2026-01-05

Blue Prince is a great game.

(Slight spoilers for Blue Prince ahead! I'm trying out some spoiler code though so hopefully you'll see blacked out text.)

A friend recommended me the game Blue Prince during the summer, and of course I had to try it. After like 10 minutes in, I was horrified. Like what the fuck.

Next time I met the friend, I simply said, "this game, this game," over and over while shaking my head.

I never got past rank 5. Most of the time, I have enough steps left, but I just couldn't draft any more rooms because all of them are dead ends, so I had to call it a day. I also, in my 9-day run, never drew any of the key rooms you need to open the Antechamber, like the Foundation, or the Greenhouse, or the Secret Garden — never even found a Secret Garden Key, or the Garage, or the Great Hall. Maybe I was too limited by never progressing past rank 5, or maybe I drew them but didn't draft them, who knows, I can't remember. I also found 0 safes and all. Basically all I did was walk around aimlessly until everything was a dead end and called it a day.

I was, however, not completely stupid. I guessed every Billiard Room dart puzzle color's meaning as soon as they appeared, and I was never wrong on any Parlor box puzzle. I also found the Planetarium floorplan first time I went into the Observatory. But still, none of it led to any progress, and I eventually gave up.

That was over the summer. A while ago I suddenly remembered this game existed, and went back to it, before giving up again real quick. Then I went to watch Youtube playthrough videos because I sure as hell ain't finishing it myself!

Tons of really smart and potentially jobless people on there spending hundreds of hours cracking every single secret the game has to offer — and I'm hooked. Reaching Room 46 was just a tutorial. There are tons of stuff in this game that unlocks only afterwards. I watched a bunch of videos, some of them more than once, and this game never failed to impress me with how much you can do in there — if only drafting wasn't random and I'm not limited by steps and keys!

Then I suddenly remembered modding exists. I could… literally just mod the game into giving me unlimited resources.

So I found 3 mods, one that sets my steps, keys, gems, dice, and coins all to 9999 at the start of the day, one that gives me a shitton of items at the Entrance Hall, and one that sets my luck to somewhere like 999. It was nearly midnight but still I immediately sat down to finally journey into Room 46.

And… it did not go well. I mixed up some steps. I spent 2 hours filling up every single room in the house, got the Full House trophy, and got ready to go into the Basement, but I couldn't. I had drafted a Tomb and drained the fountain, but these two things were alternatives to each other; they accomplished the same goal. To actually complete my objective, I still needed to get to the Basement, which requires either the Foundation or the Workshop to craft a Power Hammer, and… since my house was already full, I could not draft new rooms.

Come to think of it, if I filled back the Fountain, drained the Reservoir by 1, and entered the reservoir through the Tomb, would that have worked? Basically the key here is you need to access both sides of the Underground, yet I only accessed one side. I think I might've tried that, actually, but IDK. It was 2 A.M. and I was tired and frustrated that even with all the mods I still couldn't get to Room 46.

Funny thing about that run was, I had an experiment that went like, "the next three times you open a chest, add 3 Aquariums to the draft pool." I ended up having a shitton of Aquariums in my house.

The next day (today), I sat down, not at midnight thankfully, to get to Room 46 again. I drafted the Foundation, opened the Antechamber in the Great Hall — which is my favorite now since all you need to do is draft it with my 9999 dice and open all the doors, got to the Inner Sanctum, and reached Room 46! Long live modding!

Does modding take away the fun in a game? It happened before with Soul Knight for me, but quite the opposite this time, unlimited^[1] resources took away the frustration and allowed me to focus entirely on the puzzles and hidden secrets. And it doesn't even guarantee success, as evident in my midnight playthrough!

Anyways, I've basically watched through all the gameplay on Youtube LOL, so I know what to do next. Neither does being spoiled take away the fun in this game. It's still vastly different experiencing it through someone else's video than to actually be in the game yourself.

I've found out that I don't really like playing video games at all. Every time I don't get what I want, I get frustrated^[2]. I rage-quit Reverse 1999 for the same reason. The games I do like, like Henry Stickmin, was largely plot-focused, and basically only required clicking everywhere, and I still had to look at wikis to get all achievements. But well, I mean, games are supposed to be fun. If I don't get fun out of them, why am I still wasting my time then?