Hello everyone,
Welcome to the first community update of The Rogue Prince of Persia!
Before we get started, you can watch/hear the exact same info in our YouTube video, so if you prefer listening instead of reading (guilty), check it out here:
(there's also more gameplay footage to look at...)
So, let's say it straight up, this is a pretty surprising game that came completely out of nowhere, we know that. It’s another 2D Prince of Persia that's arrived just a few months after another one came out. It's releasing in Steam Early Access. It's made by a studio that hardly anyone has heard of.
Sooo yeah, hands up, it's a strange one.
Hopefully this update, and the other community updates that will follow in the coming weeks, will be able to help you understand just what the hell is going on.
In this one...
In THIS update we're going to be covering who we are at Evil Empire, what we're doing working with Ubisoft on a Prince of Persia game of all things, how that relationship works, and why we're releasing in Early Access. Just some minor subjects to begin with!
So grab a coffee, go to the loo, whatever you need to do to get comfortable, then read on!
Evil Empire
First up, let's quickly cover who we are and why we have our grubby little hands on this iconic name.
Evil Empire was originally created to continue working on post-release content for the hit 2D action roguelite Dead Cells, which was created by Motion Twin and which won Action Game of the Year at The Game Awards in 2018. Not too shabby right?
For the past four and a half years we've been working with Motion Twin on a constant flow of free updates for the game, as well as four DLCs, including a full-on licensed Castlevania DLC, which was received pretty well, if we do say so ourselves ;)
There we both are at the bottom!
Obviously, we couldn't do that forever, people move on, games end, but the main thing is that now we want to make our own games, not just work on ones that already exist, however good they may be.
As luck would have it, a few years ago some members of Evil Empire were at GDC, the convention for game developers, and they had a dinner with some people from Ubisoft. "Refreshments" were flowing and an Evil Empire minion got the courage to throw out the idea "Wouldn't it be cool if we could use our knowledge and make our own 2D action-platformer version of Prince of Persia". I doubt it was as coherent as that but you get the idea.
Obviously everyone said "Oh yeah that sounds cool, let's see" and the night continued on.
But this idea stayed in our minds. We couldn't stop thinking about the chance to work on this renowned series.
We saw the crack in the door, put our heads together, made a pitch, and came back to Ubisoft with our idea. Lots of discussions were had yada-yada-yada, business stuff etc, and then bam, an official request came from Ubisoft, and the game was born!
So is it really a Prince of Persia game?
Now, we've mentioned Dead Cells a few times, but we need to be clear that this is not a reskin or a clone of that game. We've used what we've learned from that game for sure, it would be pretty stupid not to right?
That's why Ubisoft wanted to work with us to make this game, for our knowledge of what makes a good 2D action roguelite.
But, this is a game designed from the beginning to be a Prince of Persia game, first and foremost. An indie version yes, but a Prince of Persia nonetheless.
You will see everything that you'd expect from this series – fluid acrobatic traversal, fast-paced combat, and a high-stakes adventure story, where the Prince has made a grave mistake and must now redeem himself and save his people from a magical threat.
There's a wall-run, spikes & traps, magical enemies and the Prince can heal himself by drinking from a fountain (Sands of Time players will know that one). The time power comes from the Prince's bola, which takes him back in time to the last truly safe place he was in, whenever he dies.
It is essentially our very own love letter to the entire series, particularly The Sands of Time, but we drew inspiration from the whole lot. Most of us have fond memories of playing Prince of Persia games, some of us are even ancient enough to have played the very first one that came out in 1989, which was actually a 2D platformer itself.
I remember booting up Sands of Time on my PS2, doing the first wall run then immediately unplugging the console and taking it to my friend's house to show him this mind-blowing awesomeness.
So yeah, we wanted to make a Prince of Persia game!
Ubisoft were always there to help guide us of course, it is their IP after all, and they're not just going to let us do whatever we want with their baby, but we had full creative freedom to make the game that we wanted to make.
So, while we pay homage to the series with this game, it is very much a fresh take from the minds of our small dev team.
The corner where the entire dev team works
The team in question are a group of less than 20 people, who have been working on the game for the last 3 years. Yes, that's not many devs at all for a Prince of Persia game, but being such a small group has let us be more creative and collaborative, which we think has helped us to craft a really great game.
Early Access
But we think it can be even better. This is why we are releasing the game in Early Access on Steam, and that is a deliberate choice by Evil Empire for how we want the game to evolve.
We saw how Early Access helped the development process of Dead Cells, and of course other great indie games like Hades, Subnautica and Slay the Spire. The list goes on but we don't have the space to list them all, however much we love them!
A lot of roguelites, especially those with narrative elements, have been through Early Access, as it just helps to take this kind of game to another level. Even Baldur's Gate 3, THE game of 2023, became so good because of Early Access.
We want the same thing for The Rogue Prince of Persia.
Right now, we have what we believe to be a great core of a game, which will give you a ton of fun already – you don't have to worry about this being some kind of testing phase, it's already a solid game.
From here on out, we want to work with you, the players, to take the game as it is now and to make the best possible version of it.
To do this we will be releasing frequent, chunky content updates and collecting constant feedback from the community, with active devs hanging around in the Steam forums and Discord.
We already have a plan of what we want to add of course – new levels, bosses, weapons, story acts and so on – all the good stuff - but feedback from passionate players will give us that extra spice that will make this game truly great. At least we hope so!
Our plan is to double the content from Early Access launch to 1.0, so there will be a ton of interesting moments to come, and we can't wait to share that with you.
So that's it for this update, and be sure to keep an eye out for the next one where we'll be diving into the game itself to check out the traversal and combat movesets that you'll be playing around with.
Cheers,
Matt and Evil Empire