Blue Prince designer Tonda Ros reveals nearly 700 hours spent playing UFO 50

Tonda Ros, the designer behind 2025’s acclaimed puzzle journey Blue Prince, has logged nearly 700 hours in Mossmouth’s UFO 50. He made the admission in an interview with PC Gamer printed on Sunday, 4 October 2026, as a part of the outlet’s weekend collection trying on the video games put in on builders’ PCs.

His verdict on the retro anthology was unambiguous.

“I feel it’s simply my favorite recreation of the final 20 years,” Ros informed PC Gamer.

The determine stands out for a designer whose personal recreation rewards lengthy, affected person play. Blue Prince asks gamers to discover a shifting manor room by room, and its puzzles have saved many gamers returning for dozens of hours. Ros, it appears, is simply as keen to sink that form of time into another person’s work.

The interview additionally sheds gentle on how Ros got here to video games within the first place. He was seven when he first obtained hooked on PC gaming, by the action-adventure Beast. Ros described it as “form of like an open, nonlinear Sokoban that’s action-based and never puzzle-based.” A 386 PC arrived in his family roughly a yr later. That machine launched him to Tank Wars, the unique SimCity and Star Management.

Video games weren’t his first profession. Ros constructed knowledgeable life as a cinematographer and visible artist earlier than he began work on Blue Prince in 2016. The undertaking would take years to succeed in launch in 2025.

For journey followers, the extra telling element is the record of influences behind it. In keeping with the interview, Ros drew on Myst, on board video games resembling Jewels within the Attic, and on puzzle books. That lineage helps clarify the sport’s mix of environmental thriller, note-taking and logic puzzles, which positioned it alongside the basic first-person puzzle adventures that Myst popularized.

Ros has not used the interview to announce a brand new undertaking. His feedback do verify one factor: the designer of certainly one of 2025’s most talked-about puzzle video games spends a exceptional share of his spare time inside UFO 50, at near 700 hours and counting.