How a Roguelike Game Fostered a Unique Bond and Overcame Learning Challenges

I’ve always been the gamer in the family. When my son was born nearly 11 years ago, gaming was one of the things I looked forward to sharing with him. Pulling up a chair next to me, he would watch as I played Sea of Thieves with friends, often wearing the too-big-for-his-head headset to talk with them, instructing me where to go. Now instead of him watching me play through Clair Obscur, I’m sitting next to him and he battles Calamity Ganon in Breath of the Wild. His real gaming passion for years has been Minecraft — he appreciates the rules and order, as well as the calming environment of creative mode. He also likes to meticulously stack up as many TNT blocks as he can and watch them explode.

What I wasn’t expecting is the gaming connection my wife has made with my son. She’s made the effort with Minecraft and joins his worlds occasionally, though it admittedly is not her favorite. But she loves puzzles and stories, so when a friend suggested Blue Prince, recently released on the Switch 2, for both her and our son, she immediately bought it. They’ve been working their way through it every chance they have together — and have already long passed our friend who suggested it.

Blue Prince is a puzzle-solving roguelike where you need to explore a 45-room mansion from one day to the next and reach the mysterious Room 46 in order to earn your inheritance. But the rooms reorder themselves at the start of each day, requiring both detailed thinking and the ability to piece together a large story. That’s why my wife and son playing together works so well: They complement each other in their thinking and abilities. Our son has incredibly high spatial intellect. He’s able to remember directions to things easily and exactly (and correct my wife when she heads the wrong way); he can quickly solve puzzles where pieces need to be lined up or a series of switches need to be flipped in a specific order, or know the precise spot they need to stand. Often she’ll hand him the controller so he can solve the puzzle because it takes far less time than him trying to explain it to her. Also, the way he notices minor changes in a room instantaneously is astounding. This goes back years to when we would bring him to preschool, and he would take a moment to point out how the space had changed since the day before, get himself acclimated with the differences, and then be comfortable again.

My wife is great at the big picture and piecing together the themes of the story. Word-based puzzles — especially those with symbolism — are a breeze for her while they frustrate my son mightily (either because of his age or because his brain thinks far more literally instead of metaphorically). Blue Prince has brought up teachable moments where she can expand his way of thinking and explain the thought process she uses to solve these logic puzzles.

But the best part of all is the excitement that the combination of game design and storytelling has instilled in him every minute of the day. His mind is constantly thinking about how things might connect in the story. And despite some learning challenges he has with reading and writing, he’s put together his own notebook to categorize their discoveries and is even writing them down! The motivation of discovering the story by solving problems has overtaken his fear and reticence to write out ideas. This might seem minor to some, but as a parent that has watched their child struggle getting the thoughts in their brain down on paper, it makes me immensely proud and emotional.

Gaming, and Blue Prince in particular, isn’t just a distraction for him, but instead a way to expand how his brain processes information and logics its way through problems. It’s something that he can take with him, providing strategies he can use during his day-to-day life. Does he generally spend more time on a screen than he should? Yeah, probably (we’re working on it). But the interaction he and my wife have enjoyed through this adventure, and the way his sheer enthusiasm has helped push him through his normal boundaries, are well worth the extra screentime.