[HN Gopher] Blue Prince is a roguelike puzzle masterpiece
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Blue Prince is a roguelike puzzle masterpiece
Author : adrianhon
Score : 76 points
Date : 2025-04-09 01:27 UTC (2 days ago)
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| galleywest200 wrote:
| I have been playing this game and it is really a blast. The
| tutorial note cards strongly recommend using a pen+paper while
| playing and I can second that as pretty much required for some of
| the more "meta" puzzles.
|
| Worth noting that I believe it is also on Gamepass and whatever
| Sony's version of Gamepass is called if you already had those
| services and wished to save a few bucks.
| gs17 wrote:
| > The tutorial note cards strongly recommend using a pen+paper
| while playing
|
| This is my largest complaint. The game should really have a
| notepad built in. It doesn't need to write down clues for me,
| but it would be nice to not have to find where my notes were if
| I put the game down for a long time. Is it that it's a console
| release?
| RamRodification wrote:
| So many games desperately need this feature. Almost all games
| could benefit from it to some degree. I see zero negative
| consequences to adding it to every single game in existence
| just in case someone wants it.
| detaro wrote:
| if you play on PC through Steam, Steam at least has a notes
| function in the overlay nowadays:
| https://www.polygon.com/2023/4/28/23702656/steam-beta-
| update...
| gs17 wrote:
| Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure adding Game Pass games to
| Steam isn't really compatible with that. It looks like
| there was a "notes" app for the Windows "Game Bar", but
| it's no longer available.
| nlawalker wrote:
| Thanks for this callout, I was looking at the reviews here and
| on Steam and waffling, but I've got Game Pass.
|
| Also, re: notepad writing: if you've got two monitors, it
| Alt+Tabs just fine. I'm writing this as the opening credits
| play.
| nameless912 wrote:
| Already contender for my favorite puzzle game of the year. I
| would compare it to Outer Wilds or Animal Well, but that would do
| all three games a disservice. Blue Prince is a thoroughly unique
| game that is worth your time. And like another commenter said, a
| pad of paper is _absolutely required_.
| npinsker wrote:
| > I don't like what they do to me. I shudder to think how they
| could supercharge builders like Dorfromantik, Carcassonne, and
| Castles of Mad King Ludwig.
|
| A very similar mechanic is used in the popular board game
| _Betrayal at House on the Hill_. That game 's arguably even worse
| because it has stat upgrades!
| throwerofstone wrote:
| After playing the game for 10+ hours and dropping it out of sheer
| frustration, I came to the conclusion that I must have been
| playing a vastly different game than the people praising it.
|
| The first hour was great. I was constantly encountering new rooms
| and solving puzzles. The many times where the game decided to
| give me nothing but rooms leading to dead ends was annoying, but
| I still had things to explore in the next run so it didn't matter
| that much. After that first hour, the game became a slog. I
| encountered the same rooms, solved the same two puzzles for
| resources and was constantly praying for the RNG to give me
| something new. There is some RNG manipulation, but not enough to
| mitigate the boring part of the game. There are a few interesting
| overarching puzzles, but most of them are wrapped in multiple
| layers of RNG.
|
| For example, for one puzzle you need a specific item that
| randomly spawns, use it in a room that randomly spawns which you
| need to unlock with another room that also randomly spawns. It
| took me 6 hours for the game to give me a run where I got all
| three of those things in a single run. The reward? Some resources
| that I have next to no use for and some clues that I can only
| experiment with if the RNG deems me worthy.
|
| I have absolutely no idea where the praise for the game comes
| from. Maybe this game is perfect for those who are really into
| roguelites, but for me personally it just feels like the game is
| wasting my time for no reason at all.
| 383toast wrote:
| > many times where the game decided to give me nothing but
| rooms leading to dead ends
|
| Since each room can only appear once, you can minimize this by
| strategically choosing to place dead end rooms early on in the
| lower southeast/southwest, and edges generally. Then always
| make sure you have gems as you move north, so you can usually
| pick good rooms.
| fragmede wrote:
| > After playing the game for 10+ hours
|
| You paid $30 for it. Did you get $30 worth of entertainment
| from it? $3/hr sounds pretty good, and if all it did was not
| live up to your expectations because of what other people been
| saying, I'd say that's still money well spent, just you gotta
| adjust how much stock you put into what those particular people
| say as relates to good you enjoy something.
| glimshe wrote:
| For me, a dead end after 10 hours of playing feels like
| frustration. I don't like starting games I can't finish,
| especially if I rage quit. It stays with me as a painful
| memory, the opposite of entertainment.
| com2kid wrote:
| This is fair enough.
|
| When I bought the original Brothers, it took me maybe 10
| hours to finish, if even that. It was well worth the cost,
| amazing game. (Apparently the remake was badly done...)
|
| Some games are in the "experience" category, $30 for 10
| amazing hours, great deal. $30 for 10 hours and then a rage
| quit, not a good deal.
| square_usual wrote:
| I generally have the same frustration with roguelites as you
| seem to: every time I start a run, it feels like I'm gambling
| whether I'll have any fun at all. A bad seed or start can mean
| losing in ways that feel unfair or boring, like in balatro if
| you get a bunch of bad hands and bad jokers, you struggle
| through rounds and hands until you either lose or get an
| interesting combination. I don't need that kind of gambling in
| my life when there's tons of games out there where I know I
| will have fun.
|
| E: I still quite like Balatro - when it works it's a blast.
| I'll also still try out Blue Prince because people I respect
| seem to like it.
| DanielVZ wrote:
| One common mantra about most roguelites is that every run can
| be a successful run if you play your cards right. Some will
| be harder, in others you'll become unstoppable, but the
| general idea is that once you get good enough you should be
| able to win runs. I'm not sure if this holds and is extremely
| dependent on how balanced the game is, but I think it's a
| sane way to approach the genre since it pushes you to improve
| and generally becomes a rule once you become good enough at
| some of the games.
| explodes wrote:
| Having multiple ongoing goals helps mitigate being locked out
| from one.
| gs17 wrote:
| > solved the same two puzzles for resources
|
| I'm eager to play more, but this is something that was a worry
| already an hour in. The logic puzzle I did was good enough and
| seems like it can be generated procedurally well enough, the
| "math" puzzle I did wasn't. There's more than that, right?
|
| > and some clues that I can only experiment with if the RNG
| deems me worthy.
|
| And on top of that, it's hard to know if those clues actually
| will matter in other runs. I found a safe code in one run. If
| it takes three runs before the RNG decides the room with the
| safe will be there, will the code be randomized? I've been
| trying to avoid spoilers so it's hard to know what matters.
| ekorz wrote:
| I was also sad to hear about how much RNG is in the game, that
| is a detractor to what seems like a well put together
| experience otherwise. If you wanted to give something else a
| try, and have a PC, I made a first-person puzzle game that's
| (hopefully) more akin to Antichamber and the puzzle bits of
| Outer Wilds, called Chroma Zero. There's a demo on steam if you
| just want to dip your toe in.
| https://store.steampowered.com/app/3121470/Chroma_Zero/
| crtasm wrote:
| I've played about an hour and am getting the feeling I won't
| see it through to an ending.
|
| For anyone wanting a non-RNG puzzler set around a large
| building I highly recommend
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorelei_and_the_Laser_Eyes
| notnaut wrote:
| Having played both of these games I agree that Lorelei stands
| out as a sort of foil for blue prince. And my opinion is that
| that is a huge endorsement of blue prince. Lorelei's puzzles
| felt so inelegant and largely detached from the ideas being
| explored. Felt like a logic puzzle book, with some esoteric
| story stuff on top that just did not keep me interested.
|
| Blue prince's rng is quite well thought out imo. Once you
| pick up on some of the unwritten rules about the room
| drafting system and start building strategies around what to
| prioritize and how to adjust your goals, it starts feeling a
| lot like many other popular card-based strategy games.
|
| There are weak points, for sure, and your contrasting it with
| Lorelei makes sense. But Lorelei's puzzles felt so plain and
| unchallenging. I like that blue prince is keeping me on my
| toes.
| khill wrote:
| I've played for about an hour and agree with your assessment. I
| still have it installed but I doubt I will revisit it.
|
| I've switched to South of Midnight and it's amazing. Not
| everyone's type of game - and certainly not a puzzle game - but
| the graphics, music, story, and gameplay combine to make it one
| of the best games I've played in a long, long time.
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| This is 'article' is just an advertisement
| noqc wrote:
| I haven't seen a single good review from anyone I trust, most
| people are saying it's not good.
| eieio wrote:
| FWIW Adrian Hon (the writer) is easily the game reviewer
| that I trust the most! I am quite sensitive to false
| positives with games - it really sucks to spend a few hours
| on a game that you drop - and my false positive rate with
| his reviews is very low.
|
| (I have no affiliation with this post beyond being a fan of
| Adrian's writing and work + haven't played Blue Prince yet,
| although I'm very likely to play it because of this review)
| adrianhon wrote:
| OP here: Is there anything that makes you say that other than
| the fact that it's positive and I received a review key? I've
| written about plenty of games I didn't enjoy that I got for
| free (e.g. for judging awards) including games that were very
| well-received, like Viewfinder and Pacific Drive.
| adrianhon wrote:
| OP here: I can see how that would be frustrating and I do touch
| on that in my piece. It's not my job to convince you that you
| should like it, but I would say that the mystery and atmosphere
| and sense of discovery is what pulled me through the first
| hours where I wasn't sure what was going on. If those things
| don't chime with you, it can be a slog. What I've told other
| people is that it's better not to view the game as a race but
| more a place to explore.
| airstrike wrote:
| Been wanting to build a metroidvaniaroguelike on evenings and
| weekends and this gives me a few ideas to noodle on... thanks for
| sharing
| riffraff wrote:
| > As with other roguelikes, you can unlock persistent upgrades
| that smooth over repetitive parts of the game.
|
| I think those are called rogue-lites, for the reason that real
| rogue-likes (e.g. nethack, DCSS) actually wipe out all your
| progress on each attempt.
| skyyler wrote:
| At this point, times have shifted, and meta-progression is
| usually considered an aspect of modern roguelikes. There was a
| trend of calling them "rogue-lites" but that's faded and now
| games like ADOM and DCSS are "Classic roguelikes"
|
| It's not a hard and fast rule or anything, just what I've
| observed in gaming discussions.
| uses wrote:
| Indeed, the distinction used to be useful. But now, it's not
| useful because honest-to-God roguelikes are just not getting
| made outside hobby projects. Meanwhile, roguelites have
| become a core pillar of modern gaming, artistically and
| commercially. I think calling roguelites roguelikes is
| perfectly fine. It's simply what the genre became.
| card_zero wrote:
| That's horrible, but I can't stop you.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| Traditional roguelike is the term I see on Reddit and Steam:
| https://store.steampowered.com/tags/en/Traditional+Roguelike
|
| Traditional roguelikes seem cool in theory, but I like co-op
| for most of my PvE content, and like most turn-based games,
| no co-op to be had there.
| chongli wrote:
| That's a shame, because meta-progression ultimately
| undermines the spirit of these classic games.
|
| Roguelikes were designed to play like arcade games in that
| you'd always start over from scratch and try to get a high
| score. Most attempts ended in failure but as you got better
| at the game it was reflected in your score. Even after
| players achieve a high degree of expertise they still find
| the games challenging to win and so they keep playing and
| enjoying them for years to come.
|
| Meta-progression takes away the from-scratch element and just
| allows you to win through sheer persistence, chipping away at
| the problem until it's easy enough for you to finish it in
| one final run. But then what? The game is no longer the same
| challenge it was when you first started. It's like a mountain
| that keeps getting smaller every time you attempt to climb
| it, until it's finally shrunk to the size of an anthill. This
| is not a recipe for a game you can play for many years.
|
| Ultimately, what meta-progression does is turn a roguelike
| into a standard narrative RPG just like any other. This is
| one where the player's goal is to reach the end of the game
| and that's it, not to learn the game's systems and reach a
| high level of mastery.
| taejo wrote:
| NetHack does have ghost files (where you find the levels
| previous characters died on, including their ghost and their
| possibly-cursed loot). It's definitely not the same kind of
| progression as in modern rogue-lites, but it can be a boost to
| pick up the equipment you found on a previous run.
| chongli wrote:
| Do note that enemies can also pick up that old equipment and
| use it against you. I lost a promising character during the
| last November NetHack Tournament [1] because a gnome picked
| up a wand of fire from someone's grave and blasted me with
| it.
|
| Yeah that's another difference. When you play NetHack online
| [2] [3] you run into the ghosts and graves of other players,
| not just your own previous characters. I have run into levels
| online with the ghosts of 3 different people who were all
| killed by various dangerous monsters that kept accumulating
| more powerful equipment from each victim. It can be quite
| ridiculous!
|
| [1] https://tnnt.org/
|
| [2] https://alt.org/nethack/
|
| [3] https://www.hardfought.org/
| davidpfarrell wrote:
| OP: A single giveaway just popped up on SteamGifts today:
|
| https://www.steamgifts.com/giveaway/bloms/blue-prince
|
| Is this you?
| taeric wrote:
| I just picked this up. Curious if this will be one I can play
| with the kids while we are going to bed in the evenings. For a
| long time, that was prime time to play Slay the Spire, as it will
| get them to go to sleep. :D
| egypturnash wrote:
| It's got a bedtime story kind of vibe.
| gs17 wrote:
| I'd imagine it probably will get them to go to sleep, but
| mostly because they'll be watching a lot of walking up and down
| corridors.
| taeric wrote:
| Cool. Just wanted to make sure it wasn't overly dark in tone.
|
| I also played the Stanley Parable recently, and that is one
| that has a few sections that are a touch much for the kids.
| blindriver wrote:
| I tried playing this after buying it, but it was not what I
| expected. There was a lot of FPS moving around and aiming and
| that makes me nauseous so I had to turn it off. I guess there's
| no refunds on PS games unfortunately.
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