If you’ve ever found yourself in an unknown room, staring at the closed door and you wonder what is located besides, you already know the mysterious driving force Blue prince. Will this door lead to the corridor? Quiet bedroom? Is the great ballroom?
My name is Tonda Ros, an independent programmer with love for atmospheric games, and for the last eight years I have worked on a game with a enormous manor house and many mysterious doors. Blue Prince was made of great ideas from very different worlds. It has elements of secrets, strategies and discoveries, combining the world of adventure from the first person’s puzzle with the mechanics of cabinet of tabletop card games. It also launches on April 10 as one day of PlayStation Plus Game Catalog.
But how exactly does the game work?
Floor plan
When my own journey began almost ten years ago, I had one uncomplicated idea: “Each door is a choice.” In a sense, these five words summarize the whole blue prince. The Mount Holly estate is not an ordinary home. It is a manor of changing rooms and constantly changing expectations. In this house, each open door can lead to one of three different rooms. The choice depends on you.
Do you want the magazine to gain useful tools? Library for searching more tips? Or maybe just a long corridor to give yourself even more doors to continue exploration? By making a decision and open the door, you will immediately meet with the chosen room.
Constructing a changing house
Ironically, the process of creating this game resembles a game in Blue Prince. Both the player and I try to build a changing house of many rooms. Mansion, which is full of challenges that we cannot predict at the beginning of our adventure. To create this house, we build rooms, one time – doors at the door, plan by plan. Of course, the rooms we choose are completely from us. When we create, we are also able to discover by traveling from room to room in search of answers and tips.
However, where the player’s adventure begins to differ, he is located at the end of each day in the game. When you wake up tomorrow, you’ll find that the house you will discover will have a completely different layout. You will find a door that leads to modern rooms. You will find different items, various tips and various puzzles. You will make modern discoveries, and every day you will learn more and more about the strange rules that rule this mysterious home.
Changing puzzles
Designing puzzles for a game taking place in a constantly changing residence was a bit of a challenge. One player can find puzzles in the residence, and the next room that the sketch can contain a clue. Secondly, there may be dozens of rooms before they discover the secret. The beauty, of course, is that in fact it makes experience unique. The rooms you drag, the items you find and the order in which you make discoveries contribute to the adventure that will be very different from any other game.
In addition, there is no puzzle in the game to be solved. Like most things in the estate, there are always alternative development opportunities and various solutions to the challenges he faces, which he faces, before which he faces, before which you face. If you can’t come up with something in the game, don’t be afraid to go further. The discovery of the court will ultimately lead you to the answers you are looking for, because most of the challenges in the game cannot be solved without finding more information and guidelines in other areas of property.
After eight years of development, I am finally at the end of my journey and I am ecstatic to give you the keys so that you can start. If you let me one last word advice: the less you know about this game, the better. In this article I gave you only a wide sense of the basic mechanics of my game and how I approached them to design. I will leave the evolution of these mechanics and the story of Mount Holly so that you can discover. But don’t worry, you won’t have to wait long. Blue Prince doors open on April 10.
