Blue Prince continues the long tradition of estranged relatives leaving dangerous mysteries to their descendants, and I wouldn’t have it any other way after seeing more of the gameplay that our own Chris Livingston was captivated by at GDC.
The real shocker is that your inherited mystery house seems to have arrived with some assembly required, because Blue Prince wants you to build the interior of your mansion as you go. Each time you open a door, you’ll be choosing from several possible rooms to walk into, each represented by a square tile with its own exits and passive effects reminiscent of the board game Betrayal. Each room could have clues to advance the search for the mysterious “Room 46,” tools to help you survive future rooms, or even provide abilities for influencing future room choices.
You’ll also have to strategize your choices, because some rooms won’t have doors pointing in the directions you want, and each new room costs you precious “steps,” a resource that dwindles down to a reset of your day, and the layout you’ve been constructing. Each fresh day is a fresh try at building the mansion, though you retain your clues, items and the like from your previous exploration. Most importantly, you’ll have the knowledge you gained, which is helpful for preventing the need to backtrack to undo mistakes or simply flip a switch you’ve just realized you need.
Each individual room provides its own challenges as well, with many of them containing their own puzzles, whether revealing clues or information to help later on—like the location of a key item, or the combination to a safe—or just opening new paths of exploration. It’s a dizzying array of options, and the perfect simmering pot of stew for a discerning puzzle-solver.
For now, the anticipation will have to tide us over, as the team at Dogubomb hasn’t given a release date yet. We’ll all have to get comfy waiting in the driveway of our future jigsaw-mansion, and until then you can wishlist it over on Steam.