Indie puzzle roguelike Blue Prince has landed to some astoundingly positive reviews, and you can count Balatro creator LocalThunk among the many singing its praises.
"Blue Prince is already one of the best games I've ever played and I still feel like I’m scratching the surface," LocalThunk says in a Bluesky post. "Released today but lucky me I've been playing it all week (perks of the job). Get a journal, a pen, and buy the game already."
A few days earlier, when the review embargo first dropped, LocalThunk predicted that "Blue Prince will get a GOTY nomination at TGA," and given the critical response it's certainly looking likely. Blue Prince's Metacritic score is a whopping 92, making it the top-rated game of the year ahead of Split Fiction, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, and Monster Hunter Wilds. Our own glowing four-star Blue Prince review is among the game's lower marks.
It's certainly not unheard of for indie titles to secure game of the year nominations at The Game Awards, but the field is typically dominated by AAA affairs. One notable exception came last year, when Balatro itself was up for the big award. LocalThunk has repeatedly chosen to share the GOTY love and shine spotlight on other indie devs, and Blue Prince is no exception.
Blue Prince is a first-person puzzle game about arranging a shifting set of rooms in a mysterious mansion. The game's drawn repeated comparisons to the stone-cold banger Outer Wilds, and it seems much of its depth is waiting to be discovered below the surface. LocalThunk is not alone in recommending you keep a pen and paper at the ready for this one, and it seems that kind of investment is going to be rewarded with something special.
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