Would I have picked this game up if it hadn’t been offered through the PlayStation Plus service? I dunno. I might have. But probably not. And I would have really been missing out.
You’re a kid who has just inherited his uncle’s puzzle mansion — a legendary house of 45 (or more) rooms where the layout changes every day, and your job is to reach the mysterious 46th room and claim your inheritance. Which is not the house. But to say more would be spoiling things.
Each day, you start at the Entrance Hall. Nine rows away is the fixed room known as the Antechamber. Your job is to draft rooms that form a path to the Antechamber and find what’s inside. You only have a certain number of steps each day — you start with 50. Some rooms costs gems to draft (you’ll have to find those) and some rooms — many rooms, the further you get in, are locked, requiring keys or other methods to get through those.
Most days, you’ll run out of steps, keys, or gems, or you’ll get to the Antechamber but its doors aren’t open. But, eventually — it took me 28 runs, 28 days, until everything came together. The 27 days I didn’t make it weren’t failures, though, as most days, I’d unlock new rooms, or solve some puzzles, each one making the next run a little easier.
It’s possible to do the whole thing on Day 1, if you’re lucky. Doing so is one of the trophies. Doing it in less than an hour is another trophy.
I did neither. My winning run took a bit over an hour, mostly because I’d never done the puzzles that come after the Antechamber before. After I finished, I watched someone’s successful Day 1/1 Hour run, and that player did the post-Antechamber stuff an entirely different way. I’d unlocked some rooms along the way that made it easier for me.
Opening Room 46 rolls the credits, but what you find in the room sets up the second part of the game. Like a lot of RPGs these days, the post-credits stuff is where the real game begins, and where the real story comes out.
Like Firewatch, Gone Home and other such “walking simulators”, there is no combat, no real time pressure. The story is told through letters, notes, e-mail, books and so on you find as you explore the house. Sometimes a room will contain clues for a puzzle in a different room, maybe not even a room you’ll draft that day. Rooms can be stuffed with clues for several puzzles, but I don’t think any puzzles need to be solved to win the game. They can unlock new rooms, but typically they are just the mechanism to tell the story about what happened to the family that lived there. (Aside from your uncle, the Baron — he died there, and his death is what brings you to the house).
If you like puzzles, Blue Prince has puzzles. If you like just exploring and learning a story, there’s that. If you’re into speed running, this game has you covered. If you’d rather have exciting real-time combat, come on. Simon (your character) is a 14-year old boy, and his country, Fenn Aries, has seen enough fighting.
Oops, I’m starting to talk about the story. That should be left to you.
This one is near the top of my “to play next” pile. Glad to know it is worth it!