2025 has already been a stacked year for great games, but Blue Prince has blown them all out of the water and become the highest-rated game of the year so far.
With heavy-hitters such as Split Fiction, Monster Hunter Wilds, Xenoblade Chronicles X, and Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 dominating this year, I'm surprised a game I hadn't heard of until today has managed to bag the top spot. It's this year's highest-rated game on Metacritic so far, and it's easy to see why.
Blue Prince is a puzzle and exploration game that takes place in a house with shifting rooms. It's like Dishonored 2's Clockwork Mansion level but turned into a full game. It borrows heavily from the Betrayal at House on the Hill board game where you randomly add more rooms as you play. It also looks absolutely gorgeous with a cel-shaded style.
In our Blue Prince review, Oscar Taylor-Kent writes, "This exploration roguelike is like nothing else I've played and became a puzzle obsession I just couldn't shake." As you venture through the house, which changes its layout every in-game day, "each time you clutch a doorknob you get a selection of three possible rooms to etch onto your blueprint." I can understand why this mechanic has so many reviewers excited about it.
TheGamer's review states the objective of the game is to "find the estate's mysterious 46th room," but "this is harder than it sounds." It seems like Blue Prince is a game that's best approached with as little foreknowledge as possible, though, as both TheGamer's and PC Gamer's reviewers state they don't want to give anything away.
"I love Blue Prince so much I'm going to spend the next 1,500 words or so telling you as little about it as possible," reads PC Gamer.
If you're not a fan of roguelikes because you feel like your time isn't being respected when you lose quickly and have to start over, don't worry, because Vice writes: "Almost any strategy is valid, and it's worth poring over every room to gather as much information as possible."
Blue Prince is out April 10 on PS5, Xbox Series, and PC.
You should check out our list of all the video game release dates of 2025 so you know what else there is to look forward to.
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