I’d tell you the specific date on which Blue Prince begins, but there’s a reason that indie developer Dogubomb’s game simply labels the start of your journey as Day 1. Inside a house that rebuilds itself each day, figuring out things like when everything is exactly taking place, where you actually are, what the hell is going on, and who are all the former employees referred to in the letters, emails, and memos strewn around the grounds is the point, pleasure, and privilege of this brilliant first-person architectural puzzler.

The only thing the game outright spells out for you at the start is that the protagonist stands to inherit his great-uncle’s property if he can reach the Mount Holly estate’s mysterious 46th room—despite there only being 45 rooms in the blueprints. This objective is a play on that of Christopher Manson’s 1985 illustrated puzzle book Maze,...