Boiling Steam
How long is too long before something “gets good”? The first few episodes of a TV series? 50 pages of a novel? What about 5-10 hours of a ~30-hour game? At what point do you give up on something, not sure if it is you or it? That was my dilemma in playing the highly lauded Blue Prince, a 2025 indie puzzle “roguelite” game from developers Dogubomb. I had heard good things, and even if I don’t play much in the puzzle genre, it had some familiar mechanics (roguelite, strategy, deck drafting sort of). So I was excited to have a review copy. But it just never landed for me, never making it to something I wanted to see through. And really, I dreaded a run ending to start a new one, the opposite of what any run-based game needs. I was waiting to get over an early hump to see the game open up, but I couldn’t, or wouldn’t, make it over. Drafting a room, with red ones generally a negative, but at least the Chapel gives you a path forward. You can’t rotate the placement. (Screenshots are all from the Steam Deck.) In browsing the community a little, I found I wasn’t alone, if a clear minority. And that doesn’t make it a “bad” game by any means. More like one that didn’t hit for me, because of me (and the genre?) and its own missteps, I would say. There’s a lot that is well done, new, and intriguing in Blue Prince, that I might one day try again. Right now, though, I don’t want to walk through the random corridors of Mt. Holly, not to unravel a mystery, not to unlock more of the game, and not to see if it really gets that good. It has had my time, and I’m not getting that back.
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