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Blue Prince is a roguelike puzzle masterpiece

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Re: Blue Prince is a roguelike puzzle masterpiece

#11

Post by fragmede »

throwerofstone wrote: post #5

After playing the game for 10+ hours and dropping it out of sheer frustration, I came to the conclusion that I must have been playing a vastly different game than the people praising it. The first hour was great. I was constantly encountering new rooms and solving puzzles. The many times where the game decided to give me nothing but rooms leading to dead ends was annoying, but I still had things to explore in the nex…

> After playing the game for 10+ hours

You paid $30 for it. Did you get $30 worth of entertainment from it? $3/hr sounds pretty good, and if all it did was not live up to your expectations because of what other people been saying, I'd say that's still money well spent, just you gotta adjust how much stock you put into what those particular people say as relates to good you enjoy something.

Re: Blue Prince is a roguelike puzzle masterpiece

#12

Post by skyyler »

riffraff wrote: post #7

> As with other roguelikes, you can unlock persistent upgrades that smooth over repetitive parts of the game. I think those are called rogue-lites, for the reason that real rogue-likes (e.g. nethack, DCSS) actually wipe out all your progress on each attempt.

At this point, times have shifted, and meta-progression is usually considered an aspect of modern roguelikes. There was a trend of calling them "rogue-lites" but that's faded and now games like ADOM and DCSS are "Classic roguelikes"

It's not a hard and fast rule or anything, just what I've observed in gaming discussions.

Re: Blue Prince is a roguelike puzzle masterpiece

#13

Post by square_usual »

throwerofstone wrote: post #5

After playing the game for 10+ hours and dropping it out of sheer frustration, I came to the conclusion that I must have been playing a vastly different game than the people praising it. The first hour was great. I was constantly encountering new rooms and solving puzzles. The many times where the game decided to give me nothing but rooms leading to dead ends was annoying, but I still had things to explore in the nex…

I generally have the same frustration with roguelites as you seem to: every time I start a run, it feels like I'm gambling whether I'll have any fun at all. A bad seed or start can mean losing in ways that feel unfair or boring, like in balatro if you get a bunch of bad hands and bad jokers, you struggle through rounds and hands until you either lose or get an interesting combination. I don't need that kind of gambling in my life when there's tons of games out there where I know I will have fun.

E: I still quite like Balatro - when it works it's a blast. I'll also still try out Blue Prince because people I respect seem to like it.

Re: Blue Prince is a roguelike puzzle masterpiece

#14

Post by glimshe »

fragmede wrote: post #11
throwerofstone wrote: post #5

After playing the game for 10+ hours and dropping it out of sheer frustration, I came to the conclusion that I must have been playing a vastly different game than the people praising it. The first hour was great. I was constantly encountering new rooms and solving puzzles. The many times where the game decided to give me nothing but rooms leading to dead ends was annoying, but I still had things to explore in the nex…

> After playing the game for 10+ hours You paid $30 for it. Did you get $30 worth of entertainment from it? $3/hr sounds pretty good, and if all it did was not live up to your expectations because of what other people been saying, I'd say that's still money well spent, just you gotta adjust how much stock you put into what those particular people say as relates to good you enjoy something.

For me, a dead end after 10 hours of playing feels like frustration. I don't like starting games I can't finish, especially if I rage quit. It stays with me as a painful memory, the opposite of entertainment.

Re: Blue Prince is a roguelike puzzle masterpiece

#15

Post by gs17 »

galleywest200 wrote: post #2

I have been playing this game and it is really a blast. The tutorial note cards strongly recommend using a pen+paper while playing and I can second that as pretty much required for some of the more "meta" puzzles. Worth noting that I believe it is also on Gamepass and whatever Sony's version of Gamepass is called if you already had those services and wished to save a few bucks.

> The tutorial note cards strongly recommend using a pen+paper while playing

This is my largest complaint. The game should really have a notepad built in. It doesn't need to write down clues for me, but it would be nice to not have to find where my notes were if I put the game down for a long time. Is it that it's a console release?

Re: Blue Prince is a roguelike puzzle masterpiece

#16

Post by explodes »

throwerofstone wrote: post #5

After playing the game for 10+ hours and dropping it out of sheer frustration, I came to the conclusion that I must have been playing a vastly different game than the people praising it. The first hour was great. I was constantly encountering new rooms and solving puzzles. The many times where the game decided to give me nothing but rooms leading to dead ends was annoying, but I still had things to explore in the nex…

Having multiple ongoing goals helps mitigate being locked out from one.

Re: Blue Prince is a roguelike puzzle masterpiece

#17

Post by RamRodification »

gs17 wrote: post #15
galleywest200 wrote: post #2

I have been playing this game and it is really a blast. The tutorial note cards strongly recommend using a pen+paper while playing and I can second that as pretty much required for some of the more "meta" puzzles. Worth noting that I believe it is also on Gamepass and whatever Sony's version of Gamepass is called if you already had those services and wished to save a few bucks.

> The tutorial note cards strongly recommend using a pen+paper while playing This is my largest complaint. The game should really have a notepad built in. It doesn't need to write down clues for me, but it would be nice to not have to find where my notes were if I put the game down for a long time. Is it that it's a console release?

So many games desperately need this feature. Almost all games could benefit from it to some degree. I see zero negative consequences to adding it to every single game in existence just in case someone wants it.

Re: Blue Prince is a roguelike puzzle masterpiece

#18

Post by gs17 »

throwerofstone wrote: post #5

After playing the game for 10+ hours and dropping it out of sheer frustration, I came to the conclusion that I must have been playing a vastly different game than the people praising it. The first hour was great. I was constantly encountering new rooms and solving puzzles. The many times where the game decided to give me nothing but rooms leading to dead ends was annoying, but I still had things to explore in the nex…

> solved the same two puzzles for resources

I'm eager to play more, but this is something that was a worry already an hour in. The logic puzzle I did was good enough and seems like it can be generated procedurally well enough, the "math" puzzle I did wasn't. There's more than that, right?

> and some clues that I can only experiment with if the RNG deems me worthy.

And on top of that, it's hard to know if those clues actually will matter in other runs. I found a safe code in one run. If it takes three runs before the RNG decides the room with the safe will be there, will the code be randomized? I've been trying to avoid spoilers so it's hard to know what matters.

Re: Blue Prince is a roguelike puzzle masterpiece

#19

Post by ekorz »

throwerofstone wrote: post #5

After playing the game for 10+ hours and dropping it out of sheer frustration, I came to the conclusion that I must have been playing a vastly different game than the people praising it. The first hour was great. I was constantly encountering new rooms and solving puzzles. The many times where the game decided to give me nothing but rooms leading to dead ends was annoying, but I still had things to explore in the nex…

I was also sad to hear about how much RNG is in the game, that is a detractor to what seems like a well put together experience otherwise. If you wanted to give something else a try, and have a PC, I made a first-person puzzle game that's (hopefully) more akin to Antichamber and the puzzle bits of Outer Wilds, called Chroma Zero. There's a demo on steam if you just want to dip your toe in. https://store.steampowered.com/app/3121470/Chroma_Zero/
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