I’m still in the middle of uncovering everything Blue Prince has to offer. I managed to roll credits on the game about 12 hours before my interview with Tonda Ros, mainly because I really didn’t want to talk to the man having not finished his game. It just felt disrespectful, especially for something like this. We spoke on March 31st, and I wanted to wait until people had time with Blue Prince since there are some light spoilers as far as strategies and hints at solutions. I enjoyed talking with Tonda about the game’s creation, the strategies that he saw, and more. Enjoy!
This interview has been edited for clarity.
So, this was an eight-year journey for you. What went into making Blue Prince?
Tonda: So, around 2016, I had been toying around with a few board game ideas, including one based on the word “drafting.” So, kind of like if you take the architectural theme of blueprints and drafting floor plans, then combine it with the mechanical concept of card drafting. I had an idea where the player will draw a certain number of cards and choose a room to lay down on a blueprint.
That was the board game concept. And it was only a few pages of my notebook. So, I didn’t really explore it further. It ignited the creative impulses in my brain, where I’m like, “I need to write this idea down.” But it was high up at the top of my projects I wanted to get to as soon as I finished this film I had been working on.
Fast forward six or seven months, I wanted to check out Unity because I had been hearing good things about the software and how accessible making games was becoming. And it was at that curve — this is in 2016. There were a couple of games coming out that were pretty popular, made by smaller teams. Gone Home had just come out, as well as a few others. The Witness and Inside were kind of in that same territory, which was impressive. Definitely some of my favorite games at that time.
from dream to reality
So, I had to check Unity out. This is something I dabbled in earlier in my life — a little bit of coding and game-making, but it was largely set aside as I pursued filmmaking for a long time. So, this was me just getting back into it. And I remember that first week, I started making a first-person game just because it seemed easier than dealing with a character controller. I’m like, “Okay, I can just download this first-person camera in Unity, and I can walk around on a plane.” And all of a sudden — boom — I have gameplay.
That was five minutes. I’m like, “Okay, this is pretty easy.” Then, I just start dropping in primitive cubes and making a wall, then making two walls with a gap between — that’s a doorway now, right? Within 30 minutes, I was creating rooms, copying and pasting, and I had a pretty big house of empty rooms with no detail, flat cubes, and walls. Now this seems doable. And I had always loved first-person games going back to Myst and Riven that emphasized exploration and atmosphere.
into the mansion of madness
So, I started bringing in textures to the walls, like wallpaper stuff — all stock assets at this point — then I found the Unity asset store and just started downloading furniture like crazy. Within three months, I had a full working build of Blue Prince, and within the first week, I had the idea to bring in that board game concept. So, both of these ideas started separately.
I wish I remembered that moment, but I had the notion to combine these two elements. I had created a much bigger house, and I was putting the furniture in, but the rooms were all irregularly shaped. Considering this, I just deleted everything. “We’re gonna do this one room at a time and create them on a 10 by 10 uniform size so that they can snap together neatly.” At that point, I was off to the races.
So, specifically, Blue Prince‘s Study. That was a room I had to actually sit down and think, “I know I’m looking at the right spot, but I’m overthinking this.” It turned out that I was. So, when you created each of these rooms, what went into the decision–making as far as how some of them interact?
Tonda: Yeah, it’s kind of cool because there are two different axes of the rooms interacting. One is at the mechanical level, where it’s like, “What does this room do?” Obviously, like a Great Hall, all doors are locked. And [with] a Foyer, all hallway doors are unlocked. So, they have some natural synergy together. And then, there are ways that rooms interact with other rooms. Like the way the Utility Closet can affect what’s happening in other rooms, but that’s almost more subversive. Where the first level of connection, the mechanical one, could work even if it were a real card game. Those are card game synergies. So, those designs were just manifested on paper.
I was trying to figure out, “Okay, I want to create some different mini-strategies that can happen on different days.” If you have a Foyer, suddenly your evaluation of the three rooms you’re presented with changes. And I think that’s cool because at its core, the game is all about opening a door and choosing between three rooms. And you have some preferences for the rooms, and you’re going to have some internal evaluation. What’s interesting is when those evaluations change.
If you get a Nursery, suddenly, every Bedroom will give you five more steps. So, that changes the evaluation of how you judge the rooms from day to day. And I find that pretty interesting because if not, then you have your tier list of rooms. You obviously have to take the doors into account, but other than that, you don’t have to use too much thinking and strategy. I wanted to include enough strategic cohesion.
everything in ‘blue prince’ connects
When approaching a puzzle, you might think: “I really want to see this room; I know I saw something in that room. I need to get back there.” And that’s going to change your choice, too. At its core, I wanted the choices you’re making with each door to always be engaging.
I think there’s a tendency in some games where I just know what I’m picking. I know the strat, I know the deal. And that doesn’t even account for the physical space of the house. Hopefully, those choices will always be interesting, no matter how much of the game you’ve played. I’ve played, like, 10,000 hours, and I still have to think about what I’m choosing.
That’s the interesting thing about it, you mentioned not wanting to create a scenario where people have a tier list of rooms. But you give people the room to make that mistake. Because that was my initial mistake starting Blue Prince. Probably the first, let’s say, six or seven days, I said, “Okay, I see where I need to go. Let me just go up. And these rooms help me. These rooms hurt me. Let me stay away from the rooms that hurt me.” But that’s not really the best way to go about it. So, when you were creating each of these rooms, where did you decide what the red rooms would be — because that’s an interesting strategy.
Tonda: Yeah, the red rooms are cool because what you experienced is exactly the intended experience. I love that in the beginning, the game doesn’t even really tell you strictly to go to the Antechamber, but that’s just where you’re drawn to. So, obviously, everyone just goes north, and they’re gonna leave doors unopened behind them. And then eventually, they’re gonna learn “I should probably get more resources before going north or else I’m gonna be forced to draft the only non-gym room — or run out of keys. I’m gonna have to backtrack anyway.” And likewise, I think many new players will avoid red rooms like the plague. The effects sound scary. When you start actually tangling with them, you’re like, “Okay, these aren’t quite as scary as I thought.”
red rooms really can help, you just need the proper setup
Talking about, specifically, the Chapel or the Gymnasium. Many new players hate the Chapel. And, I get it, right? You want to keep your stuff, but it’s a small price to pay for a free room that has three doors. It’s cool because I think a lot of people just compare it to a Hallway, and you’re like, “Well, the hallway is free and has three doors.”
And this creates the misconception because there’s only one Hallway. Then, once you draft it, just because the Chapel’s not quite as good as the Hallway, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s not the next best option there. So, yeah, we tried not to hold the player’s hand at all. We want those strategies to emerge, and it’s cool because different players come up with different ways they play.
And I think that there’s enough flexibility in the game that you can watch someone play, and I’m like, “Wow, I’ve never seen that strategy before, but it’s working. You know, that’s cool. I hadn’t really thought about necessarily engaging like that.” For the red rooms, the negative effects, I’m always drawn to those in games because it just adds tension.
Challenge people and they’ll be able to rise to the occasion. There will be frustrating days, and the game isn’t easy. It’s asking a lot of the player to come up with those strategies. But as you get more and more permanent upgrades, it’ll get easier.
That’s my next goal, because that was the thing that I appreciated about it. And that’s why I said you were basically rummaging around in my head when you made it. Like you said, there’s no hand-holding. You get in, and it’s just progressively figuring things out. By day 20, I was like, “Okay, I understand what I have to do,” and then it became a thing where there’s so much story that isn’t explicitly told to you. But if you just actually explore, it’s all right there in front of you. How did your experience as a filmmaker help with that, because it is a very cinematic and atmospheric game.
Tonda: Certainly in the pace of the game. I think it’s slower paced than the hyper speed at which many modern games clip along. You can even tell that in the cinematic cutscenes we have. They’re very slow-paced and sort of come from my film side. I want to create this atmospheric thing, and I want to set a pace for the player. You know, to let the player know this isn’t a race. You can take your time. In fact, you need to be observant.
Because if you’re just opening one door and are like, “Are there any items?” Go to the next door. That’s cool after you first explored a place, but when a lot of players began, they might have that mentality of door, door, door, door, door. “Okay, I ran into a dead end. Call it a day.” And sort of keep jamming the game until, hopefully, everything lines up. You can do that. And I try not to limit the ways players can play or engage with it. But you’re gonna have a lot more success if you take your time and take in the way the world works.
sERIOUSLY, ‘blue prince’ demands that you take your time
Because many rules aren’t explained to you, and there are many ways rooms work if you start learning patterns. It’s one of the reasons items always appear in roughly the same spots — each room is learning those patterns. You don’t have to explore the whole room every time once you learn the places to look. But it does take a couple of times looking around and picking those out.
Yeah, like the best example, which you’re talking about, I can think of from my playthrough was the Boudoir. I’m looking around, I picked up the picture, and I went, “Okay, I can pick this picture up for a reason.” And I just kept staring at it. I had a magnifying glass on it and everything. And it didn’t dawn on me what the point of that picture was until I figured out the date. Then, I walked into the Boudoir, and now I see Christmas gifts. I picked up the picture again. Then, I just started walking around more, I found the safe, and I went, “Oh, that’s the code.“ And that room — unlocked in my head — every other safe in every other room, because now I see the pattern. How did you come up with all of this stuff? Because every room is teaching you something.
Tonda: Yeah, that’s cool! I think that’s the benefit of having such a long development cycle. Even the length of this development cycle is a little bit misleading. Because I actually work from the minute I wake up to the minute I go to sleep. So, I don’t have a life outside of Blue Prince. This is everything; this is literally all of me.
And so, I just had a lot of time to think about it. Brick by brick, one thing leads to another. And I get a couple of ideas every week. If they’re exciting, I’m gonna put them in the game. So, that’s why there’s a density you can achieve by having that much time, I guess. And not needing to release it. That’s also a big thing because the game was fully playable in year one — and you could find room 46.
In those days, we were still using stock assets. Of course, all that was scrapped, and we recreated everything from scratch. So, every piece of furniture in the game is now handcrafted by us. The game easily could have been shipped six years ago. My decision to keep working on it was because I wanted to create the game I wanted to play. I wanted there to be that depth and those secrets. And when I got a taste for how well things were working, I wanted more. I wanted it to be like a web; a never-ending web that, no matter how much you play, there’s still gonna be more to discover.
That was one of the most fun things because [Blue Prince] reminded me of a roguelike in a lot of ways, just with losing progression and having permanent stuff carry over. But this is the first game that I’ve played in that vein where every run didn’t feel wasted. Like, I’ve played action roguelikes; you go out and, two minutes later, you die. It’s like, “Oh, well, there was no point to that [run].” But I had runs in this where I was done after eight rooms. But I had something to go into the next run with, and it was mind-blowing. I could not wrap my head around what you had done!
Tonda: Yeah, I lucked out in many ways because I was not familiar with roguelikes. Slay the Spire hadn’t come out at the time, you know? I didn’t have a mold to follow. So, my stuff was mostly based on board game stuff. And I know many of the deck-building roguelikes were based on the same board games that my ideas came from, Dominion and Ascension, which are board games that involve drafting cards and building a deck.
So, they are deck-building board games, but our implementation of them is very different. When I finally got to check out their take — which I didn’t for many years because I wanted to do my own thing — I didn’t want to necessarily see how they did it. I knew they beat me. I always thought the game was gonna come out in one year. I’d say that starting in 2017 and onward. In 2017, I thought it would come out in 2018. In 2021, I thought it was coming out in 2022.
I’ve always been in my last year. So, I’m always like, “I’ll check out all those games next year as soon as I’m done.” But you know that finish line was just the ever-moving goalpost. And I just kept chasing it the whole time. But it’s really great to hear that. That it felt like at least you’re gaining knowledge or getting those permanent additions. There’s something happening to make you feel like it’s not just totally wasted.
I mean, it’s something that makes me want to keep digging into [Blue Prince] because I got to room 46 with only two [permanent upgrades]. I got the Apple Orchard and the West Gate. That’s all I got. So, I still want to get the other stuff. Because now, I’m like, “Was there something I missed that would have made this a hundred percent easier on me? Did I do this the hard way?”
Tonda: Yeah, I mean, I think that’s cool. Everyone’s playthrough is gonna be different. I’ve had people beat the game without the Apple Orchard. It’s cool because they’ll have different stuff. They’ll have something that really helps them that you didn’t have, and vice versa. Which makes everyone’s journey unique. And it’s cool to compare and contrast with your friends and see, “I drafted my foundation on rank three,” and be like, “Whoa, rank three for a foundation? That’s kind of wild.”
And there’s a lot of variation. It makes the game hard to talk about because even talking to you, I’m like, “Man, did I just spoil something? Should I even mention that room?” Because you’re going to have some people who see a room on day one. And for another person, that same room might not show up until day 40. That’s the nature of the rooms.
I looked at my list of rooms, and I still have a couple of early rooms I haven’t found yet. Altogether, I’m missing five rooms. But this is the type of game I have no issue going back to. Because even after I finished, I can clearly see there’s a whole bunch of stuff I never even touched, and it almost feels like a second and third game.
Tonda: Yeah. I will say it’s deeper than you think.
So, the outside of the estate. When you were working [on Blue Prince], where did that come in? Is that something that came up after you did the [inside of the] house?
Tonda: No one’s ever asked me that. Yeah, the outside did. The very first version I was talking about, those first two years, it was only inside the house. So, there was a little yard outside in the front where you started each day. You actually started each day outside, then you walked in. We’re starting you inside for two reasons. One, it just saves you time each day. And two, it allows us to hide the outside of the world from some players. Some players don’t realize they can go outside for six or seven days. And I love that. Of course, there are certain types who immediately turn around and go outside.
There’s some PTSD involved there. [laughs] That’s just like, “Hey, I missed a secret 20 years ago in this one game.”
Tonda: It’s like a platformer. You’ve got to check, just in case. Seeing if there’s anything hidden. The environmental modeling happened at year five, but the actual design happened much earlier with the outer rooms. Many of these are just a single idea that blows everything wide open. In this case, it was the Garage. Whenever I’m designing a room, a lot of it is just practically what happens. Like, I’m going to do a Utility Closet. What’s in a utility closet? A fuse box. So, the mechanics come from practicality. I want to switch the power off and on in certain rooms, and I can follow that chain. In that way, Blue Prince writes itself.
“Which rooms would it make sense to turn the power off and on?” Then, I brainstorm and come up with a list of those rooms. So, the Garage is a good candidate. And then once I thought of the Garage, I was like, “You leave the house from a different side. How does that work?” But the scary thing is that if an idea sounds cool, I will follow through with it. Even though an idea might cost me three years of my life.
One of the rooms outside cost me two of those years. So, the Garage leads to that idea, and that idea, and I’m okay with that. That’s the web I was talking about building. People shy away from feature creep for a good reason. A. You probably won’t finish a project if you entertain every idea you come up with. And B. I like simple games. You can probably tell from the way Blue Prince starts that this is not a hard game to pick up. Open a door, pick a room.
simply complex
If I’m entertaining all these ideas, am I ruining that simplicity? But if you went back and played the game in year one, it’d be very similar. None of the ideas I added are front-loaded. They don’t show up until you’re deeper into the game. And so, I got to explore that depth. I did entertain massive amounts of feature creep.
But I felt those decisions weren’t adding any complexity to the first few days. Not only that, but these were different ideas. So, the way Blue Prince works in my mind is that if you play for seven days, you’re going to make one major discovery. Every player. But that discovery is going to be different for a lot of people. Maybe there are 10 things on average that people might discover, but everyone will discover something.
Some players will discover two things, but the idea is to give someone their first discovery in that time period. The only way to ensure that is just to put so much in the game that regardless of what they’re doing, regardless of which rooms they’re choosing, they’re gonna be able to connect two of those dots. [Blue Prince] is a game of connecting dots. But two dots might be three days apart in two different rooms. So, you must keep track of some stuff and do a bit of mental work to make those connections.
Oh, I’ve got a notes app that is long. Stuff that I’ve written down, pictures taken. I will literally put my phone up and take a picture. My girlfriend was like, “Why are you taking pictures?” I’m like, “I need it.” So, yeah, I’ve got rooms upon rooms of notes. But last thing for you: I want to go back to your personal journey towards making the game. And I’m glad you started with that because as I was playing it, the more I uncovered, I’m like, “This feels like somebody’s baby. This feels very personal.” Just the intricacy of the puzzles and every other element. So, to close out, could you speak on what Blue Prince means to you?
Tonda: Blue Prince is me, full stop. It includes almost everything I like about games. It’s got a deep story that’s not told to you, and it’s not guiding your hand. There’s gameplay that’s different every day. It’s got secrets. It’s got puzzles. Games are everything to me. And so are films. So, I’m really happy with how it turned out.
When I first began, I did it full-time for three months, then when I had that first build, I had some people play it and knew I was on to something special. At that point, I was like, “Okay, I need to grind out my work.” Which, at that time, was making commercials. “I just need to make as much money as I can. I need to grind.” There was about a year when it was only part-time, then after that, I shut down my studio and went all-in.
I had what I considered my dream job. I moved out to Hollywood to make movies. So, let’s say not my first dream job, but making commercials? Next best thing. It paid well. I thought that I was content. But I realized I was making stuff for other people and wasn’t exploring what I wanted to explore. So, I just said, “F– It.” Since then, I think my life has become more of this game. Similarly, I hear certain devs talk about living and breathing the game, and that’s definitely how it’s been for me. It’s gonna be a strange feeling when it’s released.
Thank you for taking the time to chat. I’m so glad you were able to make Blue Prince and fully put out what you wanted. I loved it.
Tonda: So many times, games are rushed. So, I felt like I finally had an opportunity to give Blue Prince the time it needed. So, it really makes me happy to hear that. It sounds like you were the person I was making the game for — or one of them, anyway.
I appreciate your time. And I can’t wait to dig back into it and start yelling at people about how good Blue Prince is.
Tonda: Cool. Thanks. That was really great. Great meeting you, Anthony!
Thanks again to Tonda for taking the time to talk to me! You can get Blue Prince on PC, Xbox, and PS5.
The post My Interview With the Master of Mayhem Himself, Tonda Ros, Creator of Blue Prince appeared first on VICE.
