One of the things video games do really well is absence - specificallyrecentabsence.
Games are brilliant at this kind of Marie Celeste set-up.
I don’t need actual people around.
I just want to know who, what, why?
There’s a catch, though.
And there’s a further catch.
More of a wrinkle, actually.
These rooms move around every night.
So every morning you head into the main entrance lobby where three closed doors await.
Open a door and you draft three potential rooms that might lie behind it.
Pick one and you’re off on your adventure.
You build the house by choosing which room is found behind each room.
This is because it’s seamless.
That’s the thing I love about it.
The game stuff: Blue Prince comes at players in waves.
At first, I was just trying to get as many rooms on the board during each day.
I needed to get to 46?
Fine: I’ll get to 46.
Apologies if this is causing flashbacks.
R was the number of other people that an infected person would pass Covid onto while they had it.
When I add a room, does it increase the number of doors in the building?
It’s architectural epidemiology.
Besides the doors themselves, the simplest of these resources is footsteps.
Run out of footsteps and you’re done for the day.
Alongside doors you have to consider coins, gems and keys.
Some rooms - like the chapel - take away coins as you pass.
Gems and keys, meanwhile, are all about opening doors.
Often these are the really good rooms.
Anyone can have a den, say, but who can afford an observatory?
The room with the dartboard also has a nice little bar with drinks and glasses stocked.
Recent absence indeed.)
But this is all just at the start.
Blue Prince’s waves continue.
And some of the later waves should really not be spoiled.
Suffice to say: maybe there’s more to the house than the rooms inside it.
And, crucially, maybe there’s more to specific rooms than first becomes apparent.
Can you find the code for the keypad?
I should say no more.
Another room might contain a boiler with a series of pipes and valves to manipulate.
What happened to them?
All of this spills out of that first question, where?
In game terms it’s delightful stuff because of the run-based nature of Blue Prince.
This is, inevitably, just the start of the things this game has in store for you.
And that’s the crux of this really.
Which kind of room should really always be at the outside of the grid?
When is it a waste to use one of the really good corridors?
What’s really going on inside the rooms themselves?
Blue Prince accessibility options
Colour assist and controller remapping options coming in an update.
This is the magic of spaces and architecture, if you ask me.
I fell for this more than once.
We all did, but I think I was particularly susceptible to it.
I wanted more strange possibilities from the spaces I lived around.
With Blue Prince I get that.
What an extraordinary game this is.
Blue Prince code was provided by the publisher.
