Blue Prince

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 of the game, there are other mysteries that the player can discover related to the mansion, such as the disappearance of children's author Marion Marigold.

The game begins with Simon P. Jones arriving at Mt. Holly Estate, where he has set up a camping tent outdoors. Though not explicitly told to the player, the estate is located in the realm of Fenn Aries, one of numerous city-states on the low fantasy, parallel universe planet of Mora.

While superficially similar to Earth, major differences in technology include commonplace use of airships as transport, and a building technique called "drafting" that is able to materialize and disintegrate individual rooms on a space-time level. As Simon traverses the estate, he is able to view various clues to the world's history. While censored in its typical form, a secret original copy of a history book explains the realm's past: the formerly peaceful realm of Orinda Aries, named after that world's paragon, or angel, of royalty, was overthrown by an uprising — the Fennsurrection — led by nobles from the cities of Fenn and Oris who opposed King Desilets III's generosity towards commoners. After the War of Ruin, the highly unpopular Desilets IV was forced into exile, and the traitorous General Teskin set up an authoritarian regime under the name of Fenn Aries.

Blue Prince was primarily developed by Tonda Ros. Prior to development he had frequently held annual gatherings for his friends at different rental vacation homes, spending time to devise a puzzle game spanning the home based on ideas in the 1992 board game Jewels in the Attic. He had been inspired by the documentary Indie Game: The Movie, which had shown him that it was possible to create complete games with a simple toolset of development tools. After playing through the games Gone Home and The Witness, Ros became inspired to test ideas with the Unity game engine, finding development would be easier than he originally thought.

A principal influence for Ros for Blue Prince was the Maze: Solve the World's Most Challenging Puzzle 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, and when first published, featured a monetary prize for those that solved it within a limited time. Maze had intrigued Ros in his youth, and he considered it a predecessor to modern day first person adventure games. Ros was able to find an online Maze group and through them contacted and commissioned Manson to develop art and one of the puzzles within Blue Prince. Other puzzles in the game were inspired by those of Martin Gardner and Raymond Smullyan.

Blue Prince received "critical acclaim" from critics for the PC and Xbox Series X/S versions, while the PlayStation 5 version received "generally favorable" reviews, according to review aggregator website Metacritic. At the time of release, it was the highest-rated game for 2025 based on Metacritic averages. OpenCritic determined that 95% of critics recommend the game.

In Eurogamer's five star review, Christian Donlan singled out the game keeping its secrets hidden and releasing them slowly as the most impressive aspect. "It's the pleasure of finding hidden aspects to things you thought you understood in full, the pleasure of coming back to something you thought was simple and finding that it's not simple at all." Polygon writer Maddy Myers noted the lack of colorblind support to be "a big problem", as the emphasis on colors in some of the puzzles may make the game unplayable for certain players. As of April 2026 this issue has been addressed by an accessibility update of the game.