This is not my beautiful house! - Talking about The Blue Prince

[Violentvixen]

More explicit instructions: If you get the shelter, figure out what date you are on and pick that day just an hour in the future, time passes while you are playing so you just need to check back before you call it a day. Note the clock in the entryway, you start your day at 8 am and it ticks forward at about a minute per 10 seconds

I assumed you couldn't set it to the same day! That was silly.

 

[JBear]

I, a gigantic idiot, was today years old when I said the name of this game out loud and got the joke.

 

[Mogri]

It's a double meaning, referring also to the (in-game) book Red Prince. I'm not entirely clear on the significance of that reference, though.

 

[Johnny Unusual]

It's a double meaning, referring also to the (in-game) book Red Prince. I'm not entirely clear on the significance of that reference, though.

but also

 

[Mogri]

Well, yes

 

[lincolnic]

We are deep in the post-game over here. I'm astounded at how much there is to do post-credits. I can't remember the last time I played a game that was able to truly surprise and delight me this much every single time I sat down with it.

 

[Violentvixen]

On the other side, we've both landed on the frustrated side of things, my spouse more so than me. As we uncovered more mysteries I could see his annoyance building that it would just never be done with this game unless we happened to get lucky. I don't mind puttering around a little more but we have limited time to play games together and would both rather spend our time on other games. My gamepass expires tomorrow and I might try and poke at a little more, but it's just too slow and unpredictable for us to enjoy playing any more. Really glad we tried it for free though!

 

[Paul le Fou]

On the other side, we've both landed on the frustrated side of things, my spouse more so than me. As we uncovered more mysteries I could see his annoyance building that it would just never be done with this game unless we happened to get lucky. I don't mind puttering around a little more but we have limited time to play games together and would both rather spend our time on other games. My gamepass expires tomorrow and I might try and poke at a little more, but it's just too slow and unpredictable for us to enjoy playing any more. Really glad we tried it for free though!

Yeah, same. I got distracted by another game but I have no real desire to go back to this when I finish that one. Blue Prince only caught my interest vaguely and frustrated me more often than not, in the end.

 

[lincolnic]

At the moment there's only one thing that's really frustrating me, but we've been able to figure out pretty much everything else we've seen so far. There are two other rooms we've seen that clearly have puzzles we haven't figured out yet, though I'm not sure if we're missing something obvious within them or if there's more info to be found elsewhere.

I kinda want to talk about post-game stuff but there's so much that it would be very easy to spoil something for someone/have someone spoil something for me, plus it kinda seems like no one else is sticking with the game anyway. Ah well.

 

[jpfriction]

I’m still plugging away!

I’ve opened 2 sanctum doors and solved one. I have no clue what to do with the Gallery and not really interested in spoilers for that one yet. Wouldn’t mind a gentle hint on where I might find a legitimate safe code. I feel like I should have come across one by now.

Other open threads to pull on:

• Paintings. I get that they are pairs that represent words with one letter differences and I assume there is an important phrase or something I’ll get from deciphering all of them
• Chess board. Pretty sure I get this one, just need the drafted rooms to align
• Chests in the reservoirs. I’ll get those all opened here soon, i have several reliable ways down there now and it is permanently drained
• Locked room just before the sanctum. Haven’t found anything promising there yet

 

[MrBlarney]

Wouldn’t mind a gentle hint on where I might find a legitimate safe code. I feel like I should have come across one by now.

One of your bullet points will help you with the theming on this. What have you been able to map out so far on the painting puzzle?

 

[jpfriction]

Ah, I think I see what you are hinting at. Clever.

 

[R.R. Bigman]

I kinda want to talk about post-game stuff but there's so much that it would be very easy to spoil something for someone/have someone spoil something for me, plus it kinda seems like no one else is sticking with the game anyway. Ah well.

This seemed to get a bit of buzz when it came out, but it seems to have repelled a lot of people and it faded quickly. I think the RNG is way too harsh, and there doesn’t appear to be a good way to counter it when it gives you dog shit on a dixie plate and your run ends.

I’m certainly about to quit!

 

[R.R. Bigman]

The main problem this game has that other roguelikes like Hades and Isaac don’t is this. If you have bad luck in Hades or Isaac, you can still usually persevere if you’re skilled enough. If you have bad enough luck in Blue Prince, you simply lose. That sucks.

 

[MrBlarney]

I'm also about to tap out on the game in order to hit up my backlog (or more likely, play Clair Obscur: Expedition 33) before the Switch 2 releases. I've made a lot of progress in Act II (i.e. post-Room 46), but the number of threads I can choose to work on have dwindled, and they can very well be thwarted by an uncooperative RNG. In my most recent run I tried setting up every item-generation and rarity weight I could to try and unearth the final vault key I needed to obtain the final Sanctum Key required for the main Act II objective, but it just didn't roll despite everything else going well. Even if I did accomplish that goal, I don't think I have enough information to complete all of the Realm Sigils yet, and think I need to go on a very luck-based Classroom run in order to get what I need there. So while I technically still have at least two things I can work on, there's a lot of luck required in order to accomplish those goals. I have enough permanent progression that I can pretty much fill up the entire house on each run, but making further progress requires being increasingly more deliberate about how I approach the run and what the game gives me. It's elating when a run locks a lot of things together, but equally deflating when you do everything you can and your efforts don't get paid out.

This is definitely not a game for everyone. There are some pretty deep lows when things don't go your way, or you don't have the context for how to make progress that isn't just aiming directly towards what's set about you. But there are also some really good highs when the clues click together and you solve a puzzle or riddle and it pays off, and I can't really see the game working the same without the randomness.

 

[Violentvixen]

Yeah, I think that's what's ultimately so frustrating so much. It feels like I could love this game but it's just being difficult to be difficult, not to teach me any skills or anything. If the randomness was less so, if the permanent unlocks were stronger and there were more of them, if the story was less obtuse so I felt a connection... I dunno. Again, really enjoyed the start of my time with it, then it just stopped being fun.

I could see there being a really interesting modding community for this in a year or two, and maybe there will be a mod or cheats or a patch that would bring me back.

 

[lincolnic]

Everyone's free time is limited, I strongly support people moving on if you're not having fun. And I do get the frustration! There's one puzzle in particular that's frustrating the hell out of me (specifically involving the fourth permanent addition: the BlackBridge terminal room), and there are two other loose ends we're working on that each need a specific pair of rooms to show up. I really do understand disliking that aspect of the RNG and I agree that it's a valid criticism. But, at least in our case ("our" because I'm playing with my girlfriend), I feel like we've been steadily discovering new things in almost every run, even if it doesn't relate to whatever our goal at the time happens to be. That's a pretty rewarding gameplay loop to me, and it's kept us pretty deeply engaged.

The main problem this game has that other roguelikes like Hades and Isaac don’t is this. If you have bad luck in Hades or Isaac, you can still usually persevere if you’re skilled enough. If you have bad enough luck in Blue Prince, you simply lose. That sucks.

I'd like to offer a different way to think about this: Hades and Isaac are both action games, Blue Prince is a puzzle game. Your goal isn't to fight through a certain amount of enemies and bosses, it's just to learn more. "Win" and "lose" don't really have concrete meanings here -- every bit of knowledge that you gain from entering new rooms will lead you down new paths (figuratively, but also sometimes literally). Yes, you'll sometimes have a run end prematurely, but more often than not you'd be surprised at what you can find along the way.

if the story was less obtuse

I think the basic plotline is laid out and available from the start, but opening safes will really start to pull things into focus. (What I put in the spoiler tag probably isn't even a spoiler if you've been playing for a few days, I'm just erring on the side of caution since I don't know how much you've done/how much people reading will want to know.)

Locked room just before the sanctum. Haven’t found anything promising there yet

Do you mean you're still working out how to get inside, or that you've been inside but haven't done anything in there? (I'm asking purely out of curiosity, not offering any uninvited hints!)

 

[jpfriction]

Second one. I opened the outer door, but haven’t found any obvious clues for the padlock

 

[Violentvixen]

But, at least in our case ("our" because I'm playing with my girlfriend), I feel like we've been steadily discovering new things in almost every run, even if it doesn't relate to whatever our goal at the time happens to be. That's a pretty rewarding gameplay loop to me, and it's kept us pretty deeply engaged.

I think this is where the RNG showed up. We had two days (actual real human playtime days) of absolutely nothing new. There was one time we couldn't get past the third row because we drew terrible rooms and had no items to get the couple good ones.

I think the basic plotline is laid out and available from the start, but opening safes will really start to pull things into focus. (What I put in the spoiler tag probably isn't even a spoiler if you've been playing for a few days, I'm just erring on the side of caution since I don't know how much you've done/how much people reading will want to know.)

Oh yeah, we had lots of things to do in specific rooms 4 them I think, and we've read the history book in the library, we found the two original copies of her books in the catacombs, read emails, stuff in the shelter, thawed the freezer to get some notes etc. But they're still the very Victorian sounding evasive language and half the time it's censored or ripped apart or just a clue to how to get that information somewhere else. I just wish everything was a bit clearer, same as with the lack of randomness it just needs a bit of tweaking for me. I'll probably look up all the clips of the animatronic fortune teller as those were cool.

 

[Adam]

Second one. I opened the outer door, but haven’t found any obvious clues for the padlock

I sat at that one for a bit then decided to flip through my notes to clear my mind a bit, where I found the hint embedded in the answer I had been constructing for a seemingly different puzzle. I probably would have been Big Mad if I had had to walk away and solve that one later.

 

[lincolnic]

there are two other loose ends we're working on that each need a specific pair of rooms to show up.

We did one of these in our first run tonight, and were literally seconds away from accomplishing the second in our next run when the game suddenly crashed. Apparently Blue Prince doesn't save your progress in the middle of a run, because when we booted back up it started us at the beginning of the day again. It's not the end of the world, but a little bit frustrating to have to line up those rooms again.

 

[MCBanjoMike]

I bought this game on Saturday and have played about 3 hours of it every night since then. I've completed 12 days, earned some upgrades and made a bit of permanent progress. Last night I put together a POWER HAMMER and proceeded to discover a whole gigantic underground area (!) right before bed, so that was pretty neat. I guess now I have to solve the pump room puzzle (presumably by draining the reservoir), but I have a few other threads to pull on as well.

In less-spoilery talk, my son has been watching me play this game and helping me out with things like the dart puzzles. Last night he asked to take over for a run, so I gave him the controller and let him have at it. This is his first time playing a first-person game, so it was a challenge on that front, but thankfully the game doesn't expect too much from the player movement-wise. The only problem was that he burned through some resources that I had stockpiled from my previous run, but you gotta make sacrifices as a parent.

 

[Violentvixen]

Last night I put together a POWER HAMMER

So jealous. We never had the materials and the room for this show up on the same day but I knew about it and kept hoping.

This is his first time playing a first-person game, so it was a challenge on that front, but thankfully the game doesn't expect too much from the player movement-wise. The only problem was that he burned through some resources that I had stockpiled from my previous run, but you gotta make sacrifices as a parent.

Aww

 

[R.R. Bigman]

It’s not a bad idea to see what experiments you can run whenever the Laboratory shows up. I’ve done one where you get +1 coin for your allowance every time you break open a chest a couple times.

 

[Nodal]

At the moment there's only one thing that's really frustrating me, but we've been able to figure out pretty much everything else we've seen so far. There are two other rooms we've seen that clearly have puzzles we haven't figured out yet, though I'm not sure if we're missing something obvious within them or if there's more info to be found elsewhere.

I kinda want to talk about post-game stuff but there's so much that it would be very easy to spoil something for someone/have someone spoil something for me, plus it kinda seems like no one else is sticking with the game anyway. Ah well.

I'm still working on it. I think one way to talk about it would be to first spoil everything.

Spoiler: Post-Credits Spoilers

Then spoil based on which key in the poem you want to talk about, or etc.

 

[lincolnic]

Last night I put together a POWER HAMMER

Discovering this was such a fun moment.

In less-spoilery talk, my son has been watching me play this game and helping me out with things like the dart puzzles. Last night he asked to take over for a run, so I gave him the controller and let him have at it. This is his first time playing a first-person game, so it was a challenge on that front, but thankfully the game doesn't expect too much from the player movement-wise. The only problem was that he burned through some resources that I had stockpiled from my previous run, but you gotta make sacrifices as a parent.

I love this.

Tonight we were able to read a book that we'd been trying to track down (outside of the Library): Her Ladyship's Diary. Honestly, it's the first time I've been a little disappointed by something that took a couple of attempts to find. There wasn't really anything in it? Some info about all the bedrooms, which we already knew, and a sketch of the Western Path that had something different where the Outer Room is normally, but I'm not sure what we're supposed to make of that.

We also uncovered what seems like a massive new puzzle just when I thought we were running out of those. Hoo boy.

 

[MCBanjoMike]

Rolled credits last night! I get the feeling there might be a few secrets left in the game, so for now I'm pretty excited to keep looking. Off the top of my head, here are a few things I have left to do:

- Finish deciphering the phrase using the double illustrations in each room (I started this last night but there's a lot of rooms to go)
- Drain the reservoir in the pump room
- Solve the boiler room to power up the laboratory experiment
- Use the basement key, of course

There are definitely some other places on the map that are giving off weird vibes, but for now these are the most obvious things for me to poke at. What a cool game!

 

[Violentvixen]

- Drain the reservoir in the pump room

We did this on one of our last play days. Was a bit frustrated because it didn't seem to do anything, we couldn't get anywhere new. Looked it up later and it seems like you don't want to fully drain it the first time but have to do it in bits and access different areas at different drainage levels?

 

[jpfriction]

There are a handful of layered puzzles like that, but I’d say they did a pretty good job of making it so once you’ve done the most labor intensive steps you don’t need to do them again.

 

[lincolnic]

Use the basement key, of course

Wait, how did you roll the credits without doing this? You can't access the lever that opens Room 46 without it.