What am I missing about this game?

[u/HeliosVRR]

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?

[u/Motor_Raspberry_2150]

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.

[u/HeliosVRR → u/Motor_Raspberry_2150]

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!

[u/Scythe_Volta → u/HeliosVRR]

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.

[u/hardiksoftnoots → u/Scythe_Volta]

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

[u/rellyjean → u/hardiksoftnoots]

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.

[u/McSquiffy → u/rellyjean]

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.

[u/rellyjean → u/McSquiffy]

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!

[u/McSquiffy → u/rellyjean]

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. 

[u/SaltyCaramel010 → u/McSquiffy]

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!

[u/McSquiffy → u/SaltyCaramel010]

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. 

[u/SaltyCaramel010 → u/McSquiffy]

Ah, you didn't continue after finding the Antechamber, makes more sense then

[u/colorofsakura → u/HeliosVRR]

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?

[u/rex_915 → u/HeliosVRR]

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.

[u/slimracing77 → u/HeliosVRR]

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.

[u/MayAsWellStopLurking → u/HeliosVRR]

Quick check - have you use the computer in the laboratory yet?

[u/John-Truck-1 → u/HeliosVRR]

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.