As of last night, I’ve officially rolled credits onBlue Prince. I’ve been left feeling a little uneasy. I don’t like to walk away from games when there’s still a lot of stuff to do in them, but to say thatBlue Prince is packed to the brim with puzzleswould be a massive understatement. There are countless threads that I found where despite nearly 20 hours of pulling, I never discovered where they led.
Despite the countless mysteries that still need solving,I’ve decided that it’s time for me to walk away from Blue Prince. I’ve gotten the experience I wanted out of it and it’s time for me to move on, but I still can’t shake the feeling that I’m leaving some incredible puzzles untouched.
What I’ve come to appreciate about Blue Prince, however, is that it’s a lesson in acceptance and letting go.
This article contains spoilers for the puzzle elements that I left unsolved in Blue Prince.
What Was All That About?
Spoilers, I guess, but what was up with the chess pieces in all the rooms? I took dutiful notes on which pieces were in which rooms and which color each piece was, but what was I supposed to actually do with that information? I eventually foundsomething– trying to be vague here – thatmighthave had something to do with them, but I wasn’t able to clock how the information I wrote down interacted with thethingI found.
What did all the clocks do? I mean, I found one thing that needed meto interact with it on a specific date and time, but that couldn’t have been it, right? There are clocks in almost every room, they can’t all be for a single puzzle that isn’t even solved inside the estate, right?
Seriously, what were those visions from the fortune telling machine supposed to tell me? I saw four or five of them and while the first two gave me some very direct puzzle hint solutions, the rest of the bunch told me about stuff that never happened or, perhaps more accurately, that I didn’t have the information to even understand.
Why can I spin every globe in the house? What does that even do? Is that a puzzle? Is that just a cute little detail? I don’t believe this game has cute little details, everything feels far too intentional for anything — even something so small — to be completely insignificant.
Knowing When It’s Time To Walk Away
Feel free to answer my questions down in the comments if you know them, but I’ve got about a hundred more loose ends that I never was able to follow up on. I hate having to walk away from a game like this, but I kind of feel like I have no choice.
I figured out how to get inside the antechamber andenter Blue Prince’s secret 46th room(something I rightly figured would roll the game’s credits) about four hours before I was able to actuallydothat. The game’s roguelite elements stood in the way of me completing my goal for about seven long in-game days,which, frankly, was incredibly frustrating.
I understand that the game shouldn’t be played with a direct goal in mind. It’s best to work on several puzzles all at the same time, so that when one thread gets interrupted thanks to the unpredictability of the estate’s layout, you have multiple other things to work on in that run, but even thoughI had a lot of questions surrounding about a million different aspects of Blue Prince, I didn’t have anything particularly concrete to go on.
After finally getting all the stars to align, reaching the antechamber, the 46th room, and hitting credits, I thought for a moment about following up on the loose threads scattered across the estate’s grounds. Then I thought about the four additional hours of time I put into the game to try and finishonepuzzle on account of the RNG, and thought better of it.
I just couldn’t bring myself to spend more time wandering aimlessly hoping that I’d get lucky enough toget the boiler room, the pump room, and the laboratory all at onceto start moving the needle on a puzzle. I had a fun time with Blue Prince and I’m happy for anyone who’s deep into Blue Prince’s post-game, but I’ve closed my notebook, and now I think it’s time for me to let it go.
