Blue Prince

One of the best puzzle games ever made, but excessive RNG requirements for solving puzzles create unnecessary frustration.

Introduction

Blue Prince is something special. After 55 hours with this roguelike puzzle game, I can confidently say it's one of the best puzzle games ever made. The combination of roguelike mechanics with deep puzzle solving creates something refreshing that I haven't seen executed this well before. This game nails that balance for most of its runtime, creating puzzles that demand real thought and patience. But the excessive RNG required for certain puzzle solutions, especially in the mid to late game, holds it back from being one of 2025's absolute greats.

Puzzles That Demand Your Attention

This game requires notetaking, and that's always a plus for me. Hints and clues are sprinkled across several hours of gameplay, which might not work for everyone but absolutely worked for me. There's something incredibly satisfying about finally solving a puzzle when you connect dots from notes you took three hours ago. I ended up with pages and pages of notes, some of which meant nothing in the end, or maybe they did. I honestly don't know because I chose to stay completely blind about this game from start to finish and even after beating it.

The puzzle complexity increases as you progress, which was a huge relief. Going into a roguelike puzzle game, I was worried that with enough runs I'd eventually just know all the answers and the challenge would evaporate. That still might be true for some players, but it wasn't my experience across 55 hours. The game kept finding ways to surprise me and present new challenges that required actual problem solving rather than just pattern recognition.

Quality of Life Issues

After many hours of doing the same things over and over, the lack of quality of life features starts to wear on you. I really wish the game let you skip cutscenes, move faster, or at least had faster animations and fewer popups. These might seem like minor complaints, but in a game where you're repeating certain actions across dozens of runs, the friction adds up. It's not a dealbreaker, but it does make the late game feel more tedious than it needs to be.

The RNG Problem

Here's my major issue with Blue Prince, and it's what keeps this from being one of the greats of 2025. The baffling amount of RNG required for some puzzle solutions is frustrating. The game's core mechanic is drafting rooms, and having RNG in that system makes perfect sense for a roguelike. But when you have puzzles that require several specific room combinations to be present in the same run, or need a specific room to spawn adjacent to another room, the game starts asking for the stars to align.

This becomes absurd when you spend significant time in a run exhausting all your room choices trying to get the combination you need to progress, only to hit dead ends with absolutely no progress made. You're back to square one, starting a new run with nothing to show for the previous attempt except wasted time. It's endless trial and error that ruins an amazing concept.

Mitigation That Falls Short

To be fair, the game does offer permanent upgrades and ways to manipulate some of the RNG. You can store an item for a future run, which helps create some continuity between attempts. These systems show the developers understood the RNG could be a problem and tried to address it. But in my opinion, the incredible amount of RNG in the mid to late game massively outweighs these mitigation attempts. The tools you're given to fight the randomness just aren't strong enough to make those frustrating puzzle requirements feel reasonable.

Verdict

Blue Prince is an incredible puzzle game that does so many things right. The puzzle design is among the best I've experienced, and the way it layers complexity while maintaining the roguelike structure is impressive. The notetaking and hint discovery create those amazing "aha" moments that make puzzle games so satisfying. But the excessive RNG requirements for certain puzzle solutions, especially as you progress, create frustration that didn't need to exist. Combined with the lack of quality of life features that would smooth out the repetitive elements, the game stumbles just before reaching greatness. It's still absolutely worth playing if you love puzzle games, and those 55 hours were largely excellent. Just be prepared for some runs that end in frustration through no fault of your own, where the game simply didn't give you the rooms you needed no matter how well you played.