It hasn’t taken long for theDead Cellsdeveloper, Evil Empire, to settle on an exciting new project. Its title?Prince of Persia! But not any regular oldPrince of Persia;This isThe Rogue Prince of Persia, and it’s pretty easy to tell what makes it special.
Notably, Evil Empire and Ubisoft have launched the firstSteam Early Access buildof theRogue Prince of Persia, and though it is still early to say whether it’s a slam dunk, it sure is a whole lot of fun. There are some really interesting tidbits about this game, mind: firstly, even though it is being published by Ubisoft,Rogue Princedoes not necessitate a Ubisoft Connect login. Secondly, the game both is, and is not, reminiscent ofthe classicDead Cells, which results in a fresh and exciting gameplay loop, even this early in its development.
Evil Empire’s Rogue Prince of Persia is off to a good start
With just under 200 reviews written at the time of writing, and a “Mostly Positive” review rating,Rogue Prince of Persiaalready enjoys some amount of acclaim. The game itself is a relatively straightforward acrobatic platformer that doesn’t even try to hide itsDead Cellspedigree.
On top of delightfully rotoscoped animations and character models, albeit delivered in a slightly different style than what we saw withDead Cells,Rogue Prince‘s core gameplay loop consists of basically the same elements. A few tweaks here and there, granted, but anyone who’s spent any amount of time withDead Cellswill feel right at home here.
Once again, players need to collect resources dropped by enemies to research new gear and gadgets. The Prince does so by repeatedly attempting to wall-run his way through hordes of magic-infused Huns, with the familiar choice of levels coming up every so often. The current build of the game has two boss encounters in tow and about half a dozen unique levels, which all comes together into a lovely proof-of-concept for what’s to come in the future.
“We plan to be in Early Access for around a year, probably a little bit longer,” says Evil Empire on the game’s Steam page. “We plan to add all the good stuff – more levels, weapons, features, enemies, bosses, story acts and meta progression. Along the way we want to find out if there’s anything we can add to the core gameplay too. In fact, our plan is to double the amount of content from Early Access launch to 1.0.”
A solid plan, then. Given Evil Twin’s track record and what’s already on show with theThe Rogue Prince of Persia, I can say I’m very much looking forward to what comes next. And don’t forget: if you’re not a fan of Early Access, there’s thatother, equally delightful version ofPrince of Persiathat launched earlier this year.
