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In our Blue Prince review, Chris Livingston called the run-based room drafter one of the best puzzle games in years—a work of “incredible craftsmanship and elegance” that’s worthy of all the fevered notebook scribbling required to unravel the mystery of its shifting mansionscape. And by the looks of things, Chris isn’t alone.
So far, Blue Prince is the best-reviewed game of 2025.
It is only April of course, but earning a critical reception that comes out ahead of every game in the year’s first quarter is no small feat, especially when 2025’s first few months were stacked with well-reviewed games. On both OpenCritic and Metacritic, Blue Prince has averaged a higher review score than massive launches like Monster Hunter Wilds, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, and Assassin’s Creed Shadows.
Common amongst the praise critics are heaping upon Blue Prince is an admiration for its layered problem-and-puzzle-solving. At GamesRadar, reviewer Oscar Taylor-Kent celebrated how progress in Blue Prince is gained “by acquiring knowledge, be that strategies for how to place rooms, or by picking up and reading notes that give you greater perspective on what’s really going on.”
For Christian Donlan at Eurogamer, that layered strategy and accumulation of knowledge helps Blue Prince offer not just compelling mysteries, but an exploration of our evolving relationships with the spaces we inhabit. “More than anything, Blue Prince seems aware of the time you’re spending within it, and that’s pure magic to me,” Donland writes. “The richest aspect of the game’s extremely rich design may be how many secrets it springs once you’ve lived with it for a while.”
Putting Blue Prince in a league with Return of the Obra Dinn and Outer Wilds, two of the best-loved mysteries of the last decade, IGN reviewer Tom Marks says its fiction is just as rich and rewarding as its puzzles.
“The worldbuilding here is doled out with a patience I’m not used to seeing, with tons to learn about your relatives, the manor, and the nation it’s located in, but none of that is ever forced down your throat,” Marks writes. “That made anything I could glean about important historical events or complex geopolitics feel like a win that would almost always help me solve future mysteries, not just some ‘lore’ to read about in books or letters and then move on from.”
Time will tell if 2025’s later releases manage to post higher review numbers, but it’s clear that Blue Prince has already cemented its place as a game of the year contender. I’m hoping I end up with a similar admiration; so far, my time with the game has been spent solving the puzzle of how to reliably draft myself into dead-ends. There’s always the next run.
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Kurt Indovina
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