Saturday Morning Gaming: Blue Prince

I had about three different people in my real life tell me “Jaybird, you should really check out Blue Prince… it’s up your alley.”

The first time I heard it, I nodded politely. The second time I heard it, I started paying attention. I bought it after the third time I was told that.

And, holy cow, they were right. If you’ve been reading me long enough to know the degree to which our tastes overlap, know that I am telling you to purchase this game even if it is full price. Then we can talk about it after you’ve had some time to explore. Seriously, the game is good. And I really enjoyed how I went into it knowing nothing about the game other than that it was up my alley.

If you, like me, are merely nodding politely, I’ll give you some more details and some screenshots and you can decide whether it’s up your alley too, I guess, but it’s an awesome game. (It’s not scary! If you’re worried about it being scary, don’t worry! It’s not scary!)

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Okay, if you’re still skeptical, I can give you some more information.

In the game you are Umpty Ump, the nephew of Crazy Guy. Crazy Guy dies and leaves you his magical estate where the grounds change every day and will require your input on how to rebuild the house in such a way that you will be able to make it to the hidden 46th room in his 45-room estate.

Here’s what I mean. You start every day in the Entrance Hall. There are three doors in there.

Pick one… and the game will give you a choice of three rooms to build, like so:

You see those footsteps in the upper left corner? That’s how many “steps” you can take. Essentially, when you walk into a new room, it uses up a step (there are a handful of things you can find that give you additional steps… at first, you won’t need all of them… at first). There are different items you collect. Keys to help you unlock doors (or trunks), coins to use as a medium of exchange in a handful of places where buying/selling things is an option, and gems that get used, sometimes, when you pick what room you want to build next. You can build this room for free, that room for free, or this REALLY SWEET ROOM for a gem or two or three.

And it’s rare that I haven’t wanted to build one of the gemmy rooms.

When you either run out of rooms you can build (or run out of steps), you call it a day and you lose all of your keys, gems, and coins and start tomorrow in the Entry Hall with another blank blueprint.

Like any good rogue-lite, you can find various upgrades that will persist from day-to-day and make the run a hair less onerous (for example, I no longer start each day with zero coins).

And you build and explore the mansion again. And then again. And then again. The mansion holds a double-buttload of secrets and, moreover, it holds secrets that you don’t even *KNOW* are secrets until you find a hint that tells you “by the way, there’s been a secret under your nose the whole time”.

As you explore, you find letters that hint at old family scandals and old family secrets and old family misunderstandings that couldn’t be cleared up without breaking a very important confidence… but you’ll read those letters and then get back to trying to find a new room. Trying to find your way to the 46th.

And it’s *REALLY* good. Seriously. If your tastes overlap with mine at all, this game is right up your alley.

So… what are you playing?