We’ve all read books, seen movies, and watched episodes of Scooby-Doo in which someone must spend the night in a haunted house so that they can inherit said house from their sadistic dead relative.
But in the upcoming first-person puzzle game Blue Prince — which will be out on PC this spring — the house isn’t haunted, but its constantly changing configuration makes things difficult for its hopeful new owner.
Or so I found out when I recently had a chance to play this intellectually challenging game.
In Blue Prince,
a rich old man has left his massive estate to his 14-year-old grandnephew, but with one condition: the kid must find the hidden, never seen 46th room of this 45 room house.
The kicker being that the building has no set layout, and is in a state of constant quantum flux.
Which is why, before the kid opens a door, he has to decide what kind of a room he’ll find on the other side. It could be a closet, a bedroom, a hallway, the kitchen…the possibilities are, okay they’re not endless, but in my time playing, I ran across nearly a dozen types. And there’s probably more.
That said, your choices are not endless. The kid only has three rooms to choose from when opening a door. They also seem to be random, and never repeat during the same turn — in my playthrough, I never had to pick between, say, a hallway, a hallway, and a bedroom — though room types do come up again during other turns.
The rooms themselves also change. For instance, while the aforementioned kitchen had 3 gold coins and a banana, another kitchen might not have either. Or might have something else entirely.
Blue Prince also takes cues…
from board games by having the house’s layout be on a grid. What this means is that if you’re not careful, you might back yourself into a corner, as I learned when I chose one room to be a hallway, only to have it cut off a door in the foyer where I first came in, since the hallway didn’t have a door that corresponded to the one in the foyer.
It’s also why, at a later point, I found myself with no way to proceed forward, and thus had to leave. One of the conditions of getting the house is that the kid can’t stay the night, and it’s at night when the house resets.
Thankfully, though, the kid has as many nights as he needs to find the missing room.
It’s just too bad the kid’s out of shape. You see, he can only walk 50 steps a day, and loses a step every time he enters a room, even one you’ve been in before.
That said, once you’re in a room, you can move around all you like. It’s only moving from room to room that you use a step.
The kid can also get more steps by eating snacks. That banana I mentioned earlier? Eating it gave me 3 more steps. Similarly, apples give you 2 steps.
Still,
if you run out of steps before you run out of places to step, that’s it, you’re done, and have to leave the house and try again tomorrow. Which means any progress you’ve made is lost.
Now, what’s helpful in Blue Prince is that, before you pick a room, you’re told things about that room. Like whether there are gold coins or gems there, or single-use keys that can unlock doors.
You can also see if the room has any doors other than the one you’re using to enter, which helps you avoid the mistakes I made and not cut yourself off. Just remember to bring up the grid that shows the current layout of the house.
Then there are the puzzles in Blue Prince, brain teasers that could you give you clues, or helpful items. In the first one I encountered (and your mileage may differ), I found the key to open a box, as well as three boxes, and it was up to me to deduce which box to open.
Though as you probably assumed when I mentioned “gold coins or gems,” there’s also rooms where you can buy stuff. You have to find it, of course, but when you do, you can buy single-use keys, more gems (they open some doors), as well as other items you might need. Like, say, a shovel that could uncover an underground passage.
Now,
earlier I mentioned that Blue Prince was somewhat inspired by board games. And as you probably assumed by what I’ve said, and by the screenshots, this game is also influenced by such point-and-click adventure games as Myst.
But it’s also inspired by something you might not expect: a book.
Specifically, a 1985 Chose Your Own Adventure-like puzzle book called Maze, which was devised, written, and illustrated by author and artist Christopher Manson. In Maze, each page was an illustration of a room that might have a door or doors, which were numbered. To choose which door to go through, you’d go to the page indicated by the number, all in an attempt to go from room #1 to room #45, and back, in only 16 steps; to solve the riddle in room #45; and to find its solution in the book.
Sounds familiar, doesn’t it.
But don’t worry; Mr. Manson won’t be calling his attorney anytime soon. And not just because Blue Prince‘s art style is nothing like his (he employed black & white line drawings; Prince recalls such cell-shaded Telltale games as Tales From The Borderlands and The Wolf Among Us). It’s because Mr. Manson is actually involved in the creation of Blue Prince.
Though, fittingly, his specific role is a secret.
In the end,
Blue Prince seems like it’s going to be a rather intriguing puzzle game. Though whether it will also be an engaging one or a frustrating one will have to remain a puzzle itself until the game comes out this spring.
For more video game reviews, interviews, and previews, please check out the video game section of paulsemel.com, or Paul’s page on Open Critic.
