Welcome To Mt. Holly Estate
Imagine you have just received a jigsaw puzzle from a distant, elderly relative for your birthday (they’re old and don’t know what you’re into), but the box doesn’t show a picture of the completed puzzle. You pour the loose pieces onto the table and realise that there is an image to assemble. So you piece it together, only to realise that the finished jigsaw presents you with clues suggesting the puzzle can be assembled another way. You take the puzzle apart and reassemble it in a new way, creating another image and uncovering further suggestions of alternative solutions to the jigsaw puzzle. That is Blue Prince, and it is phenomenal.
Foundations
Developed by Dogubomb over 8 years, and published by Raw Fury, Blue Prince is a roguelike puzzle game. You take on the role of a young boy called Simon, who has been summoned to Mt. Holly Estate, a grand and puzzling manor left to you by your late Uncle. His final request is cryptic but compelling: find the mysterious and seemingly unreachable 46th room in the manor. As you explore, you lay rooms down one by one, constructing the manor’s layout as you go. But each new day brings a twist—the entire manor resets, wiping away the previous day’s progress. With every attempt, you inch closer to understanding the logic behind Mt. Holly’s shifting architecture, deciphering patterns, unlocking secrets, and trying to outwit a house that refuses to stay still.
While uncovering the 46th room is your inherited task, Blue Prince gradually reveals that it is just the beginning. Hidden within its many chambers are puzzles, clues, and fragments that hint at a much larger mystery. As you delve deeper, the game begins to bend expectations, rewarding experimentation and curiosity with surreal discoveries and layered narrative threads that transform your journey into something far stranger and more ambitious than a simple architectural scavenger hunt.
I won’t go into any more detail regarding Blue Prince’s narrative, but suffice it to say, reaching the 46th Room is both an ending and just the beginning. For this review, I set it as my goal to at least complete the game’s primary objective, and while it may not end up being the only task, I am pleased to say it still delivered a satisfying conclusion to the game, even if there is still more puzzles to solve and story to uncover.
A Room With A View
Blue Prince presents Mt. Holly as a place seemingly built by hand, and not just because you’re assembling it as you go. From rooms, corridors, and staircases to trees, flowers, and the items you find throughout the manor, everything is rendered in a style that resembles layered craft paper. This tactile aesthetic isn’t just charming; it’s quietly brilliant. The cool, muted palette of blues and greys reinforces the manor’s dreamlike, slightly melancholy atmosphere, while also inviting players to think of the space not as a static environment, but as something assembled—constructed with intention.
That visual style dovetails perfectly with the game’s meta-puzzle nature. You’re not just exploring a house; you’re exploring a creation. The diorama-like quality of the visuals reminds you constantly that you’re stepping through a designed experience, just as your character is following the puzzle left behind by their uncle, you’re engaging with the puzzle crafted by the developers. It’s a subtle layer of self-awareness that never breaks immersion, but adds a thoughtful depth to the act of play.
The handcrafted look of Blue Prince also plays directly into its environmental puzzling. Clues are often hidden in plain sight, nestled into the scenery like a nod from one designer to another. A peculiar portrait might contain a detail that hints at a secret within the room it depicts. These visual cues reward observation over brute logic, inviting players to pay attention to the texture of the world itself.
While the rooms may be colour-coded—bedrooms in purple, hallways in orange—each one feels unique, almost archetypal. The Den is cozy and familiar, its wood-panelled walls, deep sofas, and roaring fireplace offering warmth in a house that rarely feels welcoming. The Drawing Room, by contrast, is airy and formal, sparsely furnished but adorned with dozens of framed pictures. Over time, I grew familiar with Mt. Holly’s many chambers and corridors, developing a fondness for some—and a strong aversion to others. (I’m looking at you, Chapel.)
Moody Blues
The sound design in Blue Prince deserves particular praise, as every noise you hear not only fits perfectly, but often enhances the feeling of tactile feedback. The clunk of tumblers in a locking door, the stiff squeak of a tap turning, the soft rustle of loose pages, they all contribute to the manor’s sense of weight and presence. It’s not just about immersion; it’s about reinforcing that every interaction matters. Even something as small as the creak of a floorboard can feel loaded with intention, drawing your attention to detail in a game where details are everything.
Music, by contrast, is used sparingly—but precisely. Much of your time wandering Mt. Holly is accompanied only by your own footsteps and the natural ambience of its strange, silent halls. But every now and then, you step into a room and something shifts: a few gentle notes begin to play, and the entire tone of your exploration is altered. A solemn organ hums through the chapel, imbuing the space with a quiet reverence that lingers even after you leave. A delicate piano might greet you in a sunlit room, soft and reflective, while elsewhere, a tense and uncanny melody might creep in without warning, making you suddenly second-guess your surroundings.
These musical cues don’t just reinforce the identity of individual rooms, they influence the rhythm of your run. In a game with no enemies or combat, music becomes its own kind of narrative punctuation, drawing invisible boundaries between comfort, unease, and curiosity.
Blue Clues
The brilliance of Blue Prince lies in how its structure allows for a wide variety of puzzles, differing not just in content but in how they’re built into the very fabric of exploration. It’s not just a game of linear solutions or isolated brainteasers. Instead, puzzles come in all shapes and sizes, from visual riddles, mechanical sequences, to long-form mysteries that unfold over multiple rooms and multiple runs.
At the heart of the gameplay is the room-drafting mechanic. Every room in Mt. Holly has a fixed number of exits—two, three, or sometimes none—but you don’t just walk through a door and see where it takes you. Before you enter, you’re presented with a draft of three blueprints. You choose one, and that becomes the next room. Slowly, turn by turn, you construct the manor across its 5×9 grid, shaping the architecture based on your strategy, your resources, and sometimes just your curiosity.
But rooms aren’t just hallways and furniture. Each one comes with its own attributes and consequences. Some offer useful items, like a metal detector for sniffing out coins and keys, or a sleep mask that grants extra steps when entering bedrooms. Others serve functional roles, like shops where you can spend your gathered coins. And a few rooms work against you, introducing restrictions that can narrow your blueprint choices or complicate your resource management.
Speaking of resources, the most important is your steps. You use one step each time you enter a room, and once you run out, the run is over, and you start again the following day. It’s a simple rule, but it gives every decision weight. How far can you go today? What can you learn, and what might you unlock? You can find food during your run to gain more steps, along with keys and gems, which are used to unlock doors and access special rooms, respectively.
The deeper you get into Mt. Holly, the more puzzles begin to stretch across rooms—or even across entire runs. A strange shape on the wallpaper in one chamber might only make sense once you stumble upon its twin in another. Some puzzles are nested in layers, requiring tools or knowledge that only become available much later. As you make progress, the game rewards you with permanent upgrades: more starting gems, a higher step count, or new items unlocked for future attempts. These moments of progression are paced just right—they arrive when you’re beginning to feel stuck, and they gently nudge you onward with renewed motivation.
The only negative I can really call out is that there will come times when you know what you want to do, what you need to do, but due to Blue Prince’s roguelike design, you may find yourself unable to do so. This can prove frustrating, but with the game having so many threads to pull on and unravel, I found it best to adjust my expectations and track down other leads if need be.
I will stop there, for fear of oversharing and ruining this incredible game for future players, but I want to end on this. I recommend playing Blue Prince with someone else. The game is not co-op, but during my time playing it, some of my best experiences were talking and sharing notes with my colleague V, the GSC Reviews Editor. Like a great TV series that slowly unfolds each week with a new episode, Blue Prince lends itself to the same “watercooler chat”. Sharing discoveries, discussing theories, and working out solutions with your pooled knowledge really adds to the whole playthrough.
Also, make notes. Yes, grab a pen and a notebook and write things down. You may not feel like you need it, but believe me, you will.
Trophy Room
Blue Prince is a puzzle game for all time, and it deserves a place among the greats of the genre. Its design is masterful, its vision clear, and every moment spent within Mt. Holly Estate feels purposeful, crafted with care and a quiet confidence. I can easily see it becoming a touchstone for puzzle design in the years ahead.
I may have reached the 46th Room, but that really is just the tip of this big, blue iceberg. I’m still playing Blue Prince, still chasing hidden clues and untangling clever threads, still drawn to the mysteries that ripple out beyond the walls of the manor. I don’t want it to end, and even though it will, I know this game will stay with me long after the last puzzle is solved.
Blue Prince was reviewed on PlayStation 5.
Blue Prince is available on PC, Xbox Series, and PlayStation 5.
If you would like some help getting started, check out our Blue Prince: Beginner’s Guide.
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