The Rogue Prince of Persia News

Hey everyone,

Hope you all had a nice break and Happy New Year!

Almost everyone is back in the office and getting stuck in to our plans for 2025.

Speaking of... we've just released a "minor" update to kick off the new year with lots of polish and tweaks!

We've been receiving a lot of feedback about balancing since The Second Act update, mosty that it's a bit too hard, and thank you very much for this feedback!
We are working on a balancing rework which will be split into 3 phases, and the first one is coming with this update:

• Medallion bag has been removed. You now obtain medallions only from looters (altars, chests etc). This should give you more choice about which medallions you're getting and reduce the 'management' of medallions you don't want.
  
• You can now recycle medallions for gold if you have the skill.
  
• Some balancing on the Gold costs and Medallions effects.
  
• Balancing tweaks on Heavy Weapon special attacks damage
  
• We've also added an "over shield" to the heavy weapons, preventing interruption when being hit while charging the special attack.
  

Some of these may seem minor, but they will have a decent effect on balancing straight away and set the stage nicely for the development work on the other phases which are coming later this year.


We didn't just make changes to balancing, we've also added and tweaked some things to generally improve the game:

• New 3D animations during dialogues.
  
• Some level structure improvement in Garden and Academy, plus some tweaks in the Huns Camp, to improve variety and simplify navigation (like adding more Well of Dreams in Academy). Let us know how these levels feel now!
  
• Rework of interact visibility, adding a little hint on where to interact with things and clarifying what you're interacting with.
  
• Added a World Map into the in-game menu, to help you better understand the World Structure and follow where you were, where you are, and what's next.
  
• Rework of the loading transitions. This is mostly aesthetic - we know they can be a bit long, we are aware of it and will be working on this in the coming months, don't worry.
  
• Our sound designer also worked hard to improve the overall ambiance, adding new SFX and tracks in the biomes to give them more life.
  

We've also fixed some bugs, here is a shortlist of the major fixes:

• The challenge room in the Gold Mines won't appear behind rocks anymore.
  
• Skystalkers now have a proper outline when shielded.
  
• Awakening of the Reinforced now works on bosses.
  
• You shouldn't have duplicated medallions anymore.
  
• Rescue music is now bound to the music slider option.
  
• Fixed Z-Door looping animation when entering.
  
• Berude's fight can't be skipped with Stealth Spirit anymore (Don't be rude to Berude guys, she deserves a fair fight too).
  

Finally, here are some known issues, we're working on them!

• Still investigating some collision disappearing for mobs and player sometimes.
  
• Props can appear before the Kids in the shop.
  
• Achievement for meeting or freeing Shahin might not trigger.
  
• Baatar's arena door doesn't appear (but the collision is still there)
  

We should™ be back with a bigger update at the end of the month so keep an eye out for that!

Cheers,
Matt & the EE team

Hello everyone,


Seems like we were a tad premature with our post last week.

We said that Ubisoft Connect would be an optional-only feature at 1.0, but things have evolved.


There will in fact be no Ubisoft Connect at all for the game on Steam.


Now we are aware that some people might have wanted Ubisoft Connect in order to do cross-saves with consoles. If this is requested by a lot of players at 1.0, then there are other ways we could address cross-saves and we can explore that if/when it comes :)


No price increase in January

We'd also previously mentioned a price increase after the Winter Sale but again our plans have slightly changed.
We won’t be raising the price in January, but we will still raise the price at some point in the future, considering all the content that has been added and will be added, but right now isn't the right moment. It's a Christmas miracle.

Also, we will have our biggest ever discount of 25% for the Steam Winter Sale. Just sayin.


Roadmap

In case anyone missed it, last week we posted a loose roadmap for the first half of 2025:



If you want more insight into that then go read our previous Steam post: https://steamcommunity.com/games/2717880/announcements/detail/4479488435875218790

Essentially we'll be polishing the bejeezus out of all the features we added this year while feeding in some new content, addressing some issues and getting the final biomes/boss ready.


We can't wait for all that but right now we're going to go eat, drink, sleep and get merry for a week or two to recover from this crazy year.


Have a great holiday break!
Matt & the EE team

Hello everyone,

Hope you've all been enjoying the Second Act update and everything that came with it!

Now we've got that monster of an update out into the world, we can talk a bit about the future and what's in store for The Rogue Prince of Persia in 2025.

Behold, the new roadmap!




Most of that is pretty self-explanatory, but we want to expand a bit on some points which might be misunderstood...


Medallion management

Before you panic, we're not going to change the Medallion system again - just how you find, improve and setup your Medallions.

Right now the system of filling your Medallion bag through kills, then opening it, then picking up the Medallions, then only being able to adjust them at altars or with Astara is, well... just too complicated, time-consuming and frankly it can kill the flow of a run.

So, we've got some big improvements coming to this whole system to make it more fluid, streamlined and fun!


Improve control input & response

We've seen some reviews and posts about the game controls feeling slow, that they have input lag, problems with getting locked in to animations etc...

After swearing a blood oath to hunt these people and their entire families down, we realised that we actually agree that this can be improved, so we're going to address it! We're not going to go into detail about exactly how, as there's a lot of background tech & number stuff involved, but it's coming soon!

Now, we also get lots of positive comments about the movement and controls, so if that's you don't worry, we're not going to make crazy radical changes either.


Make biome layouts more random

Some biomes have an issue where they feel the same in every run, even though they're procedurally generated.

This shouldn't be the case, so around half of the biomes are currently being worked on to add more variety to their layout and 'rooms', without sacrificing the feel of the biome.


Improve loading transitions

The first round of improvements will be purely visual - making the entrances/exits of biomes and the transition screen itself more good-looking.

Then later on in the year we'll be trying to reduce the loading time. To put it simply, the loading screen is there to entertain your eyes while the game generates the level design of the next biome.

Sometimes this level generation fails and has to start again - we have several ways to improve this process, but we have a small team, the solutions take a long time to test, and we have many other things to do, so this has to come later on in the year. But it IS coming!


Improve traversal & combat 'feeling'

This is kind of a follow-up to the 'control input & response' point. While we think we've earned the right to say that the gameplay is satisfying, we think there's a good 20% of extra satisfaction to be found.

Whether it's making the animations more fluid, adding more audio feedback or adjusting the visual effects, next year we'll be searching for more of that sweet sweet "gamefeel" nectar.


Environmental interactions and breakable environmental items

Our artists' work on the "glow-up" for the Second Act update was incredible, but the environments can still lack a bit of life.

So we're going to be adding things in the background that you can interact with, as well as random things happening in the background.

Maybe a flock of birds will fly off as you get close, maybe a part of a tower will collapse - events that make the world much more lived in.

You'll probably also be able to break some random pots, because can a video game really exist without that?


Summary

This year we've put all the structures in place to get the game in a good position for 1.0, now we just need to polish the absolute hell out of these features, while taking the community's feedback into account.

We'll add some extra spice along the way, then the final story act, biomes and boss and we'll be good to go!!


Denuvo + Ubisoft Connect on Steam - update

We've noticed people asking about Denuvo (the anti-piracy software) and whether it will be in the game at 1.0.

Well, we can tell you that Denuvo will NOT be in the game on Steam.

On the same note, Ubisoft Connect will be available as an optional-only activable feature at 1.0 on Steam.


Voila.


See you soon,
Matt & the EE team

Hello!

As I guess you've seen, The Steam Awards nominations have started and so it's time for us to stake our little claim.

If you enjoy playing The Rogue Prince of Persia on Steam Deck, love the Visual Style, or you just can't get enough of the bangers made by Asadi for the Soundtrack, please consider us when you're making your nominations :)

I chose Soundtrack to be tagged here as we're saving ourselves for Game of the Year in 2025 mwahahahahaaa...

We'll be back with more news soon!

Thanks for playing,
Matt & the EE team