Blue Prince
A puzzle adventure set in a mansion that rearranges itself daily.
Blue Prince is a puzzle adventure game from solo developer Tonda Ros, working under the studio name Dogubomb and published by Raw Fury. Ros spent eight years building the game, drawing inspiration from Christopher Manson’s illustrated puzzle book *Maze*, other puzzle books, and tabletop games that involve card drafting. The game launched on April 10, 2025, for PlayStation 5, Windows, and Xbox Series X/S, with a macOS version following on September 29, 2025, and a Nintendo Switch 2 release on March 3, 2026. Critics praised it heavily, and it won Outstanding Achievement for an Independent Game and Outstanding Achievement in Game Design at the 29th Annual D.I.C.E. Awards.
Players control Simon P. Jones, who inherits the Mt. Holly Estate from his late great-uncle Herbert S. Sinclair. The catch: Simon must find a hidden 46th room inside the mansion to claim his inheritance. If he fails to reach it within a single day, the house rearranges itself overnight, and he has to start over. The mansion is laid out as a 9-by-5 grid of 45 room tiles. Only two rooms stay fixed each day: the Entrance Hall (where Simon begins) and the Antechamber (which leads to the 46th room on the opposite side of the map). Every time Simon opens a door to a new space, he must draft that room by picking one of three randomly offered floor plans to place in the adjacent spot. The new room’s doors and walls don’t have to line up with existing ones—if they don’t match, those doors become blocked and unusable. Many rooms are dead ends, but building them can still be worthwhile because they sometimes grant rewards.
When a room is placed, the game reveals its contents. These can include keys for locked doors, gems to buy specific floor plans, coins for food and tools, and tools that unlock areas in certain rooms. Some puzzles are confined to a single room, while others require searching multiple rooms to solve. Rooms also have tiers based on which row of the grid they occupy; higher-tier rooms offer more complex puzzles or better rewards. Moving from one room to another costs one “step.” Simon starts each day with 50 steps, but can replenish them by eating food or entering bedrooms. When steps run out or progress stalls, Simon must leave the mansion for the night, losing all collected objects.
- Developer
- Dogubomb
- Publisher
- Raw Fury
- Initial release date
- April 10, 2025
- Platforms
- PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox Series X/S, macOS, Nintendo Switch 2
- Solo developer
- Tonda Ros
- Development duration
- Eight years
- Awards
- Outstanding Achievement for an Independent Game and Outstanding Achievement in Game Design at the 29th Annual D.I.C.E. Awards
Lore & Background
The player takes the role of Simon P. Jones, who has been willed the Mt. Holly Estate, a mansion owned by his deceased great uncle Herbert S. Sinclair. The one stipulation in Herbert's will is that Simon must locate a hidden 46th room within the mansion in order to secure his inheritance. Failure to reach that room within the span of a single day means Simon must start the search fresh the next day, as the house's architecture is rearranged overnight. While discovering the 46th room is the primary goal, there are other mysteries related to the mansion, such as the disappearance of children's author Marion Marigold.
The mansion is represented by a grid of 45 room tiles, nine rows by five. Only two rooms persist in the same locations every day: the Entrance Hall where the player starts, and the Antechamber that leads to the 46th room on the opposite side of the map. Upon opening a door to a new room, the player drafts that room by choosing one of three randomly selected floor plans to place in the adjacent space. The doors and walls of the new room do not necessarily need to align with already-placed rooms' existing doors, but failure to align them results in blocked, unusable doors. Many potential rooms are dead-ends, sometimes still desirable for offering rewards.
The plot reveals that the estate is located in the realm of Fenn Aries, one of numerous city-states on the low fantasy, parallel universe planet of Mora. The game's lore includes a history of the realm's overthrow by the Fennsurrection, the disappearance of Simon's mother Mary Jones (who wrote under the pen name Marion Marigold), and her involvement with the Children of Black Water resistance group. Reaching the antechamber to the 46th room allows Simon to access the estate's inner sanctum, which contains remnants of a mining operation that stumbled upon ancient Castle Orindia. Simon can reclaim the original Orinda Aries throne by drafting the castle's throne room, making him the eponymous 'Blue Prince'.
Reader's Guide
Blue Prince was developed over eight years by solo developer Tonda Ros. Ros was influenced by the illustrated book Maze: Solve the World's Most Challenging Puzzle by Christopher Manson and other puzzle books along with tabletop games that featured drafting. Prior to development, Ros had held annual gatherings for his friends at different rental vacation homes, devising a puzzle game spanning the home based on ideas in the 1992 board game Jewels in the Attic. He was inspired by the documentary Indie Game: The Movie, which showed him it was possible to create complete games with a simple toolset. After playing Gone Home and The Witness, Ros became inspired to test ideas with the Unity game engine.
A principal influence was Maze by Christopher Manson, a book featuring 45 illustrated rooms that challenged the reader to find the shortest path from the entrance to the center of the maze and back out. Ros contacted and commissioned Manson to develop art and one of the puzzles within Blue Prince. Other puzzles were inspired by those of Martin Gardner and Raymond Smullyan, and other 'armchair mystery' books such as Masquerade by Kit Williams. Card and tabletop games that featured drafting, such as Magic: The Gathering and Agricola, also influenced the game. Ros wanted the puzzle solving to be similar to how The Legend of Zelda games would place clues to puzzle solutions in disparate locations but would not require the player to find all the clues to progress.
Once the player has successfully reached the 46th room for the first time, they unlock challenges for future runs, and can collect trophies to denote completed challenges. There is an extensive post-game with many secrets and areas only available after reaching room 46. These become increasingly challenging and labyrinthine; as of November 2025 a number of puzzles remain unsolved by the community. Ros has indicated that he will not formally announce when everything has been solved, as the developers of the comparably deep Animal Well did.
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