3/5 ★ – musitive's review of Blue Prince.

I've been playing a lot of puzzle games lately, and what Blue Prince manages to pull off is nothing short of incredible. However, this will have to be a game that I'm fine with not completing. I think that Blue Prince accomplishes it's goal of allowing the player to be lost in a mysterious manor full of secrets. The roguelite elements are crucial to that feeling, but it also the one element that I am most conflicted on. The biggest puzzle in the game IS the roguelite element. While some rooms have mini-game puzzles that are repeatable each run, most puzzles only need to be completed once. After a few in-game days, you'll start to create goals for yourself, which where I had the most fun. You'll have to manipulate RNG and carefully plan out room placements to shape the mansion to your desires. The RNG is a double-edged sword: it can lead to really cool, unexpected discoveries or it can flat out kill your run. Ultimately, the gameplay loop started to grow tiring for me. I tend to not love roguites (although I do have my exceptions, like Balatro and Hades). Replaying the same content over and over again without feeling like I'm making progress is my biggest issue with the genre, and that's where I felt I ended up with Blue Prince.