Must Play
Bring a notebook and your entire brain
Blue Prince is definitely as advertised, a roguelike puzzle mystery, and it is best played going in blind so I will keep the specifics light. A lot of the puzzles are cryptic, and plenty of them unfold slowly enough that you will not crack them in the session where you first run into them. This is a game for when you want to use your detective skills and, honestly, your entire brain.
What surprised me was how much was still waiting after the credits. I assumed finishing it would leave me satisfied and ready to move on, and that was not the case at all. Blue Prince feels like a gift you keep unwrapping, with another layer sitting underneath every one you pull off, and there are enough mysteries left over that I have kept playing well past the point where most games would have let me go.
The soundtrack fits all of this extremely well, holding a constant air of mystery and giving way for ambience to be king rather than pushing itself to the front. It is not filled with unforgettable bangers, it is much more lowkey than that. It pairs itself perfectly to the game, and it stuck with me for a bit afterward because of how much I really enjoyed my time with it.
One quality of life improvement I’d love is an in-game journal. The game will not hold your hand about remembering anything, so bring your own notebook and be ready to write down what you find. Solving something here is genuinely challenging and just as genuinely rewarding, which is why I keep going back.