Of all the primary game genres, puzzle games probably have the most variability in difficulty and style, which isn't something I had really considered until I sat down to write this game review.

Candy Crush is a puzzle game, so is Tetris, and so is Baba is You. All of these games are truly excellent in their own way, but I'd hardly consider them similar in any way whatsoever. Blue Prince is... well, it's like none of them.

Blue Prince is a "think outside the box" kind of puzzle game, something more akin to a massive Escape Room. It's so rare in video games that I can only think of one other, Secret World, which had these types of puzzles throughout the MMO (which was a pretty odd genre mash-up its self). In Secret World you'd have to do things like notice that a car's lights were flashing in Morse Code and hand-translate the code to text to solve something. Expect puzzles like this in Blue Prince, where the answers won't be handed to you easily, and may not be relevant until much later, if at all.

There are clues and mysteries everywhere, even in the Security Room.

The brief plot is your Uncle has died and left you his estate with one condition: You can only claim it if you find the 46th room of the 45 room mansion. The challenge-cherry-on-top is you can only enter a limited number of rooms per day, every door you open will be one of 3 random rooms to select from, and every day those rooms reset. Basically, it's a card-drafting-outside-the-box-thinking-puzzle-game. Making it a truly unique mix of sub-genres.

Every door has 3 choices, but which choice will lead you towards your goal today?

Due to the nature of puzzle games like this I can only reveal small bits without spoiling things, but suffice to say, if you like to solve mysteries well beyond the skills and abilities of the Scooby-Doo gang, just go buy this game (or get it on GamePass like I did).

A little magnification may be just what you need to read the fine print.

My wife is a true puzzle master, and alongside several Discord friends, we set off to solve all of the mysteries within the mansion. She'd call out suspicious items in every room, jot down notes in a notebook (yes, real paper!) and recall names, dates, places, objects, and more with ease as we navigated the ever-changing mansion. I strongly urge you to do the same and play this game with notebook in hand and as many extra sets of eyes and brains as possible. The story unfolds naturally as you find more rooms, more mysteries, letters, notes, and scribbled drawings.

Just one page of my wife's notes, blurred to prevent spoilers.

When we finally reached the 46th room my wife literally applauded the developers and I was quick to join her. Like any true puzzle though, the final solution only lead to more questions and more puzzles to solve. We're buzzing with excitement to dive back in and uncover more mysteries about our dear Uncle Herbert, our mother Mary, and the plot that entwined them all.

Overall, I haven't had an experience like this in gaming in quite a long time. This is a 10/10 for puzzle fans, but make no mistake about it, if a game that requires taking notes on paper sounds like torture, this is not your game.

P.S. If you DO enjoy this kind of thing we highly recommend taking a look at Journal 29, an interactive puzzle book by Dimitris Chassapakis. It's a household favorite of this puzzle-solving husband/wife duo.