Blue Prince: A Masterclass in Mystery and Room Drafting

You step into the shoes of Simon, a teenage heir to Mount Holly Estate. To claim your inheritance, you must find the mysterious Room 46—a room everyone insists doesn’t exist. But the mansion is a living puzzle: Each day, the house resets, and you must rebuild it by drafting rooms behind every door you open. The puzzles, notes, and clues you uncover help you piece together the secrets of the estate, the family, and the broader world around you.

Blue Prince solves the classic “one and done” problem of traditional puzzle games. Most puzzle adventures grow stale once you’ve solved them; Blue Prince brings you back again and again, thanks to procedural generation, a shifting narrative, and the thrill of mastering its unique room drafting system.

Blue Prince balances puzzle-solving, storytelling, and roguelike progression. It’s a game for inquisitive minds, perfect for players who enjoy detective work, logic challenges, and uncovering hidden stories. It’s not a free-to-play title; expect to pay for a premium experience.

Compatibility is straightforward: If you have a modern PC, PlayStation 5, or Xbox Series X/S, you’re good to go. There’s no mobile version, and while a Steam Deck is technically playable, some runs can take an hour-plus—so handheld play isn’t always convenient.

Blue Prince runs on the Unity engine, a popular and robust platform for indie games. The development is led by Dogubomb, an indie team with a clear vision for their puzzle opus. Updates have rolled out regularly, with detailed, spoiler-sensitive patch notes aimed at helping both newcomers and veterans. The community is passionate: forums and social media are buzzing with theories, walkthroughs, and shared discoveries of Blue Prince secrets.

Performance is smooth on modest hardware—no high-end GPU required, though you’ll want a decent CPU and 16GB RAM for the best experience. There’s no DRM outside the digital storefronts, so you can focus on the puzzles, not on privacy worries.

The room drafting system is Blue Prince’s star feature. Each door offers three possible rooms to place, with each room type serving a different function—some give you extra moves, others hold key items, and some are dead ends. You must balance immediate needs with long-term planning, learning which rooms to prioritize and when to take risky picks.

The game also stands out for encouraging note-taking. Unlike games that log every clue for you, Blue Prince trusts—and almost requires—you to keep your own records. This feels like old-school detective work: cryptic codes, hidden safe combinations, and family histories all need to be pieced together, often across multiple runs.

Microchip locations (virtual collectibles in the game) and other secrets are scattered throughout, rewarding thorough exploration. The game doesn’t handhold; it respects your intelligence and rewards patience.

Blue Prince stands shoulder-to-shoulder with modern classics like Return of the Obra Dinn and Outer Wilds. All three games are “metroidbrainias”—progress is gated by knowledge, not keys or abilities. Where Blue Prince shines is in its procedural generation and room drafting: every run is unique, and you’re always learning, not just repeating solutions.

Return of the Obra Dinn does deduction and storytelling brilliantly, but its world is static. Outer Wilds offers an open universe to explore, but its secrets are fixed. Blue Prince combines the best of both—a shifting, evolving mansion with a deep web of interconnected mysteries. If you loved those games, Blue Prince is your next obsession.

That said, fans of pure logic puzzles (like The Witness) might miss the zen-like focus of a single, perfect puzzle. And those who dislike randomness might find the drafting system frustrating—some runs don’t go your way, no matter how smart you play.