As someone who has been pretty well fully on board with roguelike anything since I first began playing them, it has been fascinating to see that label continuing to be applied to new genres and ideas. Since I see making games have roguelike elements as a catalyst for new and exciting variations on familiar gameplay, while I acknowledge that not all combinations I’ve checked out have been successful, I’d argue that the big swings that have connected have been worth those that didn’t quite work out. Blue Prince is the latest such title I’ve played, but what makes it particularly interesting is even if you removed some of the roguelike elements it would still have a pretty unconventional design, outside of just perhaps being a very complex maze.

Your character stands to be awarded a significant inheritance, but in order to claim it he’s been challenged to find the fabled 46th room in his great-uncle’s estate. In theory that should just be a matter of getting from point A to point B, mapping out the rooms as you go, but of course it can’t be that simple. As it turns out, every day the mansion is reconfigured thanks to the game’s roguelike tendencies, but each day that you return in failure you’ll at least be slightly better armed to face the next challenge ahead. By mixing together elements of strategy, meticulous planning, a fair number of puzzles, and almost certainly some luck, you’ll continue to make your way further into the mansion, and you’ll find that the deeper you go the more you’ll get sucked into the mystery of what lies within.

Mechanically, you’ll move through each run one room at a time. As you open each door to exit the current space you’ll then have the opportunity to choose which of typically 3 rooms you’d like to move into next. While at the beginning this is normally a pretty simple decision, driven in part by the desire to avoid leaving yourself with nowhere else to go, the more you understand the harder this can get. This isn’t merely about conquering an ever-changing maze, in order to get further in and find success you’ll need to be smart, acquiring crucial items that will aid you in a variety of ways, as well as simpler usable fare like coins, gems, and keys which will work as currency for helping you get further in. Then, as you begin to get exposed to more and more of the varied rooms in the house, you’ll begin to understand the value of taking a risk just to be sure to get them into your layout. While there is no singular right answer to how to be successful, there are absolutely a plentitude of wrong ones, and even over 4,800 games in, I can confidently say that I’ve never run into a challenge quite like this, so it’s exciting!