Celebrated indie gem Blue Prince won’t be getting a localisation or a direct sequel, as its creator wants all his projects “to be able to stand up on their own and be unique things”.
At present, the game is only available in English, with no in-game language options. Yet while some players have criticised the game for this as it’s virtually unplayable for non-English speakers, its developer has no plans for localisation.
Blue Prince developer Tonda Ros told Polygon there are “certainly no concrete plans because it is largely considered near impossible”.
The reason for that is because so many of the game’s puzzles rely on wordplay, which cannot be easily translated.
That’s not to say it isn’t necessarily doable, mind you, but that it would take far too long to achieve.
“It’s a tough decision to let Blue Prince be discoverable by more people, but potentially risk burning out myself and/or giving up making a whole other game,” said Ros.
That sort of work would equate to “creating a second game,” he added. Yet a direct sequel isn’t planned either, though a follow-up of sorts could still happen.
“I want all my projects to be able to stand up on their own and be unique things,” said Ros. “That’s just the type of sequels that I like. I like Myst followed by Riven, not Myst 2.”
As such, there “will not be a direct sequel to Blue Prince,” added Ros. “There might be a game set in that universe, but I can’t even say it likely will be in the same genre.”
At the very least, though, “it would take as many risks as Blue Prince took.”
“More than anything, Blue Prince seems aware of the time you’re spending within it, and that’s pure magic to me,” reads our Eurogamer review of Blue Prince.
“The richest aspect of the game’s extremely rich design may be how many secrets it springs once you’ve lived with it for a while. It’s the pleasure of finding hidden aspects to things you thought you understood in full, the pleasure of coming back to something you thought was simple and finding that it’s not simple at all.”
