Days after beating Blue Prince, I am still playing. I have a few final mysteries to uncover, within and without the confines of the ever-changing blueprints. The puzzle strategy game asks its players to pay a lot of attention, as every corner could hold a key or some sort of clue not to be overlooked. This week, it finally arrives on PlayStation Plus and Xbox Game Pass, and releases on PC and console for everyone else.
It has been an eight-year development process for game designer Tonda Ros, who originally came from the world of film. Ros had worked in Los Angeles for years, ending up making commercials for places like Pepsi, according to his website. The films he made, though they appeared in festivals, did not receive many written reviews, he tells Inverse. Ironically, he says, he found that securing funding for a video game was easier than raising capital for a short film. People think it’s harder to make a video game, so it’s more intimidating, he says. So in the sea of creative projects, that’s how he ended up standing out — teaching himself how to engineer a prototype over the course of years, and later hiring collaborators. In time, that prototype drew attention, even from one of Ros’ childhood heroes, a children’s book author named Christopher Manson.
