Some 34 years after the release of the first game in the series, Prince of Persia is going back to its 2D roots. Jordan Mechner’s 1989 Apple II original was a side-on platformer that dazzled with its fluid, rotoscoped animation, but the series is probably now better known for its groundbreaking 3D entries, in particular The Sands of Time from 2003, which gave the Prince the power to slow, freeze or even rewind time. That game was the work of Ubisoft Montreal, but The Lost Crown is being created by a different Ubisoft studio with a strong 2D heritage.
“Ubisoft Montpellier has real expertise in 2D platform games, and some 20 members of the team worked directly on Rayman Origins and Rayman Legends in key positions,” says game director Mounir Radi, who thinks it’s a natural evolution for the studio to try its hand at a more open, less linear game structure. Accordingly, The Lost Crown is a “Metroidvania”, a style of action game that encourages backtracking across a gradually unfurling world where new abilities unlock new areas to explore. And it introduces a neat new trick: memory shards.
By pressing down on the D-pad at any point, a screenshot of your location – a memory shard – is automatically pinned on to the map. “This feature was born out of our experience with other Metroidvania games,” says Radi. “It’s a genre that relies heavily on memorisation. In some, you can use coloured pins that you can attach to the map to help you remember the presence of a closed passage, a chest or any other item of interest. But with the passage of time, it’s easy to forget what was behind the element in the first place.” Not so with memory shards, which record a perfect picture of whatever you wanted to earmark for later exploration.
Radi says the studio aimed to retain what people remember about Prince of Persia – the setting, the time powers – while twisting them to surprise players. So the prince is back, but this time he’s the one who needs rescuing. Instead, you play as Sargon, one of a group of elite warriors called the Immortals who set out to rescue the kidnapped Prince Ghassan. This time around, it’s the villain who has time powers. By contrast, Sargon has powers that control space: one is teleportation, “which allows you to create an afterimage and move around in it to scout locations, create combos from scratch or bypass physical obstacles,” Radi says; another is the “dimensional claw”, which lets you trap enemies or objects and transport them elsewhere.
Combat is fast and furious. Sargon’s fighting style was inspired by tricking, an acrobatic sport combining martial arts, dance and free running. Other influences include the Street Fighter games, of which Radi says he’s a big fan. Just as in Street Fighter 6, particularly spectacular moves prompt the camera to zoom in and swoop around the character. For the visuals, senior artistic director Jean-Christophe Alessandri has drawn inspiration not only from Persian mythology and culture, but also from a wide range of comic books and anime; Sargon’s haircut in particular could well be lifted from the pages of Shōnen Jump. “I dare you to find all the references we’ve hidden in the game!” says Radi.
Work on The Lost Crown began in late 2019, but Radi says Ubisoft Montpellier had “already thought about and even prototyped a 2D Prince of Persia in the past” – so the series’ return to 2D has been a long time in the making. “We want to believe that we’ve succeeded in our aim,” says Radi, “to create a true Prince of Persia that can be enjoyed immediately.”
Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown will be out 15 January 2024, on Xbox, PlayStation 4/5, PC and Nintendo Switch
