Blue Prince review

• Available on PS5, Xbox Series X/S and PC
• Released on 10 April 2025
• Developed by Dogubomb

You know you’ve got something special on your hands when a game is near-impossible to walk away from. That’s Blue Prince in a nutshell: a roguelike exploration-puzzle game that’s equal parts addictive and inventive.

The premise? Simple enough: explore the ever-changing manor of your dead relative, and try to find the elusive 46th room. Do that, and the whole estate is yours. Easy, right? Not quite. Behind every door lies a new blueprint, and every blueprint brings a new challenge.

Each in-game day starts with 50 steps. Every time you enter a new room, you lose one. It sounds like a lot, but it’s not long before you’re budgeting steps like they’re gold. Some rooms even eat up more than one: a gymnasium takes two, while a trip into the weights room will cut your remaining steps in half.

Then there’s everything else to keep track of: locked doors that require keys, fancier rooms that need gems to access, and the occasional electronic door that only opens with a keycard. It’s a lot to juggle. But when you finally reach that one room you’ve been trying to track down for hours? So satisfying.

Inside these rooms are puzzles — deliciously layered and clever ones. Sometimes they’ll help you uncover the secrets of the mansion, other times they’re red herrings. But solving them always feels rewarding. The randomness of each run means no two games are the same, and even when you don’t make huge progress, it never feels like time wasted.

Your knowledge builds over time. Discovering the usefulness of a mail room, for instance, or learning you can stash an item in the coat room for your next run — it all adds up. There are even permanent upgrades tucked away if you’re lucky enough to find them, like an outbuilding with perks that can make future runs a little smoother.

That said, hitting zero steps after a great run can sting a little, especially if you feel like you were on the brink of a breakthrough. But that’s all part of the loop — every run teaches you something new, and the thrill of figuring out just one more piece of the mansion’s mystery keeps you coming back.

There’s story here too, subtly woven into the walls of the house. It’s easy to miss, and you can absolutely finish the game without piecing together much of the narrative, but if you’re curious, there’s a rewarding, eerie lore waiting to be uncovered.

Blue Prince won’t be for everyone. If you’re not into puzzles or you hate the idea of starting fresh every time, it might not click. But for fans of roguelikes and brain-teasers, it’s something genuinely special: a game that burrows under your skin in the best way possible.