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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   1490 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for May 16, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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I've reached the (an?) ending of Blue Prince, a roguelike escape-the-room game. The premise is that you have to reach the final room of the manor your uncle left you in order to inherit it... except the layout is shuffled every day. In each run, you have a limited number of "steps" (spent by going from room to room) and explore the manor anew, drafting new rooms from a selection of three at every doorway.

Overall, it's likely the most fun I've ever had playing an escape-the-room game. There are many puzzles and threads to chase, and I haven't even discovered all room types, let alone solved everything there is in the game. The puzzles for the most part lack the infamous "moon logic" of puzzle games and the way to solve them is pretty intuitive - it's figuring out the mechanics and finding the solution across multiple randomized runs that's going to be hard.

The most glaring flaw is the lack of saving mid-run - if you want to close the game, you have to end the current delve. Also, some object interactions are downright sluggish and it's very frustrating when there's something routine you want to do with a terminal in a particular room but it still takes a literal "60 seconds" minute.

I really enjoyed Blue Prince (Blueprints... get it? get it? aha). If anything I would love to see more games like this despite its flaws. It took 8 years to create the interlocking lore and puzzles. Unfortunately this means we're unlike to see a puzzle game of this quality any time soon.

The game has some frustrating quality of life problems and grind related to getting the right combination of elements through RNG. The later is terrible when you want to test obscure theories of interactions between rooms and items, or worse, a particular reading of a possible clue. While up until the first 'ending' (which is were they roll the credits and probably marks around 30% of the games content) this isn't a huge problem as there are multiple leads to investigate on any given day. If you don't get the RNG for a particular combination of elements you are likely to have another that will allow you to make progression. Later on in the game progression really slows down while you wait for the correct RNG combination which is very frustrating.

For all the above, the game was like crack to me, particularly in the early game up until the first ending. I'm glad to see someone talking about it as I think it would be a good fit for a lot of the gamers on here.

(which is were they roll the credits and probably marks around 30% of the games content)

For real? Or are you exaggerating here? I stopped playing after the first ending on the assumption that I had seen most of what it had to offer and the remaining puzzle threads that I had discovered but not yet solved seemed pedantic and annoyingly completionist and I didn't think I would have the patience to grind through them just to get a "true" ending.

But if there's literally more than half the game remaining (in terms of actual content, not merely playtime spent grinding runs hoping to get lucky) then I might pick it back up.

Not exaggerating. You're about 1/3rd through on the way to the final 'true' endings.

The 2nd 3rd is probably doable solo without being too frustrating. The final 3rd is incredibly pedantic (and was mostly crowdsolved on discord/steam forums). Some streamers like CohhCarnage ostensibly managed to complete the whole thing solo, but I suspect Cohh and those like him get fed hints behind the scenes to allow relatively smooth progression.

I pretty much fizzled out after getting 2/3rds of the way through as I'd gotten most of the lore by that point and was frustrated at the obscurity of some of the puzzles/solutions and increasingly narrower RNG windows for progression.

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