this post was submitted on 11 Jun 2025
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Found this on game pass (which I keep meaning to cancel, but here we are). Holy. Shit.

It's a cute little cell shaded board style game. Might be fun to toy around with... Maybe just a couple more tries...wait what...?

It's a masterpiece. It's genius. It's madness. It's like Myst shot up the 7th guest and started snorting riddles.

Did anyone else stumble into this labyrinth? I'm obsessed.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Blue Prince is an awesome game, but it confirmed for me that I can't stand roguelikes. Any game that's based on repetitive loop where you do the same thing over and over for small progress is just not my jam. That includes multiplayer grindathons, MMOs and roguelikes/lites.

I guess as I got older, time became more and more of a previous commodity and feeling like I'm not moving forward in an experience kills it for me.

Nothing against the game. Just not for me.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

I thought I was the same, but I quite enjoyed hades. Though it's not a traditional roguelike.

It has a good mix of mindless fun that doesn't punish you when you lose and don't make progress. The story does heavy duty in making sure each run, no matter how successful it is, is fun/interesting.

I guess I still don't like rogue likes that much but I do like hades.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I keep wanting to love Hades but keep bouncing off it. It has all characteristics of what is want - great art, good story, solid voice acting... I think I am not into the combat mechanics though. Diablo, at least I would enjoy until I finished all the story and quests...

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

I can't blame you. I was for forced to play it before I got into it. Forced by the fact that supergiant games can be er go wrong in my book 🙌. Haha

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

I got to room 46 then looked stuff up for the later more arcane puzzles. I still have some stuff to unlock but waiting until someone finds the last envelope

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

I don’t really have time for extensive puzzle games anymore, so I watch a YouTuber named Aliensrock. He’s still playing it, and I’m so invested! It’s insane that a puzzle rougelite can work so well and be so engaging with the story and mysteries. There are multiple ways to figure out each puzzle (except one so far), which is fascinating.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

The idea of a puzzle rougelike is intriguing.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

I was enjoying right up to the point where I stopped making progress and started getting frustrated at the random aspects of it. Even some of the self contained puzzles were taking a bit of trial and error.

The last puzzles are likely going to take a lot more hours than I'm willing to give it, not because they're hard but because they require the stars to align before it'll let you even try them. I stopped playing a while ago now, and I haven't felt the urge to go back.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

I think the limited number of room transitions would stress me out, but I like the concept and love the punny name.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

For those interested. The game is actually based on a book from the 80's called Maze. It was a contest offering a reward for the first to solve it. It's only a maze in the same in the same sense Blue Prince is

By random coincidence, my wife has the book. You can definitely see the resemblance.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 week ago (1 children)

My mother got into it. I'm not going to.

A puzzle game that puts RNG in between the player and the ability to attempt a solution is something I'm not willing to tolerate.

how is it different from playing Riven with one of your sticks of RAM poorly seated so the computer crashes on a semi-regular basis resetting your progress?

No. Not for me. I'd be more interested in wearing the corner fire hydrant in my ass than playing that.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Do you feel the same about other games that involve random chance, such as roguelikes and RPGs?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago (10 children)

That question is the thesis statement of a 2 hour long video essay if ever I heard one.

Most games involve random chance somehow to make the game feel more alive and less deterministic, like in an early Zelda game, should the Octorok run 3, 4, 5, or 6 tiles forward? Should it turn left or right? Should it drop a rupee or a heard when killed? These I'm fine with.

In an RPG, things like monster encounter rates might use the RNG to simulate the behavior of a dungeon master, both "roll for initiative" and "I'll have them encounter 4 groups of low level monsters on their way through the creepy forest." Using an RNG and lookup table for that is a reasonable low overhead way to add some unpredictability and adventure to the game. Note: I don't really play RPGs that much.

The term roguelike has started to be overused to mean any game that features procedural generation and permadeath. By that definition I think Tetris qualifies as a roguelike. The original Rogue kind of worked like a virtual dungeonmaster, it would create an RPG campaign for you to play in, and then it played like any RPG where you have to explore a dungeon, learn the mechanics etc. with permadeath and the consequence of having to relearn everything you've learned thusfar generating stakes and pressuring the player to survive, no "whatever, I'll just die and respawn." So that's an innovative use of a computer random number generator. Most things that call themselves "roguelikes" are more "We designed a cool primary gameplay loop but can't really be bothered with level design so here's some procedural generation to beat your head against over and over again, maybe hoping to find a scenario you can possibly win." Quite often, it's not that the game randomly re-engineers itself, it throws the same pre-scripted things at you in a somewhat different order, so they end up playing more like old arcade games than an actual adventure.

A "roguelike" I've spent the most time with is FTL: Faster Than Light, and its roguelike structure is by far my least favorite feature. I don't really like beating my head against the RNG hoping a permutation of combats, 50/50 "do you help with the giant spiders" encounters goes my way so that I have enough scrap, and that it gives me a shop with a useful array of weapons so that I have a chance at the end encounter.

Blue Prince takes the randomization to a whole other level. It might be compelling if it procedurally randomized the house for each playthrough such that you do have to learn YOUR way through it, and you have limited stamina so that each day you can only explore so far, but you can get upgrades to your stamina so that you can stay in the house longer and explore deeper, but...I can't see the way they implemented the game's RNG as anything other than flagrant disrespect of the player's time.

The "AHA!" moment in a puzzle game is what you're after. That hapens in the player's mind. If the player thinks up the solution, but the mechanics of the game make it take a long time to implement, all you're doing is grinding the player's teeth together. And Blue Prince seems designed to maximize teeth grinding, because the player may know the solution to a puzzle, but contriving the circumstance necessary to implement that solution requires several unlikely rolls back to back to back to back to back.

Sorry, I'm just convinced it's bad game design pretending to be novel.

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