Blue Prince | Xbox Review

We’re only a third of the way through 2025, and it’s already looking to be arguably one of the best years of gaming in a long time. Not only have there been hit after hit, there’s been a ton of surprises. Blue Prince from developer Dogubomb (published by Raw Fury) has definitely been the best surprise for me thus far, and it’s the game I want more people to play the most. It satisfies in ways I never imagined.

I Like to Keep the Kitchen Tidy

Blue Prince is a puzzle game at its core. You play as a fourteen year old inheritor of Mt. Holly, “the mysterious manor with shifting rooms”. Upon arriving at the estate on day one, you find a letter from your lost relative. The letter contains your first hints as to how exactly you should explore your new home. This subtle tutorial explains that the mansion rebuilds itself each day, and that you have to build the floor plan in order to reach a specific room on the north side of the property. You’re teased with the promise of learning exactly what your deceased relative wants you to learn before inhabiting the residence.

Navigating your way through Mt. Holly consists of placing rooms, one by one. The game plays in three dimensions as you explore the mansion looking for clues and learning seemingly countless secrets that lead you to the ultimate mystery. You start in the main entrance with three doors in front of you. When you choose to walk through one, you’re given the option to choose from one of three different randomly-generated room types. This is where you’re also given a map of the manor, which is a perfect nine-by-five grid with one room marked at the top as your destination. Each room may have one, two, or three corridors. Some may contain much-needed keys to open locked doors, gems to purchase more valuable rooms, or puzzles to solve. These puzzles often reveal more items, more available rooms, or eventually ways to make further exploration easier.

The catch here is that you have a limited number of steps before you’re exhausted and have to rest for the day. Each time you enter a new room, it costs one step, and once those steps are depleted, you have no choice but to go on to the next day. When that happens, the house resets itself, and you have to start over, hopefully this time more equipped to better explore.

One Plus Two Plus Two Plus One

I know what you’re thinking: Scott’s recommending yet another roguelike. Yes, I definitely love the genre, but this one hits quite a bit differently. There’s no action or combat; it’s purely puzzle-based. I will admit that it can sometimes get frustrating becoming a victim of the random nature of the game. More times than not, I backed myself into a corner with no way to proceed forward. But restarting never felt like a letdown to me as long as I learned something on my previous run. Any shred of information equips you on your next day of exploration, and that’s way more fun to me than stat upgrades that are attributed to this genre. It’s a refreshing twist where your goal is to solve more and more puzzles to unravel the next clue to both progress as well as uncover the game’s narrative.

That’s not to say there aren’t permanent upgrades as well. Telling you exactly what those are would ruin the surprise and discovery present in the game. Uncovering these secrets quite literally had me giddy with excitement. Not only was it rewarding to solve a puzzle that made me feel clever for figuring it out, but it also made future progress significantly easier each time.

The brilliance of Blue Prince, however, lies in its puzzle structure. Some are straightforward: solve an increasingly-difficult puzzle in a specified room to gain keys or gems. These range from “two truths and a lie” puzzles (where you have to figure out which of three boxes contain a prize) to an order of operations brainteaser involving a dart board that might have you grabbing your calculator. Most of the rest are logic puzzles that involve first figuring out exactly how you’re suppose to solve them. And that’s really the most fun part. Clues for how to solve the puzzles are often in other rooms and some require you to have outside-the-game knowledge in order to solve them. I found myself taking notes on my phone and taking pictures of clues to come back to later. I don’t know if I’ve done that since the NES era, and it felt fresh and exciting.

Blue Prince Final Verdict

When I finally rolled credits on Blue Prince, I experienced a sense of accomplishment that I haven’t had in quite a long time. Believe it or not, I stuck to my hard and fast rule of not Googling answers to puzzle solutions. I did, however, resign myself to turning the puzzler into a multiplayer game of sorts. No, I didn’t actually pass the controller or work together online with a buddy. Instead, we compared notes and gave each other hints about what to do next without actually spoiling the fun surprises. These “water cooler” moments turned into thirty to forty-minute phone call conversations that were just as much fun to experience as playing the game.

Blue Prince is a dark horse candidate for game of the year. Its random nature might be a problem for some players, but the brilliant puzzle design more than makes up for it. Add in an intriguing story with a satisfying conclusion, and you’ve got a recipe for an addicting puzzler that rewards its players on many levels. Even after achieving the game’s main goal, there’s still much more to explore, puzzles to solve, and checklists to cross off. It’s easy to recommend this title, if nothing more than working through the mysteries with a partner. With the busy season of video games upon us, don’t let this one pass you by. I feel confident you’ll hear me talking about this one again at the beginning of next year.

To hear me talk more about Blue Prince, be sure to listen to the April 23rd, 2025 episode of The Gaming Outsider Podcast around the 39:02 time stamp.

This review is based on a Game Pass copy of Blue Prince. It is also available on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC via Steam.