Please Don’t Rush Through Blue Prince

If you browse the catalogue of games available as part of Sony’s PlayStation Plus service, you’ll see that the critically acclaimed puzzle sensation Blue Prince is classified as a “quick adventure.” This is a lie on par with saying that you can find a Mew under the truck by the S.S. Anne in the first generation Pokémon games, or that the reason game developers keep getting laid off is because games are too dang cheap and not because CEOs are blowing the budgets on classic cars. I’ve literally spent more time uncovering Blue Prince’s secrets than I’ve spent 100%-ing full-length RPGs, and it would be truly tragic for someone looking for a short romp to fall down a bottomless rabbit hole such as this.

Blue Prince’s novel mix of roguelike repetition and puzzle solving is hard to wrap your head around, even if you’re a puzzle game aficionado. It is simultaneously an adventure with a defined end goal and an open world (or I guess open house?) mystery, so the question of “how long Blue Prince is” will depend entirely on what you want to get out of it. This ambiguity has also led to some discourse among the game’s fans that I personally take umbrage with, even if said discourse was well-intentioned. Let’s break it down.

How long does it take to beat Blue Prince?

At the outset of Blue Prince, you have a clear objective: reach the 46th room of the randomized 45 room house you’ve inherited from your uncle Herbert Sinclair. While it is technically possible to accomplish this task in one in-game day (there’s a trophy for it, even), 99.999999999% of players will need to aimlessly stumble throughout the house while they gather clues and unlock permanent upgrades first. The game’s credits will play after finding Room 46, so you could consider this “beating” Blue Prince

While you can finish Blue Prince in 15 to 20 hours, this estimate can swing wildly. If you’re really good at puzzle games and luck is on your side, you could find your way to the end of Blue Prince in under ten hours. However, if you aren’t accustomed to roguelikes or puzzle games (or both), you could easily spend 25 or 30 hours to reach the credits. Frankly, there’s nothing wrong with that! Blue Prince leaves a lot up to chance by design, so you could go hours without seeing clues that other players might find incredibly early on their journey.

That said, Blue Prince has a ton of mysteries to solve after the credits. These relate directly to the main story and include some pretty big discoveries, but uncovering these will take a lot more notetaking and out-of-the-box thinking. Peeling back every layer of Blue Prince and seeing every challenge to the end can absolutely take you over 100 hours. Again, that estimate should be taken with a grain of salt, as many secrets will depend on whether a lot of random events line up just right for you on a given in-game day. Your completion time will also change if you use guides or want to solve absolutely everything yourself.

This massive postgame is why many fans have taken to calling the quest for Room 46 “the tutorial.” That said, if you haven’t played Blue Prince yet, I’d strongly advise against looking at the opening act as an appetizer to overcome before you get to the game’s main course.

Why I don’t think you should call getting to Room 46 in Blue Prince “the tutorial”

I wasn’t able to start Blue Prince until it was already universally praised by both indie game aficionados and whoever is still employed writing about video games. Before I could even press play, I was barraged with tips and facts about Blue Prince that I had to know if I wanted to play it the right way. You gotta take notes about everything! You haven’t really started Blue Prince until you reach a certain point! You’re just a noob if you complain about the Billiards room! You won’t believe how many layers there are to Blue Prince and you have to see them all!

I’ll be frank; this discourse damn near ruined Blue Prince for me. I was so stressed out in the opening hours of the game that I obsessively noted every observation I had about every room, worried about all these intricate and complex puzzles that would await me when the game really started. I wasn’t even sure what I was looking for, I just had to get through this “tutorial” fast so I could understand why everyone’s losing their mind about this game. What spectacular secret will I find once I enter Room 46? What will Blue Prince be like once I finally get to the “real” part of the game?

Without outright spoiling, I’ll say this: there’s no reality-shifting moment in Room 46. There is no “Just Monika” or “The Cake is a lie” twist that will force you to make that shocked face you see in 90% of YouTube thumbnails. The only big reveal is—as mentioned above— there are several extra puzzles in Blue Prince that involve more obsessive note taking and riddle-decoding to solve. When people call the first act of Blue Prince “the tutorial,” they just mean there’s a lot more game remaining.

By focusing so much on what was next in Blue Prince, I wasn’t able to enjoy those opening hours of the game. I nearly put it down for good until I started playing it alongside my girlfriend, which finally helped me ignore the sky-high expectations put in my brain from internet commentators. I really regret that my first hours with the game were tainted by focusing on what came next, so my advice is to take Blue Prince slowly and enjoy every phase of the game however you’d like.

Play as much of Blue Prince as you want, even if you don’t “beat” it

My negative experience aside, I still think framing the first act of Blue Prince as “the tutorial” is misguided. At best, it’s redundant: You’ll inevitably find bread crumbs for extra puzzles and objectives on your journey to Room 46. Blue Prince naturally does a good job of prodding your curiosity, so you’ll know which threads to pull next if you’re ready for more after the credits.

At worst, the tutorial framing is patronizing. It undermines the accomplishment of getting to Room 46, as if to say the player shouldn’t feel proud because the puzzles that lie ahead are just so much harder. Even if there’s no ill intention involved, it’s the same vibe as telling someone they haven’t really played an MMORPG until they’ve participated in high-end raid content, or you haven’t played Elden Ring unless you use a strength build and never use Spirit Ashes and play exclusively with a dance pad. Not everyone enjoys video games the same way, and that’s okay! Reaching Room 46 is worth celebrating, whether it took you five or fifty hours to pull off.

Blue Prince is about the journey, not the destination. So if you aren’t enjoying the journey, there’s no big moment at the end that’ll make it all worthwhile. The post-credits puzzles in Blue Prince are way more intricate and cryptic than everything that came before, and you might not enjoy those challenges as much as the straightforward quest to find Room 46. Others may say that the endgame challenges of Blue Prince are the best part. It’s up to you to decide whether or not you want to dive so deep into the game that you become a walking wiki for it.

All of this is to say, don’t worry too much about what the “true end” of Blue Prince is. It is, indeed, a quick adventure if you want it to be. But if you want to dig deeper into it, you’ll be pleased by just how deep this rabbit hole goes. For best results, I recommend going slowly with the game and taking breaks if you get stuck, as a good night’s sleep can make all the difference between a puzzle being fun or frustrating. And most importantly, enjoy your time in Mt. Holly manor!