In the time away from my glorious life as a designer, I love to fill my time with a variety of activities that promote critical thinking. Sometimes it’s getting lost in a book, or knitting, or completely rearranging the furniture in my guest room. The activity that takes up most of my free time, however, would be playing video games.

A problem solver at heart, I lean towards more narrative or puzzle focused games. I don’t like competitive arena games, they’re just kinda boring to me, but give me a complicated 100 hour narrative based game and I’m there. That brings me to a game that easily made it into my top 10 recommendations: Blue Prince. 

Launching on Playstation, Xbox, and of course Steam, this game made a massive splash in the 2025 game market. This is absolutely the puzzle game to top all puzzle games. There’s deck building elements, complicated mysteries, and endless hours of theorizing. Not only that, but the art and music are absolutely incredible. 

I don’t want to give too much away, but I will provide a loose gist of the gameplay. Your character, having just inherited his great uncle’s mansion, must navigate a maze of rooms in order to get to the mysterious room 46 and claim his inheritance. Literally every inch of every room is covered in clues, some for puzzles you won’t even be presented with until 20 hours into the game. If you enjoy escape rooms and puzzles, I recommend not only playing this game, but trying to go in as blind as possible. Don’t look anything up, just jump right in and see what you find.