the time, the main puzzle of the game, which was orienting the rooms correctly to make my way to the top of the map and enter the “antechamber.”

Alas, it wouldn’t be too long before I understood that this was far from the main puzzle of Blue Prince, nor was reaching the antechamber its prime objective. The problem is, the game, in no way, tells you any of this—the community surrounding this game is also frustratingly vague, unhelpful, and somewhat pretentious. I spent my first ten in-game days in Blue Prince flailing about the mansion, beelining my way to the top of the map – because that was the only obvious objective the game shows you – and trying not to lock myself out. I found some interesting notes, a couple of codes for things, and figured out some of the more obvious puzzles like the ones in the “Parlour” and “Billiards” rooms. I’d made it to the top of the map and the “antechamber” on more than one occasion, only to find the room unenterable, making me realize that this was not the way to get to the elusive “Room 46.” 

The problem is, the game tells you absolutely nothing about what you’re actually supposed to do. Now, listen, that’s fine. I don’t need a game to hold my hand. I enjoy figuring out mysteries and environmental storytelling. I love narrative-driven walking simulators like What Remains of Edith Finch and Gone Home. I enjoy first-person puzzle games like Portal and Manifold Garden. The problem I have with Blue Prince is twofold. 

Lack of Interactivity & Going Back to School

Whenever I drafted a new room in Blue Prince, my goal was always to either have the room connect to another while moving upwards on the map, or to find an item like a key or gem. That’s because most of these rooms don’t have anything for you to actually do. Aside from the aforementioned few (and I’m sure a few more that I have yet to find) that have more obvious puzzles, most rooms seem like just pretty set dressing. There may be a note here and there for you to read, or a picture frame for you to take a closer look at, but nothing more. As mentioned, I did find a couple of notes that were noteworthy, but they never amounted to anything, or at least in ways that made sense to me. But, speaking of noteworthiness, that, apparently, is the biggest gameplay mechanic of Blue Prince: Taking notes. 

After five hours of banging my head against the wall, not knowing what to do, I acquiesced​​ and went over to Reddit for some help. And help, I did not find. Every person I came across that had spent every waking hour of their lives these past few weeks in this game all said the same damned things: “Take notes!” “Pay attention to everything in each room!” “Every room has, like, a million hints to a billion puzzles!” 

Uhm, what? What game are ya’ll playing? What puzzles? What hints? Eventually, I realized that there’s this whole other metagame that’s far from obvious from the moment-to-moment gameplay. Apparently, every painting in each room is significant because it gives hints about some other puzzle, and that puzzle will give hints on another puzzle. The way you draft and arrange rooms has a meaning. The statues have meaning. The way the forks are arranged in the dining room has meaning. This bird probably has meaning:

But how do you know if something in a room actually has meaning? Well, you take notes. A lot of f*cking notes. Then, you have to cross-reference those notes with more notes, to the point where you look like that meme of Charlie Day from Pacific Rim. The frustrating part is that you don’t know what has meaning and what doesn’t, because everything in every room looks…inconsequential. Now, I don’t need the game to make things abundantly obvious, but at the very least, let me pick items up, analyze them, maybe have an in-game journal to jot things down or highlight certain aspects of the mansion—if, indeed, notetaking is the true game mechanic. Otherwise, all I’m doing is entering a room and furiously wasting pages of paper writing down every single detail I see, praying that something pays off. And that’s not fun, that’s school, and I hate school. 

A Roguelike, But Even Less Fun

Alright, so I don’t like Roguelikes. There’s nothing less joyous in gaming, for me, than losing progress, and that’s the entire mechanic of Roguelikes. Of course, I’m being a little facetious and know that there’s a lot more to it. And, God help me, I also really enjoy Soulslikes, which have an element of repetition and losing progress. But games like Hades and Dead Cells never really gelled with me, even though I understand why people click with them and can respect their game design, especially their combat mechanics. Blue Prince, ostensibly, is also a Roguelike. Each day serves as a run, with you drafting more (and hopefully new) rooms and discovering more layers of the many puzzles (after reading your encyclopedia of notes). However, where I could bear the repetitive nature of the Roguelike genre in a game like Hades or Moonlighter due to their engaging combat mechanics, Blue Prince is simply not fun in the moment-to-moment. There’s nothing engaging or captivating about drafting or walking around rooms. It’s not like What Remains of Edith Finch, Firewatch, or Gone Home, where you’re finding interesting notes, learning more about a character’s history through interactive exploration, or actively doing something that leads to further discovery via gameplay. 

Or maybe there is. Maybe all of what I just said is in Blue Prince in spades, and this is an impeccably woven game with a deep lore, engaging narrative, and mind-blowing puzzles that I’m just too dumb to figure out. I just don’t care to figure it out. Because the moment-to-moment gameplay offers so little both in terms of interactivity and narrative, and the blind notetaking feels so aimless, especially because the payoff for them may never come due to the RNG of the game’s Roguelike mechanics. It all just leaves me feeling bereft of joy. Sorry if I’m yuckin’ all of y’all’s yums, but Blue Prince simply isn’t for me—I’m going back to playing proper video games like Batman: Rise of Sin Tzu for the Game Boy Advance.