Maybe it’s a GotY contender, maybe not. Rogue-lite puzzlers are certainly uncommon. I’ll avoid spoilers here, as that’s frankly part of the joy of these games. Suffice it to say that I have reached Room 46 and leave it at that.

Blue Prince (say it quick) tasks you with finding a mystery room in an ever changing layout of connecting rooms that you select from a random pool. Most of these games have the obvious puzzles to start, and then some complex interconnected pieces as you discover more. The Rogue- portion means that you will face resets. The -lite portion means you do have access to upgrades along the path to make your life (potentially) easier. You have limited resources each day, then reset and try again.

I think Outer Wilds is one of the best game ever made. The DLC was not enjoyable to me primarily due to the repeated friction on just accessing it. It didn’t have RNG, but it did have steps you needed to repeat ad-nauseum.

I think Blue Prince does a great job is setting up a foundation that is clean, crisp, and identifiable. The puzzles themselves are interesting (some are super obtuse, especially the latter ones) and note taking is absolutely required. That said, I am tired of the artificial friction. If I have successfully completed the billiards room a dozen times in a row, I will not fail a future attempt – let me bypass it. Some rooms are so rare that you can go 20 runs without seeing them, and not quite understand the conditions of making them available – one particular room holds a critical key that is behind some rather punitive RNG. Having to ‘farm’ the RNG machine for a specific outcome is not fun game design.

Let me super clear, the path taken to reach the ‘RNG wall’ is amazing. Some of the best out there. The little bits and pieces are sharp, and learning the colors of the rooms, cross-dependencies, and interactions a neat meta aspect for future runs. When the game has minor relationships between room, the game progresses well. Every room (well, except the lavatory) has an actual purpose and likely some hidden feature. Like smaller puzzle boxes!

When you’ve done that and there’s nothing left to discovery because you need a specific set of RNG rolls to move forward, that is not fun. The latter puzzles require you to discover a complete set of uncommon rooms in order to have a chance to move forward. It makes the journey a slog, and rather than enjoying the craft of a puzzle, it turns to pure friction as you need to get the ‘right roll’ to get to the new stuff. I mean, how many times can you solve ‘two truths and a lie’ before you’ve had enough? 20? 40?

I should mention the meta progression is present but not immediately obvious. There are specific upgrades you can acquire that are permanent, and are all but mandatory to meaningfully progress. In only one case across the entire game did I reach a point of energy exhaustion before running out of other resources, which makes me wonder why energy even exists. There’s a random drop that can upgrade a random room to some new benefit, but no real way to tweak it down the road if you haven’t understood the implications of that choice. (One particular egregious super RNG mechanic deals with permanently removing crates. I saw it occur once and never met the conditions to trigger it. Once.)

I am not looking for the puzzles to be easier, at all. I am however looking at a meta progression that allows me to say ‘I’ve mastered this, let me see what’s next’. It feels like I’m asking to skip a tutorial at this point.

One last bit regarding the story/lore. If you play this game simply for the meta aspect of solving all the puzzles, you will achieve that in a reasonable timeframe. If you play this game to understand the larger story/lore context, you won’t get that unless you get most of the achievements. Not that the achievements themselves unlock lore, but that they are all bound to uncovering every RNG nook. As of the drafting of this post, there are ~15% of players who have reached the first achievement, getting to Room 46. It is a journey.

Back to the GotY point from above. If you like puzzle boxes inside 3 layers of puzzle boxes, and that they change every other attempt, then do I have a game for you! It sticks to its design principles throughout, rewards discovery like few other games I’ve ever played, and for a long time gives a sense of progression. It’s certainly an achievement. Just not sure it’s one I can fully appreciate.