Tonda Ros’ Blue Prince is a huge indie success, but the creator isn’t scrambling on a direct follow-up
Blue Prince is one of the year’s undeniable indie hits — and in this business, that usually leads to sequel talk. But developer Tonda Ros says he may be done with the atmospheric puzzle game, whose dreamlike mansion and shifting rules have captured players’ imaginations.
In a new interview with Polygon, Ros is clear-eyed about what comes next: not a sequel, and not even a localization effort, despite how loudly fans are asking. Ros explained that expanding Blue Prince would come at a personal cost he’s not willing to pay.
“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 nother game,” he said. The original development took more than eight years, and proper localization to appeal to a global audience would basically be “creating a second game.” And he’s not interested in making a Blue Prince 2 either.
“There will not be a direct sequel to Blue Prince,” Ros said. “There might be a game set in that universe, but I can’t even say it likely will be in the same genre.”
Instead, he hopes to preserve the distinctiveness that made the original resonate in the first place. “I want all my projects to be able to stand up on their own and be unique things,” he said. “That’s just the type of sequels that I like. I like Myst followed by Riven, not Myst 2.”
Whatever Ros builds next, it won’t be predictable. That’s the point. As he put it, any future project “would take as many risks as Blue Prince took.”
