Blue Prince — the best-reviewed game of 2025 with a 92 on Metacritic — hits PS Plus Extra on April 10. If you’re on Game Pass, it’s already in your library. Either way, you should play it.
The premise: you inherit Mount Holly, a 45-room mansion. To claim it, you need to find Room 46 — the room that doesn’t exist on any blueprint. Every day, you explore. Every door you open presents three possible rooms to draft onto your floor map. Your stamina is finite. When it runs out, you go home, sleep, and the mansion shuffles.
You start fresh each run. Your knowledge doesn’t.
What Makes It Work
Blue Prince is a first-person puzzle-exploration game with zero combat. You’re not grinding gear or leveling up. You’re building a mental map of a house that refuses to stay still — and slowly figuring out what your uncle was hiding.
The drafting system is the engine: each door gives you a choice of three room types. Dead ends cost you precious steps. The right path gets you to hidden rooms, notes, keys, shortcuts. The wrong path sends you home. After 20 runs you start seeing the structure. After 30 you realize you’ve been solving the wrong puzzle.
That’s the loop. IGN compared it to Return of the Obra Dinn and Outer Wilds — two of the most beloved mysteries of the last decade. The comparison holds.
Key stats:
- Metacritic: 92 (PS5) — highest-rated game of 2025
- OpenCritic user score: 93/100
- Developer: Dogubomb (essentially a solo dev)
- Publisher: Raw Fury
- Retail price: $24.99 on Steam and PSN
- PS Plus Extra: Available April 10, 2026 (PS5)
- Game Pass: In the library right now (Xbox Series X/S, PC, Cloud)
- Playtime: ~20 hours to reach the main goal; 50-60+ to see everything
The Honest Warning
Blue Prince divides players on one thing: luck.
The room drafting is partly skill — you’ll learn efficient routes, which rooms you need, how to chain shortcuts — and partly RNG. If you need three specific rooms in a specific order to test a theory, you might spend 15 runs waiting for the draw. Early on especially, it can feel like the game is punishing bad luck rather than bad decisions.
The developer is aware of this. Permanent unlocks add more control over time. The randomness decreases as you get better tools. But if you bounced off Hades because you hated dying to bad luck runs, Blue Prince will hit you the same way at some point.
If you finished Outer Wilds and immediately started a second playthrough just to understand it better? You’ll be dreaming about floor plans within a week.
How to Get It
PS Plus Extra or Premium subscribers: Search “Blue Prince” in the PS Store on April 10. PS5 only. It stays in your library as long as your subscription is active — no need to “claim” it, just download when ready.
Game Pass Ultimate subscribers: Already available. Search “Blue Prince” on your Xbox or in the PC app. It’s an Xbox Play Anywhere title, so your save syncs across Xbox and PC.
On PC otherwise: $24.99 on Steam. Not currently free on Epic or anywhere else.
April is stacking up to be genuinely great for both subscription services. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 lands on Game Pass April 2, Hades 2 hits Game Pass April 14, and Lords of the Fallen is coming to PS Plus Essential on the same day as Blue Prince for catalog subscribers. It’s a rare month where the math actually feels good.
Should You Subscribe for This?
PS Plus Extra costs $14.99/month. Blue Prince normally costs $24.99. Play Blue Prince plus one other game from the April catalog and you’ve already beaten the price of a physical purchase.
Same math on Game Pass at $19.99/month — Blue Prince has been sitting there since April 2025, and if you haven’t played it yet, you’ve been leaving money on the table.
The Verdict
Blue Prince is not a flashy action game. There’s no combat. Runs end not in explosions but in quiet walks home. The satisfaction comes from understanding — a note clicking into a theory you had on run 15, a door you’ve been trying to reach finally opening, the house revealing what it was all along.
It’s the best puzzle game since Outer Wilds. It’s free on PS Plus Extra on April 10. Claim it, start a notebook, and don’t look anything up for at least the first few hours.
