Video games don’t have mysteries any more. There are too many people and too much internet to allow for such a thing, anything without an answer can, must, and will be solved by someone, often in a timeframe faster than developers expect. So I appreciate when developers refuse to divulge details, or indulge individuals in their desire to know exactly how much they have on their checklist, one such developer being Tonda Ros of Blue Prince developer Dogubomb.
In response to a question from PC Gamer regarding whether there are any mysteries left to be found in the puzzle game, Ros said that there certainly are, and that “there will probably always be some mysteries in the game. And in order to preserve that mystery, I will probably never fully acknowledge whether or not everything has been solved.” Music to my ears!
Ros goes further, saying, “I know that for some games, they’ll have, like, a canary in the coal mine, right? I think it’s Animal Well that has a website that’s like, ‘Has everything been found yet?’ That kind of serves as a canary.” As it turns out, such a website does exist, it’s haseverythinginanimalwellbeenfoundyet.com, and I’ll let you click to find out what the answer is.
For Ros, that question of whether everything has been found in Blue Prince is one he thinks people will always ask. “The only thing I will say is that there are still mysteries,” he said. “Not to say that they’re necessarily things that can be solved in definitive ways, but they are things that you can piece together answers to, oftentimes intuitively.”
I truly hope this is something we see more of from developers going forwards. There is such a massive inclination towards complete and utter player satisfaction, but to me there is nothing more satisfying than to be left wanting more, a reason to keep coming back, even if the gaps between return trips end up being days, weeks, months or years at a time. Lay unto me your mysterious developers! I may not solve them, but I will think about them.
And while you’re here, I’d like to remind you that one of the lead playtesters on Blue Prince is in desperate need of a kidney, something you genuinely might be able to help with.
