Its creator has taken eight years to finish it

Sometimes, the most stimulating phenomena of the video game happen behind the back of the great media campaigns and prefabricated successes. Simply, an extraordinary quality game or with immense playable possibilities grows with the mouth to mouth of the users. And when it reaches the media, it is already the sensation of the environment. It has happened to ‘Blue Prince‘, And it is the great current secret success of video games.

Simple but matador. What makes ‘Blue Prince’ an overwhelming concept game is that he finds a point where two apparently opposite mechanics are crossed. On the one hand the static puzzles of ‘Myst’ games. On the other, that the game is a Roguelitethat is to say: each game is completely new, death is permanent and the objective of the game, exploring a house of 45 rooms in search of number 46, which is secret, is reset with each restart, having to start exploration again every time.

The ‘Balatro’ Way. Every time you try to leave a room, the player has three rooms at your disposal to locate. Not only will they tell a fascinating and increasingly sinister story between the lines, but they have their individual characteristics: not all of them open to the first, not all have the same ways of exit, if they have them. They could be three letters to choose from a deck, and in that sense the game remembers’Balatro‘, the last feeling of the industry. And that he toured a path very similar to this: released by Bajini, without great campaigns around, and thanks to the mouth of the players, excellent notes and the runrún on social networks became the game of the season.

Eight years. It is the time that its creator, Tonda Ros. Inspired by the documentary ‘Indie Game: The Movie’, he decided that he would set up a game with very elementary development tools, such as the Unity engine. His inspiration were games like ‘Gone Home’ and ‘The Witness’, as Bloomberg said. In 2016, Ros began to develop a prototype of ‘Blue Prince’ with the plan to invest only six months in development, but one thing led to the other and ended up leaving the job and commissioning part of the tasks, such as the art direction or the soundtrack, to other creators. Since 2021, with the already playable prototype, he has basically dedicated himself to balance the difficulty.

But … What does ‘Blue Prince’ have? Basically, a mixture impossible to describe in words: on the one hand rigid mechanical, almost outdated for puzzles; on the other, the total unpredictability of the Roguelites Modern, where each game is completely new. Contemplative and at the same time mysterious, with a story that unfolds wonderfully and without carrying the player at any time, ‘Blue Prince’ has become one of the best valued games of the moment.

Criticism loves him. ‘Blue Prince ‘holds An average of 92 in Metacriticthat is, it is the best valued game from 2025 to date. In other aggregators, as opencritichas an impressive 98 after 63 criticism, and an average of one in three reviews providing the maximum possible score. Many media already describe it as Important matching contender of the year. If something like this happened in the next game Awards, it would mark a trend worthy of being taken into account in the industry: after the triumph last year of the superb ‘Astro Bot‘, we could be seeing a withdrawal of Blockbusters and a turn players preferences towards titles (much) more modest.

And sales endorse it. ‘Blue Prince ‘has been played by approximately 150,000 people on all platforms. The bulk of its sales have produced, however, in Steam, since those of PlayStation and Xbox are scarce due to their availability in Game Pass and PlayStation Plus. Sales are not official, but estimates They are between 77,000 and 162,000 copies: as the game debuted in the Seventh place in the Steam Sales Weekly Top In its launch week, it is believed that their digital sales have been superior to the average for such a game. ‘Blue Prince’ reached a historic peak of 19,243 simultaneous players in Steam on April 20, 2025, and currently is around 15,000 players connected simultaneously. A authentic and small miracle.

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