Games have a singular power that I don’t believe any other medium has. Try this: has the meaning of a screenshot ever changed for you the longer you played a game? Have you ever experienced the feeling of looking at a screenshot early on and not understanding it, and then, many hours later, looking again and understanding it completely?
Think of an image from Balatro, of the jokers in the game, which are immediately an arresting sight, colourful as they are and caught in grotesque poses. What does this image mean to you when you first see it? Perhaps you’re intrigued. There’s a lurid eeriness to the style of the game, and poker – you like poker. But what about hundreds or even thousands of hours later – who am I to judge your Balatro obsession – what does it mean then? Where once you saw a picture, now you see a game.
Blue Prince set this thought off for me. I’ve been playing it what feels like every day, often late into the evening, taking it in turns with my partner to hold the pad – although in truth I prefer being the passenger. I like being the one with the notepad. Perhaps it’s the reporter in me. Regardless, we’re in deep. Blue Prince looms, quite pleasantly, over our daily life. And the deeper I go, the more the game changes, and the more I appreciate the nuance of what I’m seeing in front of me.
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Blue Prince is a game about building the interior of a huge and enigmatic mansion, room by room, and each day seeing how close to an almost mythical 46th room you can get. It’s a bit of a deck-builder, a bit of an adventure game, and it’s full of mystery. Seeing the nuance here is as simple as looking at the room cards you’re dealt during the game – the kind you play when you touch a closed door and have to decide what lies beyond. To begin with, these rooms are objects, simple things to be placed, a means to an end. But the longer you play, the more they come alive in your thoughts, as you remember where they were best used or ponder where they might work better. It’s almost as though you give them a personality.