Every review or video I have seen about Blue Prince has spent at least a bit of time dealing with the title, often doing an “oh, I get it!” moment as though it was happening just then.  While my sample size is small, it does seem like an obvious go-to gag to avoid at this point, so I am just going to say it is a homonym and leave it at that.  (Also, look at me playing a semi-new game!)

Blue Prince, BP going forward, is a rogue-like, pseudo deck building, puzzle game that was in the top ten list for the best scoring games in Fantasy Critic League in 2025.  It got high marks all around and won some indie awards, even with Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 sucking all the oxygen out of the room.

Anyway, lots of good press and it was marked down during the Steam Winter Sale 2025, so I grabbed a copy and then started playing it after I wrote my speculation as to what I might play this year, but before it went live.  Anyway, mark that one off the list.

The premise of the game is… well, I am just going to steal from the Wikipedia article.

The player takes the role of Simon P. Jones, who has been willed the Mt. Holly Estate, a mansion owned by his deceased great uncle Herbert S. Sinclair. The one stipulation in Herbert’s will is that Simon must locate a hidden 46th room within the mansion in order to secure his inheritance. Failure to reach that room within the span of a single day means Simon must start the search fresh the next day, as the house’s architecture is rearranged overnight.

Basically, you start each day walking into the entry hall which has three doors.  When you click on one of the doors you are given three possible rooms you can draft… because blueprints… see, that was the thing about the title… and you must pick one.

Pick one of Three Choices

You keep doing that to build out the mansion… technically you’re the one rearranging the layout every day I suppose… in something akin to Carcassonne… minimal boardgame knowledge achievement unlocked… only constrained by the outer walls of the mansion layout.

See, it says Blueprint right there

So you build out the mansion, room by room, constrained by a few factors.

First, there are the rooms themselves, some of which have one, two, or three exits, and some of which have none.  Having a door to work from is clutch and many sessions of mine have ended when the draw on the last free door yields choices which give you no path forward.

That was the problem in the image above.  All out of doors.

Then there are locked doors, rooms with prices, and rooms with costs.  You have three common items you can accumulate, keys, gems, and gold.  When you get to a locked door, you will need a key to open it in order to proceed.  Out of keys and only locked doors available?  You’re done for the day.

Then there are gems.  You can see in the draft screen shot above that the Observatory costs one gem to draft.  No gems, no luck.

Coins can be used to buy things, but there also rooms that cost a coin to pass through.

And then there are steps.  You start with a pool of steps you can take, consuming one with each room you enter.  Bedrooms will restore some steps, some rooms require extra steps to pass through them.  Initially steps will not be much of a constrained as you’ll box your way into ending your day.

When you’ve done that… run out of doors, have no keys, or run out of steps… they day will end and you will get a little summary of how you did.

The end of day 7… not a great day…

My reaction on my first day play through was kind of “well, that’s easy enough… but I am not sure what the draw here really is.”

And then, two hours later, when I was still playing, doing “one more day”… yeah, that was kind of the indicator that maybe there was a hook in there.

One of the joys of the rogue-like genre is the easy “go, go again, and again…” nature.

Another is the discovery of new things.  There are a wide range of rooms, some of which you need to get to have other rooms become available in the pool of possible rooms, something even mentioned on a sign in the pool room.

Pool Rules from the Pool Room

Some rooms come with specific resources, like keys or gems, others have the possibility of having items that will help you in your daily task.

The ivory die

And some rooms give you information.  In the security room you can see what is up in other possible rooms.

Security cameras everywhere

Over in the library you can get information about all the rooms, as well as some insights into your attempts so far, such as the rooms you have drafted the most or which ones you have passed on.

There is also the store room, where you can leave an item to pick up later, the mail room, which gets a package you can open the next time you arrive… when the RNG lets you draft it again… or the freezer, which freezes your gem, key, and coin count so they return with you the next day.

All of which is great, but then there is the downside of rogue-likes, their primary defining characteristic after randomness… that when you fail you have to start again.  Run out of doors, be left with locked doors and no keys, use up all your steps, and your day is over and you must begin once again in the entry way.

Day 23 was going so well

Nothing can be as disheartening that getting so close to the Antechamber, the gateway to room 46, though getting in there is a task on its own.

The Antechamber entry from the Library

At the end of the day you have to start all over again.  Mostly.

There are a few things that persist between days.  If you get the Foundation room, that remains in place where you first drew it.  There are some updates that carry over.  There are places like the store room.

And if you have upgraded a room… then it stays upgraded.

Room upgrades available

So you do gain something through repeated days on the same save.  It isn’t total rogue-like where the slate is wiped clean when you start again.

And there is a whole story to unravel and piece together through letters and post cards and envelopes scattered about the place and pictures on the wall and inscriptions and what not.

It is an easy enough title to pick up when you have a bit of time… and also easy to keep playing, at least until you are so close only to run out of keys or doors or steps and you have to start a new day.  And then it can be an easy game to put down for a bit as well.

The curse of the rogue-likes.