Only a few months after Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, a Metroidvania-style reboot of the franchise was released to positive reviews, another Prince of Persia title has been announced. The Rogue Prince of Persia will feature roguelike gameplay and is being developed by one of the best when it comes to the genre, an offshoot of Dead Cells developer Motion Twin, named Evil Empire.
Announced during the Triple-I Indie event that several smaller publishers and developers put together to focus on small titles, there is some irony that the big end cap to the event was published by Ubisoft even if the developer is much smaller in stature. There has been some debate on the term Indie, spurred on by last year’s Dave The Diver receiving a nomination for best indie game despite being published by Tencent Games. This is something the Triple-I event itself poked fun at.
I digress. The Rogue Prince of Persia sees a 2D animation style that is more cartoony than the previous entries (even the original games for Apple used Rotoscoping to offer more realistic art). The trailer itself opens with an animated sequence that seamlessly segways later into gameplay that makes the best use of the Animation style. In an event harkening back to the Popular entry Sands of Time, the Prince gets riddled with arrows but instead of dying respawns. This feels like the do-over mechanic that has appeared before in the series, but based on its depiction there is no rewind in time, just death and rebirth.
Evil Empire, for their part, oversaw the very enjoyable Dead Cells expansions Return To Castlevania and Queen of The Sea. IGN recently got to go hands-on with The Rogue Prince of Persia and highlighted several similarities with their previous title in a very positive light. The biggest difference noted is the acrobatic feel to The Princes’ movements, highlighted in the trailer through swinging on poles and wall running.
While rumors have circulated since early April that a new Prince of Persia game was in the works, much of these suggested the title in Quest was the canceled Sands of Time Remake, rose from the dead like the Prince is sure to do here. Dead Cells was a phenomenal game so seeing Prince of Persia get the same treatment has me far more excited than I thought I could be.
The best part is that PC players don’t have much longer to wait. The Rogue Prince of Persia is set to enter Steam Early Access on May 14th.
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