The Rogue Prince of Persia Preview: The Lost Crown gets a Dead Cells injection

Two Prince of Persia games in one year? Is this the 2000s? I jest but it's true, following on from the fantastic Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown this January, next month we're set to get an entirely new adventure too, a game coming from the Dead Cells support studio Evil Empire and known simply as The Rogue Prince of Persia.

Now, let me make this clear right from the outset. This isn't a full launch of the same calibre and quality of The Lost Crown. At least not yet. It's Early Access and will remain so for a while as the team continuously add improvements and new content ahead of a wider full scale launch down the line. Likewise, if you've played The Lost Crown recently, you'll notice that there are a lot of similarities with this game too. It's not a sequel or a follow-up, and doesn't connect the two games at all, but it is a 2D platformer with hack 'n' slash mechanics. Oh, and as was the case for Dead Cells... it's a roguelike.

The Rogue Prince of Persia sees the iconic and titular character tasked with putting a stop to an invasion of his lands by a supernatural faction. Why are they invading in the first place, you ask? Because the Prince has drawn them there through the usage of his special talisman that allows him to resurrect from fatal injuries and return to a safe location, hence the basis of the roguelike elements. Using this power and the Prince's knack for combat and athletic movement, you have to nimbly leap and climb through challenging levels packed with the usual kinds of environmental hazards like spikes and spinning blades, defeating foes along the way, and gathering currencies and upgrades to make the going easier. Should you falter and fail however, you'll lose all of your hard-earned upgrades, aside from a few special bits of currency assuming you've banked them prior to dying.

Evil Empire isn't reinventing the roguelike wheel with this game in any sense, nor the Prince of Persia formula. It's all very familiar and that's not a jab at the game and what the developers have created here at all because it works really well in practice. The gameplay is fluid and fast with welcome depth. You can clamber up and across walls in the background of the level using the 2.5D wall running technique, you can swing off bars, slide down declines, and then use much of these movement skills in battle too. There's more to this game than simply spamming the attack button for a flurry of strikes, as you can leap over enemies to avoid devastating attacks, slam down on them from above, kick them to break shields or push them into environmental hazards, and then even use a slate of differing weapon types to shake things up further. A two-handed axe might be slower than dual-daggers, but it will hit much harder, a bow might give you accuracy but a chakram returns to after you throw it allowing it to strike an enemy a second time.

I do think that Evil Empire will need to fiddle with some of the combat elements a tad going forward, as I did find in the short period I had to test the game that the regular enemies proved to be a walk in the park whereas the boss came across like a punch in the jaw from Mike Tyson. That being said, the core systems that have been designed so far, and the way that levels are structured and built all seem to be excellent and serve as a great base for what's to come next for this game.

Keeping with the theme of Dead Cells and even The Lost Crown further, The Rogue Prince of Persia has trinkets and upgrades to find that apply different modifiers and bonuses to the Prince's kit. Between causing a poison effect when damaged, to igniting enemies when you strike them a certain way, to even gaining extra permanent health when finding one of the healing wells, these trinkets will be quite familiar to those who have played those former games. What won't be as familiar is the minor system with how they are slotted into the Prince's kit. Each trinket comes with a bunch of multipliers that reflect where it is slotted on the Prince's belt. Some might enhance the two trinkets to its left, others increase the right and weaken the left, and it's your job to determine how best to slot these trinkets together for the best effect.

Likewise, you have to make the decision about what is actually worth committing your time to. You can blitz through levels without any form of exploration if you want, likely meaning you won't face much danger until you reach a boss, or you can wander and explore, find new gear, stores to spend gold coins, and even oasis wells to deposit the Spirit Glimmers you collect from defeated enemies. This latter currency is seemingly the only current part of the game that remains with the player post-death, as you can use the banked Glimmers to purchase and unlock new trinkets to find during a run. Each of the levels also offer a slate of challenge rooms to find and take on, where the Prince will need to prove his excellence at parkour to reach a chest at the end for some new loot. The catch with these rooms, and any form of exploration, is that the majority isn't permanent meaning if you die, it will all be for naught. This is pretty much a pureblood roguelike, for better or worse.

Despite the fact that the art style used in this game is almost quite OlliOlli with bright and vibrant cartoon visuals that we don't usually see attributed to the world of Prince of Persia, in practice it actually works quite well. There's charm and that signature Prince of Persia style and aesthetic that shines through in this game, in the same way that it did with The Lost Crown. It's very different to what we were used to from this series prior to 2024, but it also feels like an exciting next step forward on the road that The Lost Crown started traversing a few months back.

Evil Empire affirmed that even though The Rogue Prince of Persia is an Early Access project, it won't launch feeling like an unfinished game. I can attest to that in a way already, as the core base that the developer has created so far shows a huge amount of potential and makes me very excited for what's to come. Sure, there's a hard stop in the story at the moment, and yes there are only a limited number of trinkets and weapons to find and use, but the core gameplay, level design, presentation, and such all seem like Ubisoft has found another winner for the Prince of Persia franchise. This is truly the perfect game for anyone who has been wondering what The Lost Crown would be like after a Dead Cells roguelike blood transfusion.