Review

‘Blue Prince’ Is the Best Game I’ve Played That’s Ultimately Not for Me

Games, Review

Blue Prince is a beautiful puzzle adventure game with a blend of strategy and rogue-like elements. It is also the first game from Dogubomb, an indie game development studio founded by Tonda Ros, who developed the game over ten years. In an interview on the Play, Watch, Listen podcast, Ros explained how he built and rebuilt the game over the years, at one point starting from scratch to ensure the game played as smoothly as possible.

The care with which Ros approached the development process—from the level design to the intricate puzzles—is evident in the final game. Since it was released in April, Blue Prince has garnered significant praise from game critics and gamers alike, and rightly so.

And yet, despite experiencing an initial joy playing Blue Prince, I eventually came to the realization that this one is not for me.

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Games I Played in June 2025

Games, Review
Entry hall in Blue Prince. | screenshot by me

Blue Prince (Dogubomb) is probably the best game I’ve ever played that ultimately is not for me. The game is wonderful in so many ways. It opens with an interesting story premise — a young man inherits a mansion, which will only become his if he can find the mysterious 46th room — and features beautiful illustrative-style art with muted undertones.

The gameplay is also quite fun, allowing the player to figure out how to play through the process of playing. As you enter the mansion, you are given a brief note and then open a door and are presented with a card draw of three rooms to build, and from that room (as long as it’s not a dead end), you build more and more rooms, constructing a path deeper into the home. You are able to continue building, exploring, and collecting supplies and zeroes until you run out of steps and are forced to take a rest, resetting the entire house to zero — creating a roguelike feel.

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This is Not a Game: The Kid A Mnesia Exhibition

Games, Review
“Echo Chamber” in Kid A Mnesia Exhibition

Radiohead’s “Creep” is one of those classic ’90s grunge songs that fed my teenage years, allowing me to reflect on my own feelings of being a creep and weirdo. Over the subsequent years (and now decades), Radiohead has remained on my peripheral radar, drawing me in with their experimental soundscapes blending electronica and grungy undertones, with a mix of melancholy or moody vibes.

Recently, I’ve discovered a renewed interest in the band through the Kid A Mnesia Exhibition, a digital museum in which each room creates a unique audiovisual experience paired with specific songs from the band’s Kid A and Amnesiac albums. I find myself now immersing myself all over again in their work and even delving even more deeply into their albums, following this interactive experience.

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Thoughts on Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy and Other Games I Played in August 2023

Games, Review
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By the time I got around to Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy (which I’m playing on my phone using the touchscreen), I was well aware of the game’s reputation for inducing rage and frustration in its players. I had watched a number of Let’s Plays, in which gamers (particularly Markiplier) lost their cool, screaming in rage as they failed over and over again.

The game is based off a simple mechanic: a man in a cast-iron pot swings a hammer to climb the mountain — but its actual execution is exceedingly difficult. The hammer doesn’t swing the way you expect it to, and it takes a significant amount of trial and error to simply figure out how it functions and get over the first tree you encounter in the game. Not to mention the increasingly difficult challenges that lie ahead.

I’ll write a bit more about my ongoing struggle with trying to beat the game (I am very stuck at the moment) and how it makes me feel in another post. Short version: it is indeed frustrating, but in a way that I personally find oddly satisfying.

For the moment, I’d like to focus on the way Getting Over It approaches game writing — rather than providing a traditional narrative, the game presents a more philosophical approach. When the game opens up and the player faces the first obstacles, Bennett Foddy begins his narrations by warning the player about the challenges ahead:

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A Handful of Things I Learned from The Game Writing Guide by Anna Megill

Books, Games Writing, Review

The Game Writing Guide: Get Your Dream Job and Keep It by Anna Megill is a wonderfully practical guide to understanding how to build and maintain a career as a writer in the games industry. Her advice — which is based off interviews with dozens of writer mentors, as well as her own experience writing for games such as Fable, Control, and Dishonored, among others — runs the full gamut, from job hunting, writing resumes and cover letters, building a portfolio, and interviews to moving up within the company once you have the job and leadership roles.

All of this advice is delivered in simple, well-organized, and straightforward manner — with little dashes of humor sprinkled in — making the book easy to ready and follow. Where Megill is less confident in her commentary, she admits so upfront and presents insights of other mentors or other avenues for seeking this information.

With so many folks vying for writing jobs at the moment, I thought I’d highlight a few of the takeaways I found particularly helpful thus far. Each of these bits of advice are primarily on the job hunting side of things (as opposed to the job keeping side), since I’m still at the stage of looking for full-time work in games.

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