Ubisoft Is Finally Feeding Prince of Persia Fans

The Prince of Persia series went through a dark period than Warrior Within’s after Ubisoft shifted their priorities to other franchises several years ago. It had nearly been a remarkable 13 years since the last worthwhile Prince of Persia game released, until the streak was broken at the year’s start. But after all this time, the company is ready to feed the fanbase, at least on a lower-budgeted scale.

The newest announcement is The Rogue Prince of Persia, a rogue-lite spin on the Prince of Persia series rumored mere weeks before the official confirmation. The duo of Evil Empire and Motion Twin are handling the project, after previously teaming up for Dead Cells and its several updates (including the Return to Castlevania one), in case the game’s aesthetic wasn’t a big-enough clue. The game looks a lot like their previous title, though with a slightly prettier art style that channels the older 2D Prince of Persia titles prior to the Sands of Time, with stages being randomly generated. Their talent has clearly been recognized with a big publisher like Ubisoft contracting them for a title. The combination of old school PoP and new school rogue-lite elements should blend well together.

The players will control the Prince himself in this title, though the confusion is understandable considering the purple skin. That’s just the unique style at work, something anyone who played Dead Cells should understand. The Prince in the older PoP games looked kind of purple if you looked at the sprite from a certain perspective, so it fits. Well, the old sprite looks that way to me.

Ubisoft and the Evil Empire and Motion Twin duo also have their fingers on the pulse with their plan to release this first through Steam Early Access, a good spot for testing and balancing a rogue-lite title. The Rogue will arrive on May 14th, so it won’t take long for the fanbase to go hands-on. It might take a year until the game is ready for a full release, which should arrive on everything that can run it.

It’s remarkable that The Rogue is coming not even half a year after the release of Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, which just arrived on nearly everything that can run it. This was the first notable PoP game in nearly 13 years I referenced above, a Metroidvania take on the genre from the internal Ubisoft team responsible for the last two Rayman titles that are also over a decade old. Anyone could have thought this team was largely dissolved after not releasing a title after all that time, but they’re thankfully still around. The game’s release is proof that Ubisoft hasn’t entirely succumbed to the trend of making every non-mobile or live service title a AAA game with massive development teams and high-production values.

There’s still a risk of that happening, though. The game was received extremely well critically, easily one of the best-received Ubisoft titles in recent memory. Expect nothing less from a team that made one of the finest recent platformers around. But the game appears to have sold just as well as those old Rayman titles based on current data. The chance of this happening was always high, with how the community at large responded to the game after the reveal last summer. It wasn’t a real Prince of Persia game, they insisted, one with visibly lower production values after making the Nintendo Switch the lead development platform.

That’s why it’s not a surprise that the game was received best by Nintendo fans, with the game running at a remarkable 60fps on the Switch itself in console and handheld modes. The game itself was no slouch, after having enough content to rival similarly-great Metroidvania title Hollow Knight. The combo of this being a 2D title for $50 and how players aren’t controlling the Prince himself might have done this one in, despite neither of those being flaws per se. The Rayman team is sadly doomed to obscurity, but there’s a chance the game still sold enough for Ubisoft’s standards.

There’s one more. It wouldn’t be a surprise if you forgot that the Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time remake was announced in late 2020, with primary development being handled by Ubisoft Mumbai. The project was criticized for looking underwhelming upon its reveal, which the developers and Ubisoft themselves clearly took to heart. After all these years, it’s perhaps not that surprising to hear that its development has been completely rebooted, and that it likely won’t resemble the same project when it returns.

Reports also suggest that Yuri Lowenthal will no longer be reprising the role of the Prince. “It’s not entirely clear why Lowenthal is no longer on the project,” Insider Gaming’s Tom Henderson mentioned, even though it’s very clear. The presumed idea is to get someone Middle Eastern individual to voice him instead. This will remarkably be the second time Lowenthal was brought back and recast, after initially reprising the Prince role in Warrior Within before Robin Atkin Downes was cast instead.

Prince of Persia fans have been asking for Ubisoft to bring the franchise back for several years, and they’re getting their wishes granted. Whether those fans are enough to sustain the franchise is another question with an answer to be determined.