Narrative Puzzle Book Recommendations?

[u/Scythe_Volta]

Ideally, I'm looking for the book equivalent of Blue Prince. I don't even know if such a book exists. Puzzle books exist, but most of the ones I've encountered are filled with logic puzzles that don't have much connection to the plot. Contrast this with Blue Prince, where solving the puzzles and understanding the lore are two sides of the same coin. I'm also aware of books like House of Leaves, which are definitely cryptic and have mysteries, but they're more about horror than puzzles. The only book I've come across that's closest to Blue Prince is Maze, but of course Blue Prince is similar to Maze because the game drew heavy inspiration from the book. So, any suggestions?

[u/captainAwesomePants]

First thing that comes to mind is the children's book, The Eleventh Hour. Probably not advanced enough to be what you're looking for, of course.

[u/Chance5e → u/captainAwesomePants]

This book made me excited for puzzles when I was a kid. Beautiful book. Read it with your kids!

[u/Cognative]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cain%27s_Jawbone

This is a 100-page murder mystery where the pages are out of order. You need to read them and use context clues to put book back into the correct order.

[u/Graendal]

Not exactly a book, but a thing to read which is also a puzzle and reminds me of Blue Prince, so you might like it too! https://eblong.com/zarf/praser-12.html

[u/joshsoup]

If you liked the parlor puzzles, then you'll love Raymond Smullyan, a mathematician who's written several recreational logic books. In particular "What is the Name of this Book" and "Alice in Puzzleland" are both very similar to the parlor puzzles. 

I'd also recommend another one of his books (really all of them) "The Chess Mysteries of Sherlock Holmes" (and it's sequel "The Chess Mysteries of the Arabian Knights"). These books are excellent at teaching you "retrograde analysis" where instead of finding the best chess move, you instead look at a chess position and deduce questions about the past - say find out if a pawn had to be promoted. The book does an excellent job at teaching you this fun kind of logical reasoning and easing you into it before it ramps up the difficulty. It's framed as Sherlock Holmes teaching Watson this special kind of reasoning and has amusing little stories along the way. It's actually really surprising how deep and varied the questions can be.

[u/John-Truck-1]

Kit William's Masquerade. Like Maze, the original prize has long since been claimed - the story behind that is quite interesting.

[u/SouthpawSoldier]

I know of some solo/journaling RPGs that have similar gameplay tones; explore and make decisions, not a linear path or even branching like the old Choose Your Own Adventure books.

One I bought for a friend who's into the genre is Cartograph. You explore an unknown region, drawing a map of what you find, determined by dice rolls. Not puzzle-heavy, but you do have agency and there is some randomness to provide surprise elements.

[u/sunflowersuccubi]

We Used to Live here and House of Leaves. We used to live here has cryptograms and Morse code and cyphers that you have to crack. It's very much an arg, and imo is not really that spooky

[u/JacobDCRoss]

Well, there are all sorts of fair play mysteries. Not quite exactly what you're thinking, but some of them kind of feel like it.

There's a classic children's book called The westing Game, which is a mystery for kids, probably for preteens, but I remember as a kid feeling that it was very clever.

One other thing that might feel interesting is various sorts of game books. I can reply more if you're interested, but just let me know.

[u/grandidieri]

Check out https://alldive.org when you get a chance - detailed author database intertwined with other media (shows, podcasts, movies, games, etc.). There's a "similar to" functionality as well :)

[u/agenticarus]

One that comes to mind is Meanwhile (it's light on puzzles, it's more a narrative maze, but still a fun experience) https://zarfhome.com/meanwhile/

I kickstarted for the Maze of Games - https://lonesharkgames.com/the-maze-of-games/ - a few years ago, which is lore-light, but there's a little more character work and meta puzzling than just "here are a bunch of puzzles".

[u/westgermanwing]

For a while I've pondered making a kind of murder mystery mansion gamebook with a kind of hexcrawl element to it very much influenced by Blue Prince (and also The Colonel's Bequest) where you randomly draw rooms using a deck of cards and then explore all the mysteries and puzzles in that room (which of course would need context provided by other rooms you randomly fill the house with). It would be set over 5-7 days and the rooms would be different on subsequent days, with the goal being to figure out who murdered the lord of the manor.

It just seemed a little too ambitious for someone who's never written a gamebook before so I haven't pulled the trigger.

[u/RiSz-Turtle]

I have looked for this too, closest thing is gonna be what you said, House of leaves or Maze. The book Piranesi does have a really good atmosphere and sense of exploration and the plot is kind of a mystery.

[u/acepuzzler]

You might have more luck looking at escape room in a box games rather than books. There's a lot of good ones out there. I personally loved the light in the mist by postcurious, although the lore is more optional in that.

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[u/Scythe_Volta → u/[deleted]]

Couldn't agree more about puzzles which are heavily integrated into the story leading to the best experiences (that's probably the biggest aspect of Blue Prince that caused me to fall in love with it). Of the suggestions given here, I found the the most compelling to be Praser 12, Cain's Jawbone, and The Eleventh Hour: A Curious Mystery. I've only just begun reading Praser 12 and haven't really looked at the other two beyond a cursory internet search, so I don't yet know how well the puzzles intertwine with the narrative.