Blue Prince
This is a blog post about parenting, nostalgia and change. It's also a blog post about the game Blue Prince, currently gathering very high and insanely well-deserved reviews on Steam.
When your kids get to a certain age, it becomes almost impossible to introduce them to anything new. I’m not saying this lightly - I’m saying it with a mixture of sadness and resignation - but it’s still true. I discovered the fact around the time my son went into Year 8 at secondary school: at first, I thought it was a combination of new friends, emerging interests or any variety of other outside influences that may have come along...but it simply turned out to be a case of my boy discovering that his own tastes were different from my own. A no-brainer, right?
Totally - but tough to take...and here's why. Here's where it actually gets really interesting...
...because it's all about resistance.
Before my son was ten years old, I'd pretty much introduced him to (and surrounded him with) all my own childhood influences: Fighting Fantasy books (he sort of liked them), Terry Pratchett's Discworld (nope), Monty Python (a bit), The Monkey Island games (he loved them), the Eye of the Beholder series (nope), Jim Henson's Labyrinth (loved it) and WWF wrestling figures (he's now more obsessed with the 80s era than I am and collects them obssesively). I also showed him all of my favourite movies and board games, most of which he loved then and now watches with a strongly disapproving eye.
Then, when he reached his very early teens, he literally stopped taking my recommendations for anything...and I do mean anything. The one way I can guarantee that my son will not accept, enjoy, or take to something new is if I introduce him to it: films (he sighs through most of them), books (he reads about a page and then I find them on the floor outside his room), games (his taste is now far beyond mine in terms of strategy: he loves Root and I'm still mastering Camel-Up). You name it, I've recommended it, and he's rejected it.
If his friends suggest something, on the other hand, he's all the way in. It's at this stage that you enter the really frustrating part of parenthood where your child tells you that one of their favourite films is a film YOU tried to get them to watch for years but that their friends have shown them instead.
"Dad - have you ever seen [Enter Random Favourite Movie Here]? It's SO good."
"What? I've been trying to get you to watch that since you were twelve."
"Seriously? I saw it round [Blah Blah]'s house - Best. Movie. EVER."
"I know it is. I wanted to watch it with you."
"You should watch it again. You'd love it."
"I don't need to: I've seen it forty thousand times."
Then - wait for it - there's this part of the conversation.
"Do you know what it's about, Dad?"
"I'm sorry?"
"Do you know what the film's about?"
"Of course I do. It's about a bank heist."
"Oh! Oh, sure. That's - er - that's what you think, is it?"
And so on and so on. Every generation sees new meaning in everything and then explains it to the previous generation in exhausting detail. It's infuriating but - if you stand back and think about it - also deeply, deeply impressive.
Nowadays, my son has the same problem with me. He tries to introduce me to things he loves time and time again, and although I don't exactly reject them, I don't really invest in them to any great degree. He has tried to get me into Undertale (it's okay), Delta Rune (less okay), Dangen Ronpa (meh), Death Note (better) and even Amazing Digital Circus (okay, that's utterly fabulous).
Then, just a few months ago, he got me into a game.
It's called Blue Prince.
When I say my son 'got me into a game', I mean that he showed me inside a mansion full of draughting rooms and puzzles overlaying a really deep narrative - and left me there. I've never played a game quite like it: I can't leave it alone. Every day I go into the mansion at least two or three times, and every day I get just a little bit further. It's quiet (unoccupied rooms), it's peaceful (in that early Minecraft way), and there's a beautiful routine to it which satisfies my AUDHD brain immensely.
I realised a short while ago that Blue Prince may offer the most high-quality 'stimming' opportunity that I've encountered for a very long time. Each day you spend in the house, you get just a little bit further: you either solve a puzzle, upgrade a room or explore a tiny bit more of the sprawling, ever-growing house.
I never want it to end. The game's Mount Holly Estate has become a place to hide when I'm down, an escape hatch when I'm stressed or a refuge when I can't think of anything new to write. It's become a second home to me, just as Second Life was in the early 2000s.
I play the game during lunch breaks (when my son is at work and I have access to his computer) and in the evening when work is done and I'm relegated to my own increasingly-shitty laptop.
Occasionally, my son will wander into the room and glance over my shoulder to see if I'm still madly addicted to the thing he's introduced me to. When he does this, I catch the flicker of a smile that I recognise from the days when he was little, and I was showing him magical games like The Secret of Monkey Island and unforgettable events like the 1990 Royal Rumble.
That smile makes it feel more like I'm the kid and he's now the parent - but I guess that's the natural order of things.
It's still mildly annoying, and naturally he's way ahead of me in terms of how much progress he's making...but I'm grateful to be involved in something he's also involved in. You kinda have to treasure every moment.
