The Queue: Ready for anything

With the right look, I’m always ready to tackle any challenge. The sunglasses, of course, tie the whole thing together, as is only right and proper.

So now that I have my sunglasses on, let’s get to some questions. This is the Queue.

I am enthralled by its many layers of mysteries. Each new thing I learn about the world, the more questions I have about it, and so I start another day, and then I have more questions, and then I have to start another day, and … you see the issue.

It’s a deceptively simple puzzle game on the face, but I find it is quite deep with an interesting story to untangle. (And I’ll play a lot of games, even in genres I’m not usually good at, to get a good story.)

Here’s to uncovering the next puzzle (and hopefully solving it, though that doesn’t always happen immediately).

I’ll start by saying that just because everybody else is playing or talking about a game doesn’t mean you have to. I am enjoying this one, but that doesn’t mean I want to bully anyone else into playing it. Play what you think is fun! (Sunderfolk did just come out, though that won’t be for everyone either.)

In Blue Prince, your great uncle has died and left you his manor… but to claim the bequest, his will tasks you with finding the hidden 46th room of the 45 room estate. There’s just one problem: the manor house is constantly changing. Every night the layout resets and you start anew, searching for room 46.

The basic game is almost like a card game or a board game. There’s a 9×5 grid you can fill with rooms, and each room connects to the other room in different ways (rooms might have a door on each wall, or have just have two doors in specific orientations, or be dead ends). As you explore the manor you are also building it. Every time you enter a door you “draft” three room options, and pick one. Walk through another door, and you pick another room, continuing to build. Anna compared it, rather aptly I think, Hearthstone Battlegrounds: there is an element of RNG as to which rooms you’ll have to adjust your strategy on the fly as you go based on what you get. But there are also ways to redraw rooms if you don’t like the three options you’ve been given, ways to add rooms from the draw pool, and ways to change how rare a room is.

Rooms have different effects and can have different costs. Going into the chapel costs one coin every time you walk through. Drafting the security room costs one gem. The lights turn off when you walk into the darkroom which means you can’t see the rooms available when you open the next door. Some doors are locked with keys and some doors are locked with security cards. You have to balance your resources: is it worth spending my last key to get through this door? Is it worth drafting a closet which may have keys or gems even though it’s a dead end?

Every day you have 50 “steps,” or moves. Each time you walk through a door, it costs a step, so you cannot explore indefinitely. Do you want to backtrack to find more keys and gems, even though it will cost a lot of steps? Do you want to push forward even though you may dead end yourself if you can’t find more keys? There is strategy to laying out the manor every day, and you may have different things you want to do that require different rooms or layouts.

There’s also equipment to collect (which also resets each day). A shovel can let you dig holes to find keys and other items. A sledgehammer lets you break locks. (Well, some locks, as the character you’re playing does not seem inclined towards property damage.) Equipment can be combined in different ways in the workshop (if and when you find the workshop) and there are a couple of ways to save it for future days.

That’s the broad puzzle game. But as you explore you’ll find many other puzzles: some obvious, some subtle. The billiard room has a math puzzle, while the parlor room has a word game. When you solve these puzzles you’ll get keys and gems, but every time you solve one puzzle, the next one will be harder.

Then there’s a whole story that you’ll start to uncover, told with environmental storytelling, in notes on scraps of paper left sitting out, in books and letters. And you may start wondering just what’s going on in this manor? What’s going on with your family? What actually happened to your mother? And what is going on with the kingdom? All pieced together with little clues here and there, and chasing these mysteries is a game all its own.

I think the comparison to Myst and Riven comes from the feeling of the game.  Environmentally, the house and grounds are quiet, isolated. You’re the only one here, day after day. Puzzles and clues are not obvious, there’s no auto-highlight or arrow that tells you to click here, and you’re rewarded for exploring and poking into nooks and crannies. The game doesn’t do much to tell you what to do: you’re left to explore of your own initiative, and that could mean going to the observatory every day or it could mean trying to find the fastest way to room 46 or it could mean reading every book in the library looking for clues about the past. There is always something to explore, and even if you’re stuck on one puzzle there will be other puzzles or mysteries you can work on in the meantime. While I did mention dead end hallways earlier, the game itself doesn’t dead end or hard lock on puzzles. If you hit a dead end in the house, you can start a new day and explore fresh. And if you’re stuck on a puzzle, there is always another angle to investigate or mystery to chase. There can be different ways to get to the same places, and may different strategies for exploring the house. I am on day 65 (I’m a much slower player than some of my compatriots here) and there’s still so much I don’t know. It’s a game with many layers.

And it’s largely a self-directed adventure, particularly after you find room 46… because there’s still a lot to uncover once you do, if you want to.

Is it a must play for you? I don’t know. I can only say I’m enjoying it and I have a crazy conspiracy spreadsheet that keeps getting bigger.

This duck boss was just added last year, along with a quest chain to figure out why exactly we’re fighting a druid duck — so you haven’t missed too much. Just check the quests in Razor Hill or Goldshire (depending on your faction) and they’ll lead you right to him. He can drop a pale green flying carpet, which has an appropriately springy color scheme, and doing the quest to kill him (available once per year) will give you a Duck Disguiser that lets you disguise yourself as a duck. (Downside: there are six different colors available, and the colors are character-specific so choose your color carefully since it will be a year before you can get any others.)

Dragonflight, when this was added, was truly a great age of ducks in Azeroth.

This year there are some new cosmetic items  too, so I’m probably going to have to get out of Khaz Algar and do a little bit of Noblegarden. Can’t leave any transmog unturned.

I think it’s great to not raise expectations on a game years before its release, because I think it really maximizes the hype. But it’s a hard move to pull off between leaks and the simple need to prove to higher ups that this is a game worth making: often by announcing it and getting your audience hyped up about a project which you can then use as proof of your game’s popularity and prospects.

So it’s a fun way to release a game, and one that always gives you a little shock of surprise. But I don’t think it will ever become commonplace.

I hate it when that happens.

That’s all for today my friends. Please ask Matt plenty of questions and meet back here at the same time tomorrow for answers.

Take care, Queue!