Video game: "Blue Prince," the intriguing "architectural adventure" from an American developer

Available Thursday on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series, it immerses players in a mysterious mansion, inviting them to explore it room by room to uncover its secrets. With a twist: each time a door opens, they must choose what the next room will look like and the constraints this poses for their exploration (dead ends, detours, objects to collect, etc.).

After a certain number of steps, the layout of the building resets and exploration resumes from the entrance.

"This game took almost eight years of my life," its 40-year-old American author, Tonda Ros, told AFP.

This former short film director describes "Blue Prince" as a "first-person architectural adventure."

Started solo, development involved a small team of four to five people to establish the rules for this title, halfway between "puzzle-type adventure video games and strategy-oriented board games," according to its creator.

This is the first video game project from the small Californian studio Dogubomb, which Tonda Ros co-founded around ten years ago with director Axel Haavikko and which previously worked for clients such as Netflix and Universal, according to its website.

Praise

Initially launched as a simple test of a 3D engine, "Blue Prince" slowly transformed into a full-fledged video game, in which Tonda Ros incorporated "slow and atmospheric" sequences, "very representative of (his) style of cinema."

Controller in hand, it's hard not to think of some of the critical successes of the independent scene in recent years, such as "The Witness" (2016) or "Return of the Obra Dinn" (2018).

But Tonda Ros says he's tried to keep a fresh perspective: "I avoid playing games that seem to do similar things" so as "not to create something that might seem familiar," he explains.

After the release of a first demo last year, this original proposition has earned it much praise, notably from the former head of Sony PlayStation development studios, Shuhei Yoshida, who sees it as one of the games of the year.

"I'm delighted with this praise," the creator replies, "and I hope that the success of this type of game will encourage other developers to explore new frontiers."

The initial press reviews are, in any case, very positive. The review aggregation site Metacritic posted an average score of 94/100 on Monday afternoon, the highest to date for a production released in 2025.

Faced with the growth crisis that the sector has been going through for several years, the creator of "Blue Prince" regrets, however, that the industry has become "timid": "there is too much stagnation and too many conventions to follow."

According to him, blockbusters offer players "more or less the same thing over and over again, with slightly different themes and just improved graphics year after year" and "wait for the next trend they can cling to for 10 years."

"This is where independent games shine, where new ideas are born and where new genres are created," he insists.