Blue Prince became a bonding — and learning — experience for my family
Blue Prince became a bonding — and learning — experience for my family
《Blue Prince》成为了我与家人之间建立纽带并共同学习的契机
The experience of watching how Blue Prince has brought my wife and son even closer while challenging them both is something I’ll forever cherish. 看着《Blue Prince》如何让我的妻子和儿子变得更加亲密，同时又给他们两人带来挑战，这种经历我将永远珍视。
My wife and son spent their weekends exploring and piecing together the mansion in Blue Prince. 我的妻子和儿子周末都在《Blue Prince》中探索并拼凑那座神秘的宅邸。
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. 我一直是家里那个“游戏玩家”。近11年前我儿子出生时，游戏就是我期待与他分享的事物之一。他会搬把椅子坐在我旁边，看我和朋友玩《盗贼之海》（Sea of Thieves），常常戴着对他来说太大的耳机与他们交谈，指挥我该往哪走。现在，不再是他看我玩《Clair Obscur》，而是我坐在他身边，看他在《旷野之息》中挑战灾厄盖侬。多年来，他真正的游戏热情在于《我的世界》（Minecraft）——他欣赏其中的规则与秩序，以及创造模式下宁静的环境。他也喜欢一丝不苟地堆叠尽可能多的TNT方块，然后看着它们爆炸。
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. 我没预料到的是，我的妻子竟然也通过游戏与儿子建立了联系。她尝试过《我的世界》，偶尔也会加入他的世界，尽管这确实不是她的最爱。但她热爱解谜和故事，所以当一位朋友向她和儿子推荐最近在Switch 2上发布的《Blue Prince》时，她立刻就买了。他们只要有机会在一起就会一起攻关——而且进度早已远远超过了那位推荐游戏的朋友。
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. 《Blue Prince》是一款解谜类Roguelike游戏，你需要日复一日地探索一座拥有45个房间的宅邸，并到达神秘的第46号房间以获得遗产。但房间会在每天开始时重新排列，这既需要缜密的思考，也需要拼凑宏大故事的能力。这就是为什么我妻子和儿子一起玩效果这么好：他们在思维和能力上互补。我儿子有着极高的空间智力。他能轻松且准确地记住事物的方位（当妻子走错路时他会纠正她）；他能迅速解决那些需要对齐碎片或按特定顺序拨动开关的谜题，或者知道他们需要站立的精确位置。通常妻子会把手柄交给他来解谜，因为这比他试图向她解释要快得多。此外，他能瞬间察觉房间内细微变化的能力令人惊叹。这可以追溯到几年前，那时我们带他去幼儿园，他总会花点时间指出空间与前一天相比发生了什么变化，让自己适应这些差异，然后才会感到自在。
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. 我的妻子擅长把握全局并拼凑故事的主题。文字类谜题——尤其是那些带有象征意义的——对她来说轻而易举，却让我儿子感到非常沮丧（可能是因为年龄原因，也可能是因为他的大脑思维方式更偏向字面理解而非隐喻）。《Blue Prince》创造了许多教学时刻，让她可以拓展儿子的思维方式，并解释她解决这些逻辑谜题时的思考过程。
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. 但最棒的部分在于，游戏设计与叙事的结合让他每天都充满兴奋。他的大脑时刻在思考故事中的事物是如何关联的。尽管他在读写方面存在一些学习障碍，但他还是整理了自己的笔记本，将他们的发现进行分类，甚至把它们写了下来！通过解决问题来探索故事的动力，战胜了他对书写想法的恐惧和抵触。对某些人来说这可能微不足道，但作为一名看着孩子努力将脑中想法落于纸面的家长，这让我感到无比自豪和动容。
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. 游戏，尤其是《Blue Prince》，对他来说不仅仅是一种消遣，更是一种拓展大脑处理信息和逻辑解决问题能力的方式。这是他可以带走的东西，为他的日常生活提供了可用的策略。他花在屏幕上的时间是否比应该的要多？是的，可能吧（我们正在努力改善）。但通过这次冒险，他和妻子享受到的互动，以及他那纯粹的热情帮助他突破常规界限的方式，绝对值得多花这点屏幕时间。