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 next run so it didn't matter that much. After that first hour, the game became a slog. I encountered the same rooms, solved the same two puzzles for resources and was constantly praying for the RNG to give me something new. There is some RNG manipulation, but not enough to mitigate the boring part of the game. There are a few interesting overarching puzzles, but most of them are wrapped in multiple layers of RNG.
For example, for one puzzle you need a specific item that randomly spawns, use it in a room that randomly spawns which you need to unlock with another room that also randomly spawns. It took me 6 hours for the game to give me a run where I got all three of those things in a single run. The reward? Some resources that I have next to no use for and some clues that I can only experiment with if the RNG deems me worthy.
I have absolutely no idea where the praise for the game comes from. Maybe this game is perfect for those who are really into roguelites, but for me personally it just feels like the game is wasting my time for no reason at all.
The thing that made The Talos Principle, The Witness[2] and similar games so great was that they spent a lot of time on designing the puzzles.
I'm not opposed to a Groundhog Day sort of scenario, but in that case it really needs to be done well, like The Stanley Parable, not just rely on pure RNG. If you want to use RNG you really should have some constraint system involved to ensure at least some progress could have been made by the player.
[1]: https://steamcommunity.com/id/ADHunter/recommended/1569580/
[2]: If you've played The Witness but haven't played The Looker, you've been missing out IMHO.
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.
I enjoyed Balatro for quite a few hours before I had this problem, which is more than enough for me to call it a good game.
Beyond these first few hours though, you need ridiculously high multipliers to succeed. There's way too many jokers and 90% of them are trash by this point. The ones you need have vanishingly small probabilities, and then you need to add those probabilities together to get the combo of jokers required.
I would start a run, and within the first few minutes I would know that the RNG hadn't given me what I needed, reset, start again, repeat.
I looked up some guides, and they'd recommend using specific legendary jokers, which over my entire time playing (maybe 15 hours?) I didn't encounter even once. The only way to get them would be to play hundreds or even thousands of times.
At that point, it doesn't feel like a game anymore. It feels like a gambling addiction.
For me, that's time to call it quits. But I do wonder if the same people who struggle with gambling addiction in the real world are the ones who continue playing here.
At least with Balatro there is ten hours worth of game before your reach this point.
Balatro has a different issue for me. Despite having a lot of joker it sometimes feels very RNG reliant and limited once you reach high stakes. Plus the difficulty rises somehow artificially by withdrawing options rather than expending the challenge.
Slay the Spire remains unbeatable for me. No other game has the same level of complexity. You get all the tool to limit variance but every choice becomes very significant.
is there actually something to beat in there?
I thought you rush through opponents, then hit the "collectively with all players of the world apply bajillion damage" and there's nothing more?
I just assumed that it's some online thing where it counts total damage from everyone to finally slay that heart "together"
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/slaythespire/comments/t3habp/the_fi...
With roguelikes at least you are at the intended power level every time, even if some of these games are too RNG reliant.
Roguelike community has a saying - "losing is fun". And while I only played a few traditional rl games and finished none of them, I had great experience while constantly "losing" only a few hours into the run.
In most roguelites I play, losing isn't fun - it's frustrating. There is often very little variety in earlier stages of the game, so if you're bad (and I am) you're stuck replaying the same section for hours, only to get good RNG, go 1 level farther and immediately die to some new mechanic or difficulty spike.
One exception is The Binding Of Isaac, this is probably the best roguelite game I've ever played and nothing comes even close.
I've switched to South of Midnight and it's amazing. Not everyone's type of game - and certainly not a puzzle game - but the graphics, music, story, and gameplay combine to make it one of the best games I've played in a long, long time.
For anyone wanting a non-RNG puzzler set around a large building I highly recommend https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorelei_and_the_Laser_Eyes
Still, I 100%-ed and enjoyed it. Also a shameless plug: I made a mod that tweaks controls to add a back button, a map button, and to allow code locks to spin in both directions
Blue prince’s rng is quite well thought out imo. Once you pick up on some of the unwritten rules about the room drafting system and start building strategies around what to prioritize and how to adjust your goals, it starts feeling a lot like many other popular card-based strategy games.
There are weak points, for sure, and your contrasting it with Lorelei makes sense. But Lorelei’s puzzles felt so plain and unchallenging. I like that blue prince is keeping me on my toes.
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.
The puzzles for resources you mention are by far the worst part for me. I really wish there were a way to say "I get it, I know how to solve simple logic puzzles and do basic arithmetic, just give me the stuff".
I had my doubts when people were playing 100+ hours of it. That gave me the idea it would be a skinner box type game that is addictive but empty. So far nothing has changed my opinion on that.
Since each room can only appear once, you can minimize this by strategically choosing to place dead end rooms early on in the lower southeast/southwest, and edges generally. Then always make sure you have gems as you move north, so you can usually pick good rooms.
But hey, it makes you get away with reusing the little content you made ad nauseam and procedurally tweak some numbers on top of it to fake progression.
Loop Hero was probably when I nope'd out forever, but at least that game was pure and honest.
Also, for your example, I think you missed that you get a major permanent bonus when you got the room after using the other room.
How is this _not_ advertising in your mind? Surely you don’t think random people on HN are invested in your take on this game. What purpose did you intend if not to promote the newly released game?
I feel you’re trying to say you weren’t paid to advertise this game, which I believe, but it is 100% what you’re doing.
I post around a third to a half of the articles I write on my blog to HN – the ones I think people here will like. Sometimes they hit and sometimes they don't. Three weeks ago I wrote about Odysseus, a very ambitious larp, that was popular here:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43414992
And last year I wrote about my thoughts on The Sphere in Las Vegas:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40858165
As for things I disliked, I wrote about Tonight with the Impressionists, a VR exhibition in Paris:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40745133
I think you are saying that anyone posting a positive article about something you don't know about on HN is a shill, which seems quite strange. Sometimes people genuinely like things and want to share their thoughts on why.
My final note is that Blue Prince is not a relatively unknown indie game. It was included for free on PS Plus and Xbox Game Pass at launch – quite unusual. It was also previewed by quite a few publications and is almost certainly going to be shortlisted in a lot of game of the year lists.
And to be clear, I have not been paid to write this article. There are no incentives involved whatsoever.
What I’m saying is that it doesn’t feel obvious that I should definitely believe you. You are unambiguously promoting this newly released game. By doing this a savvy reader does need to question whether or not you’re a shill. And that is tiring. It is fully possible that this article is intended to manipulate.
Maybe background info on your past activities can provide evidence to reinforce the idea that you are doing this only because you want to. But I’m not really interested in researching you. Content like this is just not easily readable with blind trust.
So it seems it's quite popular.
I like that a link aggregator serves to surface things that people don't necessarily have investment in. I thought the article was well-written and I'm more interested now in what he has to say in future. (I guess the advertising worked...)
Idk. I feel it has a bad smell to be doing this at a game’s release with a review copy.
Again I’m willing to believe in good faith that there aren’t behind the scenes incentives here. But it would feel a lot more genuine to drop this at least a few months later imo. It _feels_ like advertising.
And frankly the juxtaposition of the glowing tone and then negative comments here has really thrown me about the whole thing. Whereas before I would just say it’s a difference of opinion, now there’s a question of intent to deceive. Meh.
I'm not exactly sure what leads to such a dramatic disconnect. Maybe game reviewers just value different things than the general population.
A game which maintains a high level of engagement during that review period but which drops off not long after that could show this kind of discrepancy between customers and reviewers. I don't want to suggest that Blue Prince is this sort of game (never mind that it might be deliberate) but I think it's possible for some games to have been designed for game reviewers rather than for long-term players. The top HN comment on this story (as I write this) would seem to indicate that the game has an issue with running out of steam after a few hours.
This sort of thing is not unheard of in other media as well. In the film industry this strategy is called Oscar-bait. Of course for a film it's not based on duration but subject matter. Certain themes and filmmaking techniques have been accused of being targeted at the narrower interests of the Academy rather than a broad audience.
This is conspiratorial nonsense.
(I have no affiliation with this post beyond being a fan of Adrian's writing and work + haven't played Blue Prince yet, although I'm very likely to play it because of this review)
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.
When I bought the original Brothers, it took me maybe 10 hours to finish, if even that. It was well worth the cost, amazing game. (Apparently the remake was badly done...)
Some games are in the "experience" category, $30 for 10 amazing hours, great deal. $30 for 10 hours and then a rage quit, not a good deal.
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.
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?
I played Obra Dinn without pen and paper and I was fine.
There was a game called The Roottrees are dead which is based on Obra dinn with a built in journal system and it is really useful.
Just mentioning that it's PS Plus, and the game was made available on their Extra & Premium tiers at launch [0], which is nice, as they typically release all the games on the same day in the middle of the month.
[0] https://blog.playstation.com/2025/04/09/playstation-plus-gam...
P.S. "Lost Records: Bloom & Rage", the second half of which is due to come out in a couple of days is very different, but highly recommended too, especially in its emotional vibes and how well they integrated the VHS camera into the gameplay.
Also, re: notepad writing: if you've got two monitors, it Alt+Tabs just fine. I'm writing this as the opening credits play.
A very similar mechanic is used in the popular board game Betrayal at House on the Hill. That game's arguably even worse because it has stat upgrades!
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.
It's not a hard and fast rule or anything, just what I've observed in gaming discussions.
Roguelikes were designed to play like arcade games in that you’d always start over from scratch and try to get a high score. Most attempts ended in failure but as you got better at the game it was reflected in your score. Even after players achieve a high degree of expertise they still find the games challenging to win and so they keep playing and enjoying them for years to come.
Meta-progression takes away the from-scratch element and just allows you to win through sheer persistence, chipping away at the problem until it’s easy enough for you to finish it in one final run. But then what? The game is no longer the same challenge it was when you first started. It’s like a mountain that keeps getting smaller every time you attempt to climb it, until it’s finally shrunk to the size of an anthill. This is not a recipe for a game you can play for many years.
Ultimately, what meta-progression does is turn a roguelike into a standard narrative RPG just like any other. This is one where the player’s goal is to reach the end of the game and that’s it, not to learn the game’s systems and reach a high level of mastery.
Although generally I find the meta progression of things goes too far and starts off too weak.
There is another approach based on unlocks, where the player unlocks new characters or game modes rather than having a single character get more and more powerful with each run. Some people prefer these unlocks but others don't. I saw one streamer, Jorbs, who got a brand new game and immediately looked up a save file hack to unlock everything from the beginning because he so detested unlocks.
I think it should be optional though. There should be an option to unlock everything from the beginning for players who don't want to fiddle around with that stuff and just dive into the full experience. Players like Jorbs can feel so strongly about it that I think they're actually offended by games that try to curate their experiences to that degree.
I'm particularly interested in the area of coop games where you've got two players of radically different capabilities. I really like newer games in the vein of "Split Fiction" or "It Takes Two". But they tend to assume somewhat equal levels of competence for skill based sections of the game. So if I try to play with my wife I have to wait over and over again as she fails what are to me basic jumps. I'd love to see more exploration of asymmetric gameplay. Where it's not just both players having to navigate the same obstacles, but allows players to better leverage their skills to overcome something together. I remember staying up late nights with my now wife playing Diablo 2. But now I'm at the point where I want to push high tier rifts and she just wants to finish the story line. I'd like to see more examples of coop games where the burden falls more heavily on one player and the other is mostly along for the ride. Not all gamers are looking for the same things out of their games, but that doesn't necessarily mean they shouldn't be playing together.
It's funny that you mention that. NetHack, one of the longest-running traditional Roguelikes (in active development since 1987) actually has a Tourist class. However it's not what you think. The class is based on the tourist character Twoflower from the Discworld series of books. This class is the hardest one in the game because it starts with the least amount of fighting ability, no weapons (apart from some darts), and no armour (just a Hawaiian shirt).
You do, however, also start with a credit card (useful for jimmying locks), some healing potions, a lot of food, a lot of money, some scrolls of magic mapping (maps), and an expensive camera (the monsters in the dungeon hate flash photography)! But until you become a lot more experienced shopkeepers will recognize you as a tourist and try to rip you off, so you better spend your money wisely!
Roguelikes really benefit from long-term development and continual balancing, new content, and quality of life updates in response to feedback from players. These are games meant to be played and mastered over the course of several years. Traditional commercial game releases are much better suited to one-and-done style single play-throughs.
The other major commercial model, the subscription- or microtransaction-supported long-term game development, such as you'd see with popular multiplayer games like Fortnite or League of Legends, would seem to be a viable alternative for Roguelike development. I don't think it would work out in practice, however, since most gamers don't seem to be interested in playing a game to mastery unless it involves a high level of competitive play.
Traditional roguelikes seem cool in theory, but I like co-op for most of my PvE content, and like most turn-based games, no co-op to be had there.
Yeah that’s another difference. When you play NetHack online [2] [3] you run into the ghosts and graves of other players, not just your own previous characters. I have run into levels online with the ghosts of 3 different people who were all killed by various dangerous monsters that kept accumulating more powerful equipment from each victim. It can be quite ridiculous!
I played two days yesterday, and it started to dawn on me that there must be resource accumulation day to day. Some items cost 10's of coins (as much as 80), while in one day I was only seeing just a few. And really only one easy puzzle so far involving a couple of colored boxes.
So is the puzzle to just keep playing through, accumulating resources to buy what you need until you make it all the way? Or does the true puzzle reveal itself to you as you play through a few times? Maybe the things you buy/activate are one-time unlocks that give access to new parts of the puzzle, without making the puzzle itself easier?
Anyway, I love puzzle games such as Myst, and I'm a new fan of rougelikes (but not roguelites) - so I really want this game to work out.
I like it!
I also played the Stanley Parable recently, and that is one that has a few sections that are a touch much for the kids.
> Valve's testing indicates that Blue Prince is Playable on Steam Deck. This game is functional on Steam Deck, but might require extra effort to interact with or configure.
> • Some in-game text is small and may be difficult to read
> • All functionality is accessible when using the default controller configuration
> • This game shows Steam Deck controller icons
> • This game's default graphics configuration performs well on Steam Deck
https://www.steamgifts.com/giveaway/bloms/blue-prince
Is this you?