After playing the game for 10+ hours and dropping it out of sheer frustration, I came to the conclusion that I must have been playing a vastly different game than the people praising it.

The first hour was great. I was constantly encountering new rooms and solving puzzles. The many times where the game decided to give me nothing but rooms leading to dead ends was annoying, but I still had things to explore in the next run so it didn't matter that much. After that first hour, the game became a slog. I encountered the same rooms, solved the same two puzzles for resources and was constantly praying for the RNG to give me something new. There is some RNG manipulation, but not enough to mitigate the boring part of the game. There are a few interesting overarching puzzles, but most of them are wrapped in multiple layers of RNG.

For example, for one puzzle you need a specific item that randomly spawns, use it in a room that randomly spawns which you need to unlock with another room that also randomly spawns. It took me 6 hours for the game to give me a run where I got all three of those things in a single run. The reward? Some resources that I have next to no use for and some clues that I can only experiment with if the RNG deems me worthy.

I have absolutely no idea where the praise for the game comes from. Maybe this game is perfect for those who are really into roguelites, but for me personally it just feels like the game is wasting my time for no reason at all.

OP here: I can see how that would be frustrating and I do touch on that in my piece. It’s not my job to convince you that you should like it, but I would say that the mystery and atmosphere and sense of discovery is what pulled me through the first hours where I wasn’t sure what was going on. If those things don’t chime with you, it can be a slog. What I’ve told other people is that it’s better not to view the game as a race but more a place to explore.

I generally have the same frustration with roguelites as you seem to: every time I start a run, it feels like I'm gambling whether I'll have any fun at all. A bad seed or start can mean losing in ways that feel unfair or boring, like in balatro if you get a bunch of bad hands and bad jokers, you struggle through rounds and hands until you either lose or get an interesting combination. I don't need that kind of gambling in my life when there's tons of games out there where I know I will have fun.

E: I still quite like Balatro - when it works it's a blast. I'll also still try out Blue Prince because people I respect seem to like it.

One common mantra about most roguelites is that every run can be a successful run if you play your cards right. Some will be harder, in others you’ll become unstoppable, but the general idea is that once you get good enough you should be able to win runs. I’m not sure if this holds and is extremely dependent on how balanced the game is, but I think it’s a sane way to approach the genre since it pushes you to improve and generally becomes a rule once you become good enough at some of the games.

I've played for about an hour and agree with your assessment. I still have it installed but I doubt I will revisit it.

I've switched to South of Midnight and it's amazing. Not everyone's type of game - and certainly not a puzzle game - but the graphics, music, story, and gameplay combine to make it one of the best games I've played in a long, long time.

I was also sad to hear about how much RNG is in the game, that is a detractor to what seems like a well put together experience otherwise. If you wanted to give something else a try, and have a PC, I made a first-person puzzle game that's (hopefully) more akin to Antichamber and the puzzle bits of Outer Wilds, called Chroma Zero. There's a demo on steam if you just want to dip your toe in. https://store.steampowered.com/app/3121470/Chroma_Zero/

I've played about an hour and am getting the feeling I won't see it through to an ending.

For anyone wanting a non-RNG puzzler set around a large building I highly recommend https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorelei_and_the_Laser_Eyes

Having played both of these games I agree that Lorelei stands out as a sort of foil for blue prince. And my opinion is that that is a huge endorsement of blue prince. Lorelei’s puzzles felt so inelegant and largely detached from the ideas being explored. Felt like a logic puzzle book, with some esoteric story stuff on top that just did not keep me interested.

Blue prince’s rng is quite well thought out imo. Once you pick up on some of the unwritten rules about the room drafting system and start building strategies around what to prioritize and how to adjust your goals, it starts feeling a lot like many other popular card-based strategy games.

There are weak points, for sure, and your contrasting it with Lorelei makes sense. But Lorelei’s puzzles felt so plain and unchallenging. I like that blue prince is keeping me on my toes.

> solved the same two puzzles for resources

I'm eager to play more, but this is something that was a worry already an hour in. The logic puzzle I did was good enough and seems like it can be generated procedurally well enough, the "math" puzzle I did wasn't. There's more than that, right?

> and some clues that I can only experiment with if the RNG deems me worthy.

And on top of that, it's hard to know if those clues actually will matter in other runs. I found a safe code in one run. If it takes three runs before the RNG decides the room with the safe will be there, will the code be randomized? I've been trying to avoid spoilers so it's hard to know what matters.

> many times where the game decided to give me nothing but rooms leading to dead ends

Since each room can only appear once, you can minimize this by strategically choosing to place dead end rooms early on in the lower southeast/southwest, and edges generally. Then always make sure you have gems as you move north, so you can usually pick good rooms.

Having multiple ongoing goals helps mitigate being locked out from one.

This is 'article' is just an advertisement

OP here: Is there anything that makes you say that other than the fact that it’s positive and I received a review key? I’ve written about plenty of games I didn’t enjoy that I got for free (e.g. for judging awards) including games that were very well-received, like Viewfinder and Pacific Drive.

I haven't seen a single good review from anyone I trust, most people are saying it's not good.

FWIW Adrian Hon (the writer) is easily the game reviewer that I trust the most! I am quite sensitive to false positives with games - it really sucks to spend a few hours on a game that you drop - and my false positive rate with his reviews is very low.

(I have no affiliation with this post beyond being a fan of Adrian's writing and work + haven't played Blue Prince yet, although I'm very likely to play it because of this review)

For me, a dead end after 10 hours of playing feels like frustration. I don't like starting games I can't finish, especially if I rage quit. It stays with me as a painful memory, the opposite of entertainment.

This is fair enough.

When I bought the original Brothers, it took me maybe 10 hours to finish, if even that. It was well worth the cost, amazing game. (Apparently the remake was badly done...)

Some games are in the "experience" category, $30 for 10 amazing hours, great deal. $30 for 10 hours and then a rage quit, not a good deal.

I tried playing this after buying it, but it was not what I expected. There was a lot of FPS moving around and aiming and that makes me nauseous so I had to turn it off. I guess there's no refunds on PS games unfortunately.

I have been playing this game and it is really a blast. The tutorial note cards strongly recommend using a pen+paper while playing and I can second that as pretty much required for some of the more "meta" puzzles.

Worth noting that I believe it is also on Gamepass and whatever Sony's version of Gamepass is called if you already had those services and wished to save a few bucks.

Thanks for this callout, I was looking at the reviews here and on Steam and waffling, but I've got Game Pass.

Also, re: notepad writing: if you've got two monitors, it Alt+Tabs just fine. I'm writing this as the opening credits play.

> The tutorial note cards strongly recommend using a pen+paper while playing

This is my largest complaint. The game should really have a notepad built in. It doesn't need to write down clues for me, but it would be nice to not have to find where my notes were if I put the game down for a long time. Is it that it's a console release?

if you play on PC through Steam, Steam at least has a notes function in the overlay nowadays: https://www.polygon.com/2023/4/28/23702656/steam-beta-update...

Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure adding Game Pass games to Steam isn't really compatible with that. It looks like there was a "notes" app for the Windows "Game Bar", but it's no longer available.

So many games desperately need this feature. Almost all games could benefit from it to some degree. I see zero negative consequences to adding it to every single game in existence just in case someone wants it.

> I don’t like what they do to me. I shudder to think how they could supercharge builders like Dorfromantik, Carcassonne, and Castles of Mad King Ludwig.

A very similar mechanic is used in the popular board game Betrayal at House on the Hill. That game's arguably even worse because it has stat upgrades!

Already contender for my favorite puzzle game of the year. I would compare it to Outer Wilds or Animal Well, but that would do all three games a disservice. Blue Prince is a thoroughly unique game that is worth your time. And like another commenter said, a pad of paper is _absolutely required_.

> As with other roguelikes, you can unlock persistent upgrades that smooth over repetitive parts of the game.

I think those are called rogue-lites, for the reason that real rogue-likes (e.g. nethack, DCSS) actually wipe out all your progress on each attempt.

At this point, times have shifted, and meta-progression is usually considered an aspect of modern roguelikes. There was a trend of calling them "rogue-lites" but that's faded and now games like ADOM and DCSS are "Classic roguelikes"

It's not a hard and fast rule or anything, just what I've observed in gaming discussions.

That’s a shame, because meta-progression ultimately undermines the spirit of these classic games.

Roguelikes were designed to play like arcade games in that you’d always start over from scratch and try to get a high score. Most attempts ended in failure but as you got better at the game it was reflected in your score. Even after players achieve a high degree of expertise they still find the games challenging to win and so they keep playing and enjoying them for years to come.

Meta-progression takes away the from-scratch element and just allows you to win through sheer persistence, chipping away at the problem until it’s easy enough for you to finish it in one final run. But then what? The game is no longer the same challenge it was when you first started. It’s like a mountain that keeps getting smaller every time you attempt to climb it, until it’s finally shrunk to the size of an anthill. This is not a recipe for a game you can play for many years.

Ultimately, what meta-progression does is turn a roguelike into a standard narrative RPG just like any other. This is one where the player’s goal is to reach the end of the game and that’s it, not to learn the game’s systems and reach a high level of mastery.

Traditional roguelike is the term I see on Reddit and Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/tags/en/Traditional+Roguelike

Traditional roguelikes seem cool in theory, but I like co-op for most of my PvE content, and like most turn-based games, no co-op to be had there.

Indeed, the distinction used to be useful. But now, it's not useful because honest-to-God roguelikes are just not getting made outside hobby projects. Meanwhile, roguelites have become a core pillar of modern gaming, artistically and commercially. I think calling roguelites roguelikes is perfectly fine. It's simply what the genre became.

That's horrible, but I can't stop you.

NetHack does have ghost files (where you find the levels previous characters died on, including their ghost and their possibly-cursed loot). It's definitely not the same kind of progression as in modern rogue-lites, but it can be a boost to pick up the equipment you found on a previous run.

Do note that enemies can also pick up that old equipment and use it against you. I lost a promising character during the last November NetHack Tournament [1] because a gnome picked up a wand of fire from someone’s grave and blasted me with it.

Yeah that’s another difference. When you play NetHack online [2] [3] you run into the ghosts and graves of other players, not just your own previous characters. I have run into levels online with the ghosts of 3 different people who were all killed by various dangerous monsters that kept accumulating more powerful equipment from each victim. It can be quite ridiculous!

[1] https://tnnt.org/

[2] https://alt.org/nethack/

[3] https://www.hardfought.org/

Been wanting to build a metroidvaniaroguelike on evenings and weekends and this gives me a few ideas to noodle on... thanks for sharing

I just picked this up. Curious if this will be one I can play with the kids while we are going to bed in the evenings. For a long time, that was prime time to play Slay the Spire, as it will get them to go to sleep. :D

I'd imagine it probably will get them to go to sleep, but mostly because they'll be watching a lot of walking up and down corridors.

Cool. Just wanted to make sure it wasn't overly dark in tone.

I also played the Stanley Parable recently, and that is one that has a few sections that are a touch much for the kids.

It's got a bedtime story kind of vibe.

OP: A single giveaway just popped up on SteamGifts today:

https://www.steamgifts.com/giveaway/bloms/blue-prince

Is this you?