I Played ‘Blue Prince’ All Weekend And The Critics Are Right, We Don’t Need To Wait For ‘GTA6’ To Dub It Game Of The Year

I love Indie games.

What they lack in budget and graphics, they make up for in gameplay, narrative, and ingenuity. When the economic risk is reduced, so is the pressure to copy and paste the latest blockbuster success with minor iterations, and we get, to our delight as gamers, something new and interesting. Something truly creative. And critics have agreed that audiences are responding to titles that prioritize gameplay over graphics.

So when I heard the internet erupting blissfully over April’s latest release “Blue Prince”, calling it the game of the year ahead of the much anticipated sixth installment of “Grand Theft Auto”, I knew I had to check it out for myself, and by ‘check it out’ I mean addictively play non-stop for an entire weekend.

“Blue Prince” ties in all the elements of the Indie games I’ve previously fallen in love with. It contains the secret codes and puzzles of games like “Chants of Sennaar” and “The Room”, the exploration and storytelling of “Firewatch”, and the shifting time loops of “Twelve Minutes” and “The Stanley Parable”.

The premise is fairly simple. In an unconventional last will and testament that plucks a similar chord to Netflix’s The Life List, your late great-uncle has bequeathed his estate to you on the condition that you locate the mansion’s hidden 46th room.

Gameplay requires you to “draft” the many rooms of the mansion each day, choosing from a limited randomized list, and systematically slotting them in a 5×9 grid as you work to navigate to the antechamber of the hidden room. The grids or “blueprints” as the title’s play on words implies are complicated by dead ends, locked doors, entrance fees, and much more.

You collect items and clues that unlock more permanent changes to the property that aid you on your quest and unearth a whole slew of family secrets. There is no official “hint button”, which makes the game all the more challenging and rewarding, but there are a reasonable number of hints strategically placed to help you get going. Rich in complexity and creativity, you won’t be able to quit until you’ve solved every last puzzle.

The game encourages you to jot down anything interesting in a notebook, but my personal advice is to organize everything in a spreadsheet. My experience as a former “Hunt A Killer” murder mystery box subscriber, helped guide my strategy to categorize things like names, dates, places, and codes to fuel my gameplay.

But the beauty of “Blue Prince”, as its developers continuously reiterate throughout the game, is that there are many ways to play. Everyone will find and gravitate towards the strategies that work best for them, until they hit their own stride toward unlocking its complex mysteries.