It's not every day that you turn on a game and realize you can't even describe its genre.
Blue Prince—arriving on April 10 for Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, PC (
Steam), PS+ Game Catalogue and Game Pass—is a beautifully confounding thing. It's part first-person puzzle, part-strategy deckbuilder, part-roguelite, part-narrative mystery box—and yet none of these quite communicate exactly what developer
Dogubomb has managed to create here. You play as Simon, who's just inherited a 45-room estate called Mount Holly—or he will inherit it, if he can find its secret, seemingly impossible 46th room. There's also the small matter of Mount Holly being, well, magical. Every day, its floor plan changes, asking you to piece it back together again—making each journey to discover that secret room an entirely new challenge.
If that sounds a bit confusing, that's entirely the point. Blue Prince is remarkably light on traditional tutorials, instead dropping hints and tips in its shifting rooms along the way. Initially, you'll need to throw yourself into the core process of drafting rooms—upon opening each door you come across, you'll draw three possible rooms that could be behind it, drawn from a pool of potentials. Some rooms are rarer than others, while others will only appear in specific place, but almost every one includes something to collect, a puzzle to solve, or a wider effect on your current run.