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Subscribe to the world's #1 PC gaming mag Try a single issue or save on a subscription Issues delivered straight to your door or device From£35.99View Amazon Prime Day Deals Essential Hardware PC Gaming Show Recommended reading It took me 25 hours to 'finish' puzzle strategy game Blue Prince—and 15 hours after that I'm still uncovering new mysteries My favorite thing about Blue Prince's intricate puzzles is that they're optional—you don't have to solve most of them to finish the game Blue Prince was made possible by creator's Magic: The Gathering fan site: 'Now you know why I had to put up a lot of ads' Events & Conferences Summer Games Done Quick 2025 is now live—kicking off a full week of speedruns and goofs to raise money for Doctors Without Borders This Minesweeper roguelike is a chaotic corporate nightmare, and I love it The Elder Scrolls The Oblivion remaster is so faithful, it still has the secret glitched door to the end of the game that lets you roll credits in under 15 minutes This gravity-defying dungeon crawler is basically Legend of Grimrock meets Portal, and while the trailer had me dizzy, the demo made me feel like a genius Blue Prince This competitive Blue Prince speedrun from SGDQ 2025 is the pinnacle of human athleticism Lincoln Carpenter 8 July 2025 This is the Olympics, to me. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. Blue Prince by BobbyBurm and RadRingtail in 1:14:30 - Summer Games Done Quick 2025 - YouTube Blue Prince is a phenomenal puzzle game about methodically, meticulously excavating a fractal web of interlaced mysteries and metanarrative plots to navigate a shifting labyrinth, a geopolitical intrigue, and a troubled family legacy. It's also, it turns out, a hype as hell competitive event capable of filling a conference hall with cheering spectators, as proven by a Blue Prince speedrun race at SGDQ 2025 this week. For mere humans like you and I, progressing through Blue Prince is a process involving dozens of hours of randomized runs, note taking, misguided speculation, and realizing how bad you've gotten at math while staring at a dartboard. For SGDQ runners Radringtail and Bobbyburm, however, it's an hourlong head-to-head sprint testing each competitor's mastery of the Mount Holly Estate. Best gaming rigs 2025Our current recommendations 👉Check out our list of guides👈 1. Best gaming laptop: Razer Blade 16 2. Best gaming PC: HP Omen 35L 3. Best handheld gaming PC: Lenovo Legion Go S SteamOS ed. 4. Best mini PC: Minisforum AtomMan G7 PT 5. Best VR headset: Meta Quest 3 Oh, and it's bingo. They're doing bingo in this one. Let me explain: Radringtail and Bobbyburm weren't just racing towards a single finish line. They were competing to be the first to complete a series of hand-selected Blue Prince objectives, arranged on a 5 x 9 bingo board mimicking the floorplan of the Mount Holly Estate. (Image credit: Raw Fury) Some of these objectives, like "solve 2 parlors" or "use an elevator" are fairly simple. Others deeper into the board, like "light four blue flames" or "7+ allowance," involve completing multi-stage puzzles or postgame progress. Unlike a normal bingo board, Radringtail and Bobbyburm didn't just need to claim five squares in a row. Beginning on the bottom row, they had to chain together adjacent objectives to create a path through the entire length of the board, much like a Blue Prince player has to draft a path through Mount Holly to reach its legendary 46th room. The biggest gaming news, reviews and hardware deals Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team. Contact me with news and offers from other Future brandsReceive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsorsBy submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over. And it ruled. Four minutes into the run, when both runners were simultaneously completing one of the game's more obnoxious logic puzzles in just seconds, I knew I was in for a show. These are players who've built a deep, internalized pool of knowledge about Blue Prince and its puzzles, turning what's typically a steady, contemplative affair into a contest of high-stakes, high-speed calculation. It's a staggering display of improvisational problem-solving, requiring both runners to weigh probability and time investment across in-game runs—all while needing to dynamically alter their strategy based on their competitor's place on the board. Brains have never been bigger. (Image credit: Raw Fury) I won't spoil the outcome, but I hope it communicates how worth a watch the race is when I say that, at 20 minutes and 26 seconds, the audience starts cheering over a runner making a contraption. Everyone loves a contraption. SGDQ 2025 runs until July 13. You can watch it live on Twitch. As I write this, a pair of runners are frantically collecting emeralds in Sonic Adventure 2. What more could you want? Best gaming setup 2025Our current recommendations 👉Check out our list of guides👈 1. Best gaming chair: Secretlab Titan Evo 2. Best gaming desk: Secretlab Magnus Pro XL 3. Best gaming headset: HyperX Cloud Alpha 4. Best gaming keyboard:Asus ROG Strix Scope II 96 Wireless 5. Best gaming mouse: Razer DeathAdder V3 HyperSpeed 6. Best PC controller: Xbox Wireless Controller 7. Best steering wheel: Logitech G Pro Racing Wheel 8. Best microphone: Shure MV6 USB Gaming Microphone 9. Best webcam: Elgato Facecam MK.2 Lincoln Carpenter Social Links Navigation News Writer Lincoln has been writing about games for 11 years—unless you include the essays about procedural storytelling in Dwarf Fortress he convinced his college professors to accept. Leveraging the brainworms from a youth spent in World of Warcraft to write for sites like Waypoint, Polygon, and Fanbyte, Lincoln spent three years freelancing for PC Gamer before joining on as a full-time News Writer in 2024, bringing an expertise in Caves of Qud bird diplomacy, getting sons killed in Crusader Kings, and hitting dinosaurs with hammers in Monster Hunter. You must confirm your public display name before commenting Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name. It took me 25 hours to 'finish' puzzle strategy game Blue Prince—and 15 hours after that I'm still uncovering new mysteries My favorite thing about Blue Prince's intricate puzzles is that they're optional—you don't have to solve most of them to finish the game Blue Prince was made possible by creator's Magic: The Gathering fan site: 'Now you know why I had to put up a lot of ads' Summer Games Done Quick 2025 is now live—kicking off a full week of speedruns and goofs to raise money for Doctors Without Borders This Minesweeper roguelike is a chaotic corporate nightmare, and I love it The Oblivion remaster is so faithful, it still has the secret glitched door to the end of the game that lets you roll credits in under 15 minutes Latest in Puzzle Today's Wordle answer for Tuesday, July 8 Today's Wordle answer for Monday, July 7 Today's Wordle answer for Sunday, July 6 Today's Wordle answer for Saturday, July 5 Today's Wordle answer for Friday, July 4 Today's Wordle answer for Thursday, July 3 Latest in News Another live service shooter comes to a premature end: Steel Hunters, the mech game that launched into early access in April, is closing in October For the next 2 weeks Destiny 2 is completely free to play, even the stuff you normally have to pay for I still believed 'cheap' controllers were a last resort until I picked up this amazing 8BitDo pad, now at its lowest price ever for Amazon Prime Day John Wick Hex and Tron Catalyst dev Mike Bithell thinks licensed games have evolved past 'lunchbox tie-ins' because 'the people who played licensed games are now bosses in the companies that are licensing IP' After 15 years of busted marksdwarves, Dwarf Fortress creator Tarn Adams says archers will finally refill their ammo 'instead of leaping over walls and clubbing people with their crossbows' After 3 years of trying, Lord of the Rings Online's 'Great Hobbit Run' ends in confused success as a mob of low-level players gets lost inside Mount Doom and decides it's close enough: 'Sauron can kiss my butt!' 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