The first time I stepped inside the mysterious mansion of adventure puzzle game Blue Prince—and I'm talking about the first time I played a demo way back in March of 2024—I noticed something interesting about one of its rooms.
I won't say what it was that I noticed—I'm going to be obnoxiously vague throughout this piece because I don't want to spoil anything for anyone—but it had to do with something I saw resting on a crowded shelf, a bit of decoration, clutter. I saw similar decorations in a few other rooms. "I bet that's part of some puzzle," I thought.
I didn't have time to do anything about it in the demo, but when I played a nearly full build of Blue Prince in August of last year, I noticed the same thing again. Even when I "finished" the game after 25 hours by reaching the elusive 46th room of the 45-room mansion, I didn't uncover that decoration's significance. I tested out one theory, but it didn't pan out and nothing was ever revealed.
I played through it again from the beginning for my Blue Prince review (I gave it a score of 92%, by the way), and I've continued playing even past that. Just the other night, now a full 40 hours after I'd finished the review, it finally happened. I solved one particular puzzle for the first time, which led me to a place I'd never been before, and while investigating this area I finally figured out the significance of that decoration I noticed over a year ago during my very first demo.
As Tears for Fears put it: "And when you think it's all over, it's not over."
In Blue Prince you draft room cards to build a 45-room mansion in hopes of somehow finding and entering the hidden 46th room. But while that's the goal of the game, it's not the end of the game, not by far. After finishing the game, it quickly becomes apparent there's plenty more to do in Blue Prince: new rooms to discover, new areas to unlock, new mysteries to explore—and in this case, at least one old mystery to take off the shelf and start working on again.
That isn't the only old mystery I'm looking at with fresh eyes. There's a story in Blue Prince, sort of a backstory slowly gleaned from notes, diaries, and a few newspaper clippings. At first it felt like just some flavor to color in the edges of the world and explain a bit more about the history of the mansion and the family that has inhabited it, but the more I learn, the more I'm convinced there's another puzzle to solve here.
One of the characters mentioned in this story went missing, and based on how well the other mysteries of Blue Prince work, I think this might be something I can find the answers for.
But I'm most excited to finally put to bed that puzzle I noticed in my earliest moments in the game last year. And I haven't cracked it yet, not completely. I now know the significance of the decoration I saw in that room the first time I played. I know what it means, why it's there, and I know how to solve the puzzle it represents, though it's still going to take some work to actually complete it.
Best of all, even after all this time, I still have no idea exactly what solving this puzzle will reveal to me or reward me with. I'm perfectly happy to play another 15 hours to find out. Blue Prince is out on Steam today.
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