GMTK Digest (April 2025)

Make your own mansion

Hello GMTK supporters!

So April was a bit of a write-off. I spent much of it nursing a broken elbow! But that won't stop me from delivering another cracking issue of the GMTK Digest. Complete with games, headlines, and recommended articles.

I sadly didn't get a chance to play too many games this month thanks to my broken arm. But I did try a couple of April's releases. In this issue, and going forward, I'll make it obvious which games I played and which ones I didn't.

Speak soon!

Mark

New Releases

Played: Blue Prince

Okay - bear with me because this is a deeply strange game. On the one hand: this is an info-hunting 'Metroidbraina'. You scamper about a dusty old house looking for clues, items, safe combination codes, and other-such hints that will help you unlock rooms in other parts of the mansion.

But! On the other hand it's a sorta deck-building roguelike. You build the house, room by room, by picking randomly selected floorplans. Plop a kitchen there, a bedroom here, a library over there. And each day the house resets and you start again.

Huh! And, here's the thing - both sides of the game are a lot of fun. One has those Outer Wilds-style 'aha' moments of revelation that has you scribbling frantically in a notebook. And the other is a tabletop-style mix of resource management and pushing your luck.

But when put together... I'm not so sure they work. It's pretty annoying to have a clue and desperately want to apply it in a specific room... only for that room to not show up in your random pool (where is that dang boiler room?!). Or to have to do a very similar riddle or maths puzzle over and over again each new day.

But then again... I'm still playing it! So I'll hold off my full feelings for the time being. There's a good video down in the reading list below that goes into more depth on it (see: blue prince is at odds with itself) if you want more design thinking on the topic!