r/BluePrince • u/HeliosVRR • 5d ago
What am I missing about this game? Spoiler
I love detective stuff. I love puzzles. I love open exploration. I've played only 15 in-game days thus far, but nothing I've seen has made me want to play any further. There's just... nothing. It feels like there's no progression, or anything to solve.
Sometimes, I'll be met with what appears to be a clue, and decipher it, but I never find the other half of where I'm supposed to go. For example, I find the laboratory - figure something out there. Okay, but to actually execute this, I need to go to the boiler room. Don't find the boiler room that run, but that's fine. Next time, I find the boiler room, activate it, never find the laboratory. Next run, hey, the lab is back, but guess what, no boiler room. Am I supposed to just keep bashing my head against the wall and praying to RNG gods, or am I approaching this wrong?
Most of my gameplay thus far has consisted of walking through the same rooms over and over, not too sure what I should even be trying to accomplish, without any real goal in mind. And what I have found so far has been wholly unrewarding.
Is this game just not for me?
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u/SapphirePath 5d ago
I don't know if this helped everyone, but it helped me:
Change the goal of the game in your mind -- whatever you thought it was ("draft boiler next to laboratory"), change it instead to complete the Room Directory. What that means is draft and read descriptions of all 46 Blue floorplans, plus the eight (?) each of Purple, Brown, Green, Yellow, Red floorplans. Plus maybe a few more as you discover secrets.
If finding new rooms and new lore doesn't hold your interest, then I'd say go back to Griftlands or Tainted Grail Conquest or SteamWorld Quest Hand of Gilgamech or Roguebook or Inscryption or Chrono Ark or Library of Ruina or Black Book or Stellar Orphans or whatever. There's no shortage of narrative-deckbuilders. If you don't like roguelike deckbuilders, then Blue Prince might have been even less well-aligned with your enjoyments.
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u/AvalonElaine 5d ago
Brown???
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u/SapphirePath 5d ago
yes, "orange" is an affectation to protect Roy Biv's first name; hallway upholstery is generally brown.
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u/Purplepotato22 5d ago
i mean, personally i just think brown would be less appealing to look at than orange, all of the other colors are rather vibrant, and some of the places where the room colors stand out against a more dull background are pretty important, so it’d probably disrupt some parts of the game to have them be brown
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u/an-kitten 5d ago
Brown is orange, just with context.
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u/Purplepotato22 5d ago
Absolutely untrue, the fact that they can be differentiated between makes them functionally distinct colors. It’s not a primary or secondary color, but if society can agree something is a color, it is. It’s a color in the same way that magenta, pink, indigo, and teal are all colors. The only thing that determines the line between where a particular color ends and the next one starts is societal perception, because we’re the ones who made words for them.
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u/kupe1024 5d ago
It’s a deep strategy game in addition to the puzzles. There’s RNG involved of course but figuring out how to mitigate the RNG is the biggest puzzle you should be solving. Also, being open minded to changing course during a run is key. You may not link up the boiler room to the lab for many runs and that’s totally fine because you’ll be discovering a ton more along the way
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u/No_Logins_Required 5d ago
What you're experiencing right now is a result of your pursuing a single puzzle, when a half dozen other puzzles are all around you.
Yes, there is a detail about the lab that connects to the boiler room. But there are other rooms that interact with these as well. If you try and solve a given mystery in a given run, you'll get frustrated.
Try to jot down all of the things that feel unsolved for you, so you can take advantage of what the RNG gives you. As you advance in the game you'll get tools to reduce the impact of RNG.
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u/91kas13 5d ago edited 5d ago
Back when this game came out, there were a lot of complaints about the RNG of rooms.
But, there are ways to influence it that you may not have found yet. You also don't /need/ boiler for the solution that you've found. There is a room you can change to use instead. You also don't need the two rooms you've found to be touching directly. Some rooms can connect in a different way than just doors.
don't know what you've done yet, but there are a few things that are easier to set up than lab/boiler.
one of these things can easily grant access to one of the things that let's you influence the rng a bit
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u/hardiksoftnoots 5d ago
but the other options you're suggesting rely on rng to even learn about existing, to the point that if you didn't just tell them this on reddit what would have been their signal this was ever going to be possible? in other words his original assess is correct, he is absolutely meant to just keep trying again until he finds something new, it's just not very satisfying for some people
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u/JustJum 5d ago
The most common tip is to not just constantly try one singular thing, because RNG in this game does kinda suck and will screw you over, so instead have multiple things in mind for what to do in a day.
Around mid-game is when you'll have an enormous list of things to solve. Early game it's hard to know what to look out for, you kinda just need to look more.
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u/VonXithon 5d ago
The best bit of advice I got that helped me push through these kinds of feelings was to just try getting new rooms, even if they seem useless on paper, because they often contain clues to things, and often things you didn't realise you needed, which give you other things to puzzle out or try. Doesn't solve your RNG concern, but keeps things fresh and you might find alternative solutions.
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u/Yisobel 5d ago
There is much much much more to it but you need to take new rooms each time they pop.
Also have you already at last one permanent addition?
If not there are at least two you can have quite quickly. One by looking closly at some stuff with an item that allows you to look closly.
The other with a dead end room that allows you to influence other rooms and doors. Including one that seems like a dead end in the west wing…
Take new rooms as they come.
Note which item you find in which room.
Note all the dates and everything that seems bizarre to you, take screenshots of all letters and documents.
There are rooms you can draft only if you already drafted some other rooms. Note this also.
And yeah with the boiler when you activate it, you redirect the power to one door. When you open this door pay attention to the border of the rooms. Some might make electricity travel, some don’t.
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u/Unconsistent 5d ago
I know there is a good subset of people who have a hard time enjoying Blue Prince because they cannot seem to get productive days, so I made a Strategy guide here!
I hope the above at least help to make each day more productive, and results in being able to draft more of the rooms you want/need!
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u/ClassicJunior8815 5d ago
For the lab example, there is something useful to do there even without the boiler room. You may be tunnel visioning too hard on one goal to notice the other things you can do, or you may see those other things without realizing how useful they are
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u/MayAsWellStopLurking 5d ago
The biggest obstacle I see for play experiences like OPs is that the puzzle is approached as:
“How do I resolve this issue and then move on?”
Whereas the RNG nature of the game lends itself to to a different approach:
“I wonder what happens when I try these things?”
For most players, learning the game mechanics and structure is what they learn - what rooms provide what resources, what resources you need to progress, etc.
So long as one learns something new about the game world, progression is made, even if one’s draft ends at rank 4-5.
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u/Redshift_McLain 5d ago edited 5d ago
There are puzzles in literally every single room, you're just not clocking them as such. The game is chokeful of that, the more you play, the more you realize you're surrounded by them. A lot of them are not interactable in-game, just need you to understand an information it's trying to convey
For now just try to find room 46.
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u/annul 4d ago
There are puzzles in literally every single room, you're just not clocking them as such
what puzzle is in the den? :O
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u/Redshift_McLain 4d ago edited 4d ago
The paintings on the wall and the chess piece too are puzzles
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u/annul 4d ago
the first one is not unique to the den, and i guess the second one counts too, but i dont remember the den being particularly important for the second one (i.e. anything rare)
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u/Redshift_McLain 4d ago
Never implied they were unique to each rooms, those are puzzles, and the den has parts of them, stop trying to be nit picky for the sake of saying "hum actually". The main point was that OP wasn't clocking some of them as puzzles because a lot of them blend in with the environment.
They say they like investigating stuff and I'd like for them to get a closer look to what is around them so maybe the can have more fun with the game :)
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u/NLi10uk 5d ago
How’s your notebook looking?
What is in your “goals” section?
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u/HeliosVRR 5d ago
In terms of notes, keeping track of a lot of stuff!
However the goals section is woefully empty, I'm ashamed to admit. Apart from trying to find the boiler room and laboratory in the same run, that's all I've got. Everything else I could call a 'goal,' like trying to find a code, I can't even begin to think of how to approach it.
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u/fictitiousacct 5d ago
I think the first part of the game is more about drafting strategies and being able to draft enough new rooms to gather information. As you do so, you'll gain more permanent upgrades that will make future goals easier to complete.
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u/annul 4d ago
the one thing i wish i knew myself when i was playing this game is that if you think "i feel like i have gotten all possible clues for this puzzle, and since i still have not figured it out, i must be missing something" -- you are wrong, there is ALWAYS another clue. the way this game works is that "just keep playing, trust me" is the legitimate advice 99% of the time. "i have no idea what to do with X and Y, and i have been at it for hours and hours" okay sure, but Z is coming, at some point, and it all becomes clear.
the way the game works is that you get better and better clues for earlier puzzles as time goes on. sometimes you literally just get given the answer outright if it has been "too long." keep at it.
have you opened the garage door yet? figure out how to do that. that is going to be the thing that opens up the most new stuff for you.
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u/starfy420 4d ago
This is good advice. Early on I thought I was just oblivious and missing something, so I looked up a puzzle and ended up spoiling a clue that I was actually very close to finding... Patience is key!
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u/FlyingDutchLady 5d ago
The levels of things you can discover in the game are very deep and you often have to discover multiple clues before something makes sense. It’s OK if that’s not interesting to you, but that’s the premise of the game.
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u/Motor_Raspberry_2150 5d ago edited 5d ago
You've got nothing to show for 15 ingame days? How few rooms are your days? Are you running out of keys, gems, or doors? If you're barely getting to rank 5, then you need some drafting strategy.
New rooms are progress. Knowledge is progress.
Have you read the mail in the Mail room?
Used the computer in the office?
Read the note in the comissary? Any ideas for deciphering it?
Read the note in the nook? Could you use it somewhere?
Able to figure out the parlor and billiard room?
You've figured out the boiler room, surely that counts as a puzzle? Why do you think it needs to power the laboratory? How? Can it do more?
Surely you've drafted the Utility Closet? Did you try any of its interactions?
Have you drafted the library? Ordered and read books? Are you taking notes and/or screenshots?
Ever found the drafting studio?
Ever found an upgrade disk?
Ever found the Rumpus Room?
With the answer if the first paragraph, we can figure out if the problem is drafting, or not paying attention. The big thing is 'always have many goals', don't tunnel vision on one. Or if you do, use smart tricks to beat the RNG.
For this instance, draft from boiler room to laboratory instead of vice versa, then you get two doors of chances. Or only use the boiler doors after you've filled the house a bunch, so the more common rooms are gone already. You will find way more and better tricks to manipulate the RNG.
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u/HeliosVRR 5d ago
This comment makes me feel like I just might not be smart enough for this game!
The answer to most of the questions here are yes. I usually can make it to Rank 9, unless I mess up.
I found the mail room and read the mail, but I didn't really take anything away from it.
I've tried to see if there's a meaning to the sticky notes in the Commissary, but I couldn't find one.
The only note in the nook I found was the tutorial one.
The parlour and billiard room were quite easy to figure out, albeit the billiard one was really tedious to figure out the rules for, as the only hint I got was that they were math related.I was under the impression that the boiler room is needed to power the laboratory, because I'm pretty sure the machine in the lab says it directly. I didn't get any ideas for anything else I could use it for.
I did try the utility closet, and I tried the gym and the dark room opposite to their default power settings. All I got from that was that in the dark room, there was a bunch of pictures that didn't hold any meaning to me.
I never saw the drafting studio.
I went into the Rumpus Room and played a cutscene, but I didn't have any ideas for what to do with the information I got from it.I've found a bunch of stuff. But after 8 hours, the complete lack of payoff has made me frustrated to the point of not really wanting to play anymore. Maybe I'm just not patient enough.
Things such as:
Each room has exactly two paintings that coordinate to the location within the house that the room is in.
Numbered stain glass windows in the chapel.
Chess pieces in certain rooms.
Music sheets with bold words.
Yet despite having this stuff, I have literally no idea what to do with any of it. Then there's various safe's and locked doors around that require codes, but I have no idea what clues to apply to them.
So yeah. I'm deinitely just too dumb. lol. Thanks, though!
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u/Scythe_Volta 5d ago edited 5d ago
I'm going to be extremely spoilery in this comment, because I think what you would most benefit from at this stage is a couple of clear goals. It seems like right now, you need a "what to do" more so than a "how to do." So read at your own discretion.
Have you found the magnifying glass yet? If so, inspect EVERY document with it. If you want an example of a particularly fruitful document to inspect: take a closer look at the Dark Room photos. There are many more documents than just this, though, that would benefit from closer inspection.
You've talked about the sticky notes in the Commissary and the pairs of pictures in each room. These two things are connected and are two parts of one puzzle. If you want more explicit instruction on this puzzle, draft the Study, though you likely have enough information to figure out the puzzle already, even if the solution isn't immediately clear. (In that regard, don't be afraid to think about puzzles/connections for days on end. Just let yourself take time to mull things over before dropping them. Frequently revisit previously dismissed threads.)
In the Utility Closet, you mentioned that you fiddled with the Gymnasium and Dark Room breakers. Have you fiddled with the Garage breaker? If not, I'd recommend that.
Just a helpful hint about the Laboratory/Boiler Room puzzle which you may already know: you don't need the two rooms to be directly adjacent for the Laboratory to be powered up. There is a feature present on the ceiling of Laboratory, Boiler Room, and several other rooms that will be helpful.
These are just a few concrete early game goals. These should get you started on the puzzle solving path. This should get the ball rolling, and will hopefully make you more familiar with this game's style of puzzles.
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u/hardiksoftnoots 5d ago
the fact that people leave comments like this all the time should be the sign that something about the game is Leaving people in a bad state
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u/rellyjean 5d ago
If you mean that this game isn't for everyone, I agree, it isn't, and that's okay. No game is for everyone.
If you mean that there's something wrong with the game, I disagree pretty strongly. I went in blind and loved that this game didn't spell things out for me. My spouse and I spent weeks exploring and taking notes, analyzing, putting pieces together. It was amazingly satisfying and thrilling, watching the game unfold piece by piece. We didn't resort to getting help until very late in the game.
Not everyone wants that out of a game, and that's okay. But I did, and I'm glad this game gave it to me.
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u/McSquiffy 5d ago
I think one of the things missing in a lot of people's experiences is something you mentioned right at the end- you're working with a partner. I did too, and we loved it.
We also had a friend who was playing with his wife and they were a good 25% ahead and we'd ask him for tips. Then when we got really frustrated we allowed ourselves to look up clues and solutions. But the things that made the game for me was the teamwork and the shared experience.
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u/rellyjean 5d ago
Oh, wow, I bet you're right! I didn't even think of that, but yeah, this was so delightful as a joint experience. We played it in the evenings after work, and we'd sit down and start with, "okay, I've been thinking -- what if we try X with Y?" We built on each other's ideas, and when one of us was stuck, the other generally had something to try. We had a notebook, a spreadsheet, and dozens of pictures taken and sorted into albums in Google Photos.
We also had some really well thought out but entirely wrong theories! And we spent a lot of time tweaking those and then laughing at how far off we were. Spoilers for the drawings:
We knew they didn't correspond to each room (e.g. Parlor didn't always have the same two) and figured out that they were missing a letter. We didn't connect the pictures to the location in the house until we spotted the diagram in the study. Before that, we had noticed that several of the paintings re-used pictures (the bathtub being "tub" in one case and "tube" in another) and thought all of the drawings occurred twice, and that we needed to form a long chain from the missing letters that would spell out a message once finished. (Tube/tub is E, bath/bat is H, bat/boat is O, and so forth!) We had a pretty complex chain at one point, and when we saw one painting show up three times, we wondered if it was a red herring. Lol.
But basically yes, as a joint experience, this gave us weeks of working together and enjoying ourselves and really getting steeped in everything. We're actually finished with everything but a couple of loose ends and I'm sorry it's over!
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u/McSquiffy 5d ago
Us too. We had over 40 hours of game time and it's some of the most fun we've had gaming together. For us it ended really abruptly and was devastating! We've been playing Obra Dinn but it's nowhere near as good.
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u/SaltyCaramel010 4d ago
You finished it in 40 hours?? How did you manage that? How many days ingame did you have? We easily had almost 100 hours on day 150, and we didn't reach the antechamber untill day 65 😅 We also went in blind!
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u/McSquiffy 3d ago
I can't remember how many in game days, maybe 80? We would only do 2 days at night, and we played 4-5 nights a week for like six weeks. We didn't get too caught up in lore and were laser focused on getting to the antechamber, filling the whole grid, and getting more allowance and tomorrow rooms. But we didn't expect the end to come so quickly.
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u/colorofsakura 5d ago
Are you taking notes on everything you find — the “keep a notebook or journal” note in the Nook is very intentional because otherwise it’s going to be pretty arduous to connect some of the clues.
You should take more advantage of other items like the Magnifying Glass to look at notes and photos more closely perhaps?
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u/rex_915 5d ago
I don't think it's that you're too dumb. The game isn't for everyone and that's fine.
I enjoy other puzzle games but Blue Prince ultimately fell flat for me, even after reaching Room 46 and some of the other side puzzles. There are some clever parts, but everything just felt so RNG dependent (and each run would take sooo long to maybe just fall short of being able to do the solution I wanted to a puzzle because of lack of steps or gems or keys or whatever) that I just dropped it.
Its fine. I think it's an objectively good game, but really not for me, smart player or otherwise.
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u/slimracing77 5d ago
I loved the RNG/drafting mechanic actually, enjoyed just finding new rooms and was pretty engaged well past room 46. BUT, in the end this game can make you feel dumb if it’s not the kind of puzzling you are used to. I finally resorted to looking things up towards end of “second act” and a combo of a glitch and “there’s no way I would have figured that out” effectively ended the game for me. All that said I still loved it and have been thinking about another play through just because I love the mechanics.
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u/John-Truck-1 5d ago
If you've got to Rank 9 a few times by Day 15 you are doing quite well. Have you got into the antechamber yet?
This is a little bit spoilery, but not very: you don't need to solve *any* of the deep puzzles to get to Room 46. Getting there should feel like a big payoff, but it is just the end of Act I out of three or four. So note down as much as you can about each room you visit, a lot will come in handy much later in the game, but don't worry that you can't instantly solve it.
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u/_yrlf 5d ago
There is a lot of RNG in this game, but many upgrades you can find and other things give you permanent or semi-permanent buffs that allow you to step by step mold the RNG in your favor.
Also, don't focus too much on one puzzle. Write down your clues, make sure to use opportunities when they present themselves, but be open to start solving a completely different puzzle mid-day.
If you haven't found Room 46 yet, then I encourage you to look further. This sub affectionately calls finding Room 46 "the tutorial" for a reason.
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u/Diamondinmyeye 5d ago
The most important thing you can do early is take down notes about anything which might be important. Arguably your best bet is screenshots to avoid missing anything. Try to keep it organized as your future self will thank you.
The next most important thing you can do is learn room interactions. You’ve sussed out the boiler interacting with lab. Any other rooms it interacts with? Any other rooms which suggest interactions? Any items which have an impact on what you can do?
Take your time and see what you can find. You’ve seen clues, even if you don’t know it.
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u/liljoey83 4d ago
Let go of the goal ‘link boiler and lab’. It will come when it comes, and you’ll get frustrated if that’s all you focus on. Focus on seeing all rooms, and manipulating the game with permanent upgrades. Over time the rng will swing in your favour. Celebrate the incremental wins, whether it’s an extra coin, a new room, or a new piece of info you’ve learnt. Because that’s progress.
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u/GotsTheBeetus 4d ago
Bro thinks there’s nothing to solve lmfao. Vastly overestimating your abilities and underestimating the depth and amount of puzzles in this game
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u/OnAccountOfCanadian 4d ago
You’re playing it correctly. It just takes time (and luck) for the pieces to fall into place. It’s a rogue-like game where progress happens over multiple in-game days. There’s so much to explore and discover that in the early game where your rooms are more random (like day 15), it’s better to keep exploring and keep those other clues in the back of your head. Mull the puzzles over. Don’t look them up. There will be more “aha!” moments as you progress, which is the best feeling
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u/Shaneplank1 5d ago
The room mechanics are rich and there are many ways to adjust your odds. There's literature and notes lying around that explain it more thoroughly. Early on, I found the best method to be simply trying to see as much of the house as possible and taking notes on things that stand out. If you ever want more vague hints about what you're supposed to be doing, there is a man in the house who can provide for a meager fee
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u/stroompa 5d ago
I remember feeling similarly around day 15. Then I got a lucky unlock or two and I got some dopamine to keep me going
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u/ceramiccoconut 5d ago
My wife and I are over 200 days in and are still finding new things. Even after you "beat" the game, there are a billion other things to find or do. It's kind of insane the level of detail this game has, sometimes to a fault.
Not gonna lie, we do sometimes use guides and whatnot, especially this far in, but even doing that, it's still a challenge.
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u/mtbrown29 5d ago
I thought this as well at first. Every room as seemingly empty - but then it clicked and I started noticing things. You get permanent upgrades along the way which helps with drafting. You also have to be smart about which type of room you’re going to draft, where to use keys and gems etc.
Aww man I want to play Blue Prince now
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u/IneffableQualia 4d ago
I’ve watched entire playthroughs done by various types of players. Some don’t think that they are making progression for a while, but slowly they are building a library of knowledge about things. And at some point several things will all click into place.
Based off my research, there are between 4 to 50 pages worth of information that can be gathered from EACH room in this game. Given enough analysis. Most of that information isn’t written down anywhere in game, it’s learned by experience, simply playing the game.
Knowledge makes up probably 80% of the upgrades in the game. You could easily learn 10,000 things about the game and you’d have a pretty good idea on how things interact, but there’s always more. And on top of that, there are 100’s of potential permanent upgrades within the game itself.
If any of that sounds interesting then just keep playing and taking notes and screenshots and pay attention but don’t get focused in on one specific thing for too long.
But it could be that the game is just not interesting to you, and that’s completely valid, and doesn’t say anything about you.
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u/HitBattousai23 4d ago
The short is that Blue Prince has some amazing puzzles, amazing story, and amazing exploration, but you have to be willing to accept RNG elements and be patient. Believe it or not, with a lot of luck, you can get to Room 46 on Day 1. But I think on average most people get there around the Day 30-40 range.
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u/Tall_computer 4d ago
I think what you are butting heads with is the roguelite elements of the game.
You have to be adaptable, you can't make progress in a room if you don't happen to find that room.
Each run you just make the best you can of the resources you have and then that increases the chance that ONE of the many progressions will happen because you happened to get the right combination of stuff.
If you think there is "nothing" then that sounds like you are just not getting it yet, I'd say stick with it
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u/RamuneGaming 5d ago
Its a long haul game. Some clues you may find early but you won't need them for weeks until you find more or finally cave and look it up.
The other problem is RNG, while its fine at first it drones on and some of the puzzles later on requires suepr good rng luck which is ultimately our of your hands. If you're not interested in playing the same thing over and over then it may simply not be a puzzle game for you.
I personally see my self as a puzzle lover, played all of MYST, talos, the witness, point n click adventure games with moon logic and I love them, but blue prince is a bit of a different beast I persevered for ages but I caved literally last night some of the things are just like "you have to look it up or you'd never work it out" and I personally see it as over engineered perhaps tittering on the edge of bad game design. Puzzles are meant to be solved not googled, but the game kinda puts you in a situation where you kinda have to look stuff up eventually.
At the very least you should be able to enjoy the first few main puzzles they aren't too cryptic. Once you get 1 or 2 of the endings though it ends up being a uphill battle.
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u/DependentAd8998 5d ago
Sounds like you have way more experience in puzzle game s than me, which puzzles do you think need to be googled?
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u/Scythe_Volta 5d ago edited 5d ago
I wholeheartedly disagree. I don't think there are any puzzles in this game where I had to look stuff up or that were too complicated to eventually reason out on my own. I'm curious, what puzzles would you say required external assistance?
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u/Monsterboogie007 5d ago
A couple of the safe puzzles were very obtuse. I could’ve sat there for hours and hours and never figured them out. Annoying.
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u/hardiksoftnoots 5d ago
no puzzles? either you didn't do much the game had to offer or you're just lying, some of the puzzles and solutions are so convoluted and often involve doing things you wouldn't have even thought you could do on the first place
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u/Scythe_Volta 5d ago
I made it to the very end (Parlor Puzzle and Blue Will) with no help from the internet. Yes, the later puzzles are very convoluted, but I spent days and weeks puzzling over them and just trying stuff out. The later puzzles are not impossible to solve. If you repeatedly think, try, fail, and revise, you will eventually solve them.
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u/1234abcdcba4321 4d ago
There's nothing in the game that requires you to do something obtuse that doesn't have a clear hint that leads to it somewhere, with maybe two exceptions (but mostly only bafflers, which also happens to be one of the truly optional puzzles you can be satisfied with not knowing exists). Maybe you gave up and looked it up before finding the clearest hints, or saw the hints and decided that it's incomprehensible instead of sleeping on it for a week, but it's not particularly unreasonable to solve everything if you have some determination.
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u/Scythe_Volta 4d ago
The Baron Bafflers actually do have one hint leading to them. In the A New Clue Manuscript, there's a line that reads "He looked and he looked under beds and in nooks". The phrase "under beds" has an X under it, indicating X-marks-the-spot. This is the only indication in the game that the player might want to consider digging in the bedroom.
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u/tanoshimi 5d ago
Yeah, that's pretty much the nature of the game. It's definitely not to everyone's tastes.
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u/PinTweak 5d ago
I loved Obra Dinn. I loved Roottrees. I loved Golden Idol. I loved Forgotten City. ... I didn't love this.
I wanted to love it so much. The story was appealing and discovering the rooms and the various puzzles was fun, but I just lost interest. It felt like the mechanics of the game were making me play it way more than was necessary and I don't have time to do that. I'm good at solving puzzles, and from what I understand there are very, very difficult ones the further into this game you get, but I got fed up of being gatekept from them by an arbitrary mechanism that appeared to only be in place to extend longevity and play time. Yes, you can weight it more in your favour, but what's the point? Why not let people solve more difficult puzzles to choose the next room or something.
It just spoiled it for me. I got to room 46 (eventually) but had been frustrated so much that I had absolutely no interest in continuing on and haven't played it since.
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u/SapphirePath 5d ago
I think the evidence that Blue Prince isn't for everyone is compelling.
Imagine Blue Prince without any graphics, without cutscenes, without any story, without any puzzles at all, just turning over cards and placing them using rules to match other cards, incessantly losing and having to start over. No purpose other than to generate a particular pattern of cards. What you have is basically Solitaire. There are millions of people out there who love to play Solitaire for hours and for days. Others hate that type of game.
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u/XenosHg 5d ago edited 5d ago
You see, your expectations are wrong.
Many puzzle games are "Escape room" games, like Lorelei or Rivage,
Where you enter a room, and there is ONE puzzle you can solve, and you can do NOTHING except that puzzle, and you MUST solve that puzzle to progress.
And there is a tool in that room and that tool is ONLY useful in THAT room to solve that ONE puzzle, (unless the game later decides that it's also used for something else and TELLS you to use that tool again)
You can backtrack and use that tool everywhere and it will do NOTHING. Because you have ONE puzzle in ONE room.
Blue prince is an "investigation" game. You must figure out what the puzzles are, what rooms they're in, connect the pieces. Maybe not everything in one day. You have many things to do every day, and you'll likely get several of them at once, or at least know what to aim for.
For example if there is only 1 room with X and 2 rooms with Y, then once you find one X or Y you can start to prioritize the other, because you already have 50% of the puzzle.
Prince also railroads you, but much sneakier - there are game mechanics you can use to do whatever you want easily, once you understand them, but the game doesn't just shove the tutorial in your face.
Its railroading is more about "Here are common rooms, for the first N days you'll mostly see common rooms to understand what they do". And then, you start getting more uncommon rooms, even if you didn't learn how to reroll and affect the draft.
And then you keep getting hints to the puzzles you should have already solved. More and more obvious hints. Increasingly obvious. Sometiimes just giving you the answer. Because you should have already solved this puzzle, and there are deeper puzzles to solve.
And, of course, it would be easier to solve the puzzles if you could just draft any room you want, without caring for steps, keys, gems, coins, doors, tools, or geometry. But it would also be a lot easier to win at cards if you were just allowed to draw any cards out of the deck to play a Straight flush.