Blue Prince is a rabbit hole that seems to get deeper whenever you think you’ve reached the bottom. You could spend over 100 hours unpacking everything this roguelike puzzler has to offer. The craziest thing about that? That’s still not enough for some people out here! For example, you! The person who clicked this article, looking for more cryptic games to play after Blue Prince!
Truthfully, finding games like Blue Prince depends on what exactly you liked about Blue Prince. Is it the note-taking to solve puzzles that appealed to you? Do you enjoy the freedom of exploring a space to get to the bottom of a mystery? Or have you just now realized that you really like roguelikes? Regardless of what you’re looking for, at least one of the five games listed here to help you scratch whatever itch the conclusion of Blue Prince has left you with.
—unless that itch is “I really want someone to recommend Return to Obra Dinn to me.” You’ll just have to let the official Kotaku review do the talking since I never got to play it. Please send your complaints about this to TimHadNoMoneyIn2019@hotmail.com.
1: Full Metal Furies
Let’s kick off with a game that doesn’t appear as often on “games like Blue Prince” lists. And considering this is a co-op action game with no roguelike elements—despite coming from the people who gave us Rogue Legacy—you might wonder what this game’s doing here!
Without spoiling too much, all I can say is that anyone who loved taking tons of notes to solve puzzles in Blue Prince will definitely like Full Metal Furies. And trust me, you’re gonna need to think out of the box if you want to see this one to its true ending. If you’ve been enjoying Blue Prince with a friend, definitely link up to work your mind and reflexes to the fullest in Full Metal Furies.
2: The Witness
The surprisingly divisive puzzle adventure The Witness is here for two reasons. For starters, it features an open world filled with line puzzles, and it’s up to you to figure out the rules to each of them. Sometimes these are straightforward, other times they can absolutely boggle your mind. Either way, it should appeal to those hungry for another puzzler after putting down Blue Prince.
The second reason is that The Witness actually has a full fan-made parody game called The Looker, which is tailored made for people who both love and hate Thekla, inc’s puzzler. This spoof is even on Steam for free, so you got no excuse not to check it out!
3: Outer Wilds
It might not be a roguelike, but Outer Wilds is one of the closest approximations you’ll find to the feel of Blue Prince. It’s a space exploration game that offers you enormous freedom as you dive deep into every corner of the solar system. Just like Blue Prince, the key here is to gather information as you piece together solutions to puzzles and the history of the civilization that came before you. You’ll even split your game time between “runs” of Outer Wilds just as each in-game day marks a new beginning in Blue Prince, even if the context is a bit different between the two.
I could say more, but fans of this one have made it very clear that the first rule of talking about Outer Wilds is that you don’t talk about Outer Wilds until all parties involved have finished it. So I recommend you play Outer Wilds to ensure that you can enjoy Outer Wilds related conversations in the future.
4: Inscryption
If Blue Prince was the moment you realized you like roguelikes, you should know that there are enough good games in the genre for you to play for, conservatively speaking, the next 8000 years. But if I had to pick just one to recommend, then know that you can’t go wrong with Inscryption.
At first glance, Inscryption isa card battler a la Slay the Spire and countless others. But as is the case with anything made by the guy who gave us Pony Island and Hex, there’s something much more sinister (and metatextual) lurking beneath the surface.
You can actually find the creator of Inscryption endorsing Blue Prince directly on the game’s Steam Page—he’s even listed in the Special Thanks section of the credits! Even if that’s a very tenuous connection between these two games, I’m sure Blue Prince’s creator would be very happy if you enjoyed the rich atmosphere of Inscryption too.
5: Animal Well
I’ve done my best to avoid the term “Metroidbrainia” so far, but Animal Well makes that task impossible. It’s a literal puzzle-focused Metroidvania that rewards out-of-the-box thinking, and you may even find yourself taking notes as you venture deeper into this game’s depths.
Where it gets especially Blue Prince-esque is in its layered design. Getting to the credits in Animal Well is a great accomplishment, but you’ll also see the signs leading you to dig deeper into the game’s secrets. And the more you peel away at each of the game’s layers, you’ll continue to find devious puzzles and new tools that will change the way you look at the sidescrolling world. Animal Well probably won’t occupy over a hundred hours of your time in the way Dogubomb’s game does. But if you’re eager for another rabbit hole to fall into, you’ll have a great time with this.
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