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A game critics indie darling, but is it actually a gem? This week Press B looks at Blue Prince and debates whether it's potentially game of the year, or RNG grind.

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Transcript:
Wulff: When building your dream home is a nightmare. Today on.

Jake: Welcome everybody to another episode of Press me to cancel. Your favorite, I don't know, contractor building construction, podcast games. I don't know. I am your host this week, Sick Jake and I'm joined by two friends. And this week we are going to talk about indie critic darling Blueprints and discuss whether the game is good or is it RNG hell. And to join me this week I'm with Wolf. How you doing this week?

Wulff: Surviving RNG hell.

Jake: And with our, I guess of all the people on press B, our number one AAA gamer, Chard. Chard, how you doing this week?

Chard: What am I, a triple A gamer? Wow. I need to stop moving my shoes into different rooms of this house because every time I go to pick them back up, that room isn't there anymore and it's get really bad.

Jake: Gosh, I wish I had as many rooms as this house. Actually. No, you know what? I take that back. I don't need 45 rooms in my house because I would have to clean them all.

Wulff: That would be hell to clean.

Jake: Yeah, imagine if I can clean that. Gosh.

Wulff: All right, so this week my wife, when I see a house that's like 2,000 square feet or more, she's like, who's going to clean all that?

Jake: Yeah, it's a good point. All right, so we're talking about a game called Blueprints, which is from what's, what's the name of the DogU bomb software. Dog Bomb. Yeah. And I had all these notes, Ted, though, I'm so bad guys. Oh, I want to do this right. Wiki Blueprints. I had notes.

Chard: Mind palace.

Jake: Yeah, Mind palace. Tonda Ross is the, the main developer behind that, behind this game, Blueprints. It, I don't want to call it a rog like deck builder. I feel like that's a disservice. It is at its core very much a carefully crafted puzzle game. From what I was reading on WikiLEAR today, he based this actually on a book which I'd never heard of. It's called Maze Solve, the world's most challenging puzzle. It's a, it's a book that came out in the 80s that is very much actually like blueprints and that is a, it's a not choose your own adventure, but it's like a puzzle based book where you flip pages to go to various rooms in a house. 45 rooms, much like blueprints. And at the time it was actually a contest. You could actually win $10,000 by playing through this book and being the first to solve it. So it's kind of interesting. That was the origin of his idea, but he's. He worked on this game for, I think it was eight years that I saw.

Chard: And that's what I saw.

Wulff: Wow.

Jake: After 25 hours of me playing blueprints, I can see why this is a game where I. I heard about a couple weeks ago, a lot of games critics on their various podcasts and YouTube channels have been. Were secretly talking about a game that they were loving, but they weren't allowed to talk about it because of embargoes. And then I heard a few let it slip that it was blueprints. So I was really interested to see what all their hype was about. And then it did release. And I think with game critics and those type of folks, it's probably going to be a game of the year contender for them in terms of the amount of work and crafting in this unique world that has been built. But for a lot of gamers, especially on Steam, people didn't like it. There's a lot of criticisms about it being too hard, confusing, relying on RNG and the whole nine yards. So it's kind of an interesting disparity between critics and us average gaming folks. So I want to talk about with you guys, because I think of the three of us, we're probably maybe varied on whether we like this game or not. I'm kind of curious to see what your guys take is on it. So for those who are not aware, Blueprints is. I'm going to use the word roguelike, although I feel like it doesn't fit all those bucket check boxes. But you are basically, your name is Simon, you're the character, and you've inherited a mansion from your. Your dead uncle. But it comes with a stipulation like the Haunted House clause, where you have to actually go to the house on Mount Holly, I think it is. And your goal is to solve the puzzles and navigate to the secret room 46 in this mansion. And you do that by entering the mansion and drafting rooms at random. From think of it like a deck of cards. And you're building this mansion room by room, and every single room has been very carefully crafted. At a glance, you may zoom through a hallway, thinking it's just a hallway. But there's a lot going on in the game that you don't quite pick up right away. But at its core, the first mission is build a path of rooms to the top of the map where it's room 46 or room 45, the antechamber. And then that's how you beat the game, and that's how you get credits. But there's a whole lot more going on. Every room is a puzzle. Every room has clues. There's books of lore literally everywhere that tells a. A backstory to the world. That was quite surprising to me. And even when you get end credits, there is still countless puzzles and fun stuff to. To explore. So I kind of want to talk with you guys and get your first impressions. We're going to start with the episode. We're going to avoid spoilers because we want to. Want to pitch you on this game and see if it's something you would enjoy playing. But I do want to spend the last part of this episode talking about some of the secrets we found and maybe some tips on how to beat this game, because I'd hate for anybody who's bought in this game to have bounced off it and not at least seen the credits because I think this game is worth beating this year. So who wants to start? Charter or Wolf? Who wants to start about your opinions and first impressions of blueprints.

Wulff: All right, Char, do you want to start?

Chard: You go for it, Wolf. It's you.

Wulff: All right.

Chard: You got some things to say?

Wulff: Well, I. I will say I'm. I'm really, really enjoying the game.

Jake: Okay. I wasn't sure that comes with.

Wulff: That comes with an asterisk. I'm really enjoying the game. Except for the room drawing mechanic, because the RNG of the room drawing mechanic has screwed me more than anything else in this game.

Jake: Okay.

Wulff: So I really love the puzzle design. I love the. The aspect of exploration and navigating your way north in this five by nine structure. And by five by nine, I mean, it's like five rooms wide, nine rooms deep, and you start at the third, like the middle room at the bottom. So you. Every time you go up to a door, it presents you with three cards. Those three cards are a room that that door opens to. So you never see the same room in the same. Well, not never, but it's. The rooms are not stationary, except for maybe one. Yeah, we'll get into that later. But yeah, other. Other than that, the only rooms that are stationary is the starting room and the anti chamber. Anti chamber, not anti.

Chard: That's my fault. I called it the anti chamber.

Wulff: And so you. You. Every time you open a door, it swings. Like, it's like, all right, pick your room that you want this room to be from the three that you've got. And there are mechanics in place to where you can reroll and later there are mechanics in place that you can rotate the rooms. But most of the time, you're stuck with those three. Us. There we are.

Jake: Make sure we're still live. Okay, that's great.

Wulff: Yeah, we're. We're still live area.

Jake: Okay. Interesting. All right. We're still good.

Chard: Sorry, guys. All right. Okay, you were saying.

Wulff: What was the last thing you heard me say?

Jake: Rotating rooms.

Wulff: Okay. So aside from those, usually you're going to open a door and just get the three options you've got and the directions they're facing, and that's it. Now what Those different rooms have different properties. Some are bedrooms, some are shops, some are just hallways, which is the weirdest, lamest descriptor for a room.

Jake: But that's what they are.

Wulff: Those are a room descriptor, and they do. Going on for them. The spare room. Actually, we'll come back to that because I find the spare room very interesting. There are also special rooms, I think. I don't know what the type is called, but they're blue.

Jake: Well, like, the blue is almost like generally room, I think. Right. Because, I mean, the basic. The first couple rooms you see and it's. The first five rooms you see are like the den, which is just, you know, a den, and there's a table and two doors and a gem.

Wulff: They generally have some sort of thing going on in them, though.

Jake: Right.

Wulff: So, like, they have a puzzle or they have some. They have something to interact with.

Chard: Right. You get something from it. Gems or keys.

Wulff: So they'll have. They'll have a