The Rogue Prince of Persia News

Hey everyone,

We're working hard on getting you fixes ASAP and you'll have one in less than 24 hours.

A patch is nearly prepared that will address some of the performance issues, save problems and bugs/crashes, but we just need to test it a little bit more to make sure it won't cause any other problems.

We'll be back tomorrow with the patch notes and thank you so much for your patience.

Cheers,
EE

Hi everyone,

So it's been nearly 24 hours since we launched our first ever Evil Empire game, and we want to say thank you to everyone who's supported us so far! We can't wait to show you what else we want to add to The Rogue Prince of Persia, and to have you alongside us as we build the game to v1.0.

But, we're going to be honest, our launch wasn't as great as we'd hoped.

We've seen two main concerns from players - bugs/performance issues and lack of content - and we want to reassure you that we hear you and that we're already working hard on this :)

[h3]Performance/Bugs[/h3]
First things first, sorry to anyone who's experienced a bug or crash.

The number of you who have had one is too high and we can only hold our hands up and apologise for that.

Fixing these is our top priority and we will be pushing hotfixes as soon as possible.

Stutters, framerate drops & input lag

These three problems seem to be interlinked and this is our number one issue to fix right now.

If you're experiencing these problems please leave a message on our dedicated Discord thread. There are instructions there to provide the player.log file and please also give as much information as possible about your PC specs too.

Save file problems

Save problems are super frustrating, so this is another issue we're working hard on. We already believe that we've got some fixes ready for this, but we need to test them to make sure we're not introducing other issues with them. That would be even more annoying! So keep an eye out for the incoming hotfixes, we'll be posting the details of each one in the Community Hub as we go.

Other bugs

We're busy cataloguing and fixing the other bugs that you've been reporting.

If you have a bug or crash, please leave as much information as possible in the dedicated bug sections in the Steam forums or Discord.

This will help us to identify the problem quicker and so we can fix it quicker.


[h3]Lack of variety/content[/h3]
We've seen quite a few comments that the game was released too early, even for Early Access, and doesn't have enough variety or content - whether that's weapons, enemies, story, or anything else.

This is a perfectly valid criticism, we're not going to try and convince you otherwise. Just know that we'll be adding lots more content very very soon.

However, we think we need to clarify again why we have chosen to release in Early Access, because some other comments are trying to compare us to games that are in very different stages of development than us.

The following section is not against people who find we don't have enough content right now, we completely get where you're coming from!


Our Early Access plan

We're not here to do a final sense check on a 90% finished game and replace some placeholder art, nor are we a finished game with years of post-1.0 support.

Our plan is to at least double the amount of content in the game, by providing weekly content updates where we work closely with the community. It'll be a collaborative environment where we build on our core gameplay and improve the game, over more than a year. It's going to be fast moving, a bit experimental, and above all, fun!

So for the reviewers saying that the game has lots of potential but they'd prefer to wait for more content, that's fine - we'll see you in just a month or two ;)

If you're curious about what we want to add, before the launch we published a list of things we're planning (and this doesn't include all the weapons, meta/upgrades, enemies, biomes, bosses and story acts we want to add) - https://steamcommunity.com/app/2717880/discussions/1/4335356121965125630/



Right now

For the moment we are 100% focused on fixing the performance and bug problems, but once that's done we'll be going full steam ahead into the weekly content updates and pumping this game full of much, much more content.

Hopefully that'll be starting next week!


Thanks for reading and we hope you'll stick with us as we shape this game through Early Access, we're excited for what's next!

Cheers,
Matt & the EE team

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Hello everyone,

Coffee has been drunk by the gallon, controllers have been broken, tonnes of tacos have been comfort eaten, and we can finally announce that The Rogue Prince of Persia is available to play in Early Access!

Here's a launch trailer to get you even more hyped, courtesy of La Cachette studio and backed by yet another great tune from our soundtrack creator ASADI!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

We also have a 10% launch discount on for 24 hours only, so get on it quick to take advantage of that...

Phew, it's been a long road, but everyone on the team is immensely proud of their work and can't wait to get stuck into Early Access and improve the game even further with you, the community.

So, how is that going to work?


[h3]Early Access[/h3]

TLDR:

• Fun solid core of a game that will be built on (a lot!)
  
• Move fast - weekly content updates
  
• Devs will work closely & openly with community
  
• Experimental branch coming Thursday
  
• Dev stream in an hour
  

Right now we have a fun solid nugget of a game - we're very confident that the acrobatic platforming and the combat moveset is a blast to play with and is a great base to build off during Early Access (and the music ain't half bad too, thanks ASADI! ;D).

We're well aware that we need to add more meta progression, upgrades, enemies, weapons, difficulty settings, other features and of course biomes, bosses and story acts, before the game can be considered complete.

But this is what Early Access is for, and our philosophy is that this is the best environment for us to build all of that in and to arrive at v1.0 with the best game possible, by working alongside a player community and in a fluid 'experimental' way.

Weekly updates

We're going to fully embrace the essence of Early Access and release weekly updates. This will be flexible of course, and we are 100% open to changing our approach if their is a negative effect on our team or the game. Flexible is going to be a key word for this Early Access ^^'

An update could contain a new mob, meta upgrade, character animations, a goat, multiple things at once - whatever's ready will be delivered. We will then tweak those additions if needed, based on a mix of player feedback and of course our own vision for the game.

It's not "move fast and break things", we want a playable game for you lot, but it's definitely "move fast". There will very likely be some placeholder images and text and things of that nature. If this kind of stuff is there, din't worry it won't be left like that, it will be polished up as we go.

Of course, big updates like a new biome or a story act can't just drop out of nowhere, so these will be reserved for certain times and will likely be communicated about in advance.

In any case, it's going to be a fun journey with lots to create & discover and there will always be open communication from us!



[h3]Experimental branch[/h3]

There will also be a more... fruity 100% optional branch coming on Thursday.

Here we will be updating the game with our creations as soon as we think they're good enough to test (i.e they won't completely break the game). This means that if you play on this branch you'll have all the new content ASAP, and you'll probably experience some crazy interactions, uber OP builds and very possibly some bugs.

This is where we will find some of the best additions to add to the game, thanks to the pure experimentation, but the player experience will be a bit off-the-wall.

It will definitely be entertaining, but it is not for everyone and again it will be 100% optional.

If you're interested, watch out for our future post where we'll give you all the access details and everything else.



[h3]How to give feedback[/h3]

At the moment we have the Steam forums and our Discord set up for feedback/bug reports.

We are trying to set up an in-game reporter too, we'll let you know when that's ready.

Please be patient with us during Early Access. Even though Ubisoft is the publisher we are just a small team working on the game here at Evil Empire, so we won't be able to make big changes instantly, as much as we would like to!



[h3]Now go play the damn game!!![/h3]

If you're stuck somewhere you can't play, we will be streaming at 18:00 CET/09:00 PT on the Steam store page, our Youtube channel and Twitch channel, so come say hi!


See you very soon and thanks for all your support,
The Evil Empire team

Disclaimer: No controllers were harmed during the making of this game. Unless they deserved it.

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Hello!

Welcome to our 4th community update!

This week we're covering the Prince's story and how narration will be explored in the game - given it's a roguelite it will be slightly unusual but nothing too crazy! There are minor spoilers here, but nothing that you won't discover for yourself in the first 30 minutes of the game.

As usual, a video version is on our YouTube channel:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h3]The Prince[/h3]
Our story can essentially be summarised as "you're stuck in a save file gone wrong".

The Prince himself has already been living a kind of roguelite his whole life, a ‘roguelife’ if you will. Yes, we went there, just go with it... Ok one more, he didn't choose the rogue life, the rogue life chose him. I'm done.

His bola, gifted to him as a baby, sends him back in time to the last truly safe place he was in before he dies.



What is a bola? It's just a small hollow piece of jewellery shaped like a sphere, often with a kind of mesh or lattice as an outer layer.

So, the Prince doesn't know who gave him his bola or why, all he knows is that this secret (and suspiciously convenient) power has let him take huge risks to perfect the skills of acrobatics & combat in his youth. If he messes up while jumping between buildings or pulling off a crazy move in combat, well, he just dies and goes back in time to when he was last safe.

Now a young man, this power has moulded him into a formidable warrior and acrobat, but this safety net has failed to teach the young Prince the value of patience and strategy. While headstrong and reckless, he still cares deeply about his country and the Persian people, and desires nothing more than to keep them safe.



So when a Hun force appears near the Persian border and King Peroz wants to take time to strategize and establish contact with the Huns, the Prince is at odds with his father. At first he obeys him, but then the Prince hears stories of strange beasts and dark magic from villagers fleeing the area near the Hun's camp.

Driven by his desire to protect his people, the Prince secretly heads out with a small force to confront the Huns, confident in his bola's protection.

But when he reaches the camp, his force is quickly overwhelmed by the Huns, who use dark shamanic magic to wield strange powers. Defeated in combat by the Hun King Nogai himself, the Prince slips into unconsciousness.

Yet when he wakes up, he is not in the hands of the Huns, nor back in time. His old mentor Sukhra has saved him, bringing him to the Oasis - a safe hidden place near the capital city.



The Prince quickly learns from Sukhra that his rash actions, though made with good intentions, have triggered an invasion of the city by the Huns. The Prince immediately sets off to stop them, but again he is bested by their dark magic and killed. The bola's power activates and returns him to the last safe place he was in - the Oasis.



The Prince realises with horror that he is stuck - his bola won't take him back further in time and so the Hun invasion is now irreversible.

Faced with the first true test of his character, he must head into the city again and again in a seemingly eternal loop, searching desperately for a way to stop the Hun invasion, and hoping in vain for a way to reverse it.

Only by confronting his weaknesses and regaining the trust of his family can he save both them and his people from his mistake, and to become the hero he has always wanted to be.


[h3]Narrative Exploration[/h3]
Narrative can be tricky in a roguelite - you're doing the same run again and again, so revealing the story can be awkward, convoluted, or can simply just not make sense.

This is one of the many reasons why we chose to go into Early Access - to get this narration exploration right, so as to make sure that discovering the story is clear, isn't tedious and also that fits well with the discovery of other gameplay elements.

We want the story to arrive naturally, so it is linked to unlocking new biomes, discovering new information, and doing certain interactions.



For example, you could discover a character in one biome, they talk you about another biome which is now unlocked. You go to the new biome and find a letter giving clues about the whereabouts of another character and a way to unlock the path to them. Now you must do certain actions in a certain order on your next run to arrive at this other character and so on.

Not exactly ground-breaking stuff, but in this way the narrative is unlocked alongside new biomes and information, and you must complete multiple runs with different paths to discover everything.

This can quickly be too much information, so to help you keep on top of it, the Prince has a mind map at his disposal. This saves and links all the clues you find about characters and locations so you can reference it whenever you need to. This will eventually help you to figure out exactly what you need to do...



At Early Access launch, we only have the first story act in the game, but more will come. But don't worry, there's plenty of weapons, medallions and other things to discover - so there is plenty to keep you occupied until the next story act arrives!

That's all for this update, the next time we post it will be for the game launch!

[h3]Dev Stream[/h3]
Speaking of launch day, if you'll be stuck somewhere you can't play, we will be doing a dev stream at 18:00 CET/ 09:00 PT on the Steam store page, our Youtube channel and Twitch channel.

We'll be talking with chat, so if you have any burning questions, come say hi!


Hope to see you there on launch day, either playing or watching :)

Thanks for reading,
Matt & the Evil Empire team

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Hello and welcome back to another community update for The Rogue Prince of Persia!

Sorry it's a bit later than planned, the game delay threw us out of loop a bit ^^

This time around we’ll be going into the art direction of the game, this also includes a bit of a dive into the absolutely banging soundtrack and who’s behind it, and we’ll touch on our animated trailers too.

As always, if you prefer to watch/listen, here is a YouTube version:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

First, let’s start with the the art of the game itself.

[h3]Art Direction[/h3] Persian miniatures

Since a Prince of Persia game is above all an epic and adventurous tale, the team was inspired by old Persian miniatures, that were often used to illustrate books of Persian tales and are often said to have a dreamlike quality.

The Rogue Prince of Persia IS a tale that someone is recounting – at the very beginning of the game there is a narrator saying exactly this, so it already seemed to be a good fit.



Battle scenes, myths and legends were the main scenarios depicted in these miniatures, so that was another tick in the box.

On top of that, the painters were often supported financially by the royal family, and this is a game about a Prince of Persia, so for us that sense of nobility seemed to be a natural fit for the game.



When discovering those Persian miniatures we were all charmed by how bright and colourful they are. The use of clean colours, which you can clearly see in our art direction, were captivating. But these pieces of Persian art, while beautiful, don’t have much sense of depth and are quite busy. When you’re playing a game, even a 2D one, you need to be able to distinguish the foreground, background and gameplay elements.

Franco-Belgian graphic novels

So, to counter this, and also probably because we have mostly french people in the team, we also drew heavy inspiration from Franco-Belgian bande-dessinée artists. Bande-dessinée essentially means graphic novel.

Obviously, there isn’t one style for all these artists – there are a wide variety of schools and styles and everyone is unique. Even a single artist will change their style between different projects.

But we can say that the sci-fi/fantasy work of Moebius, the pseudonym of Jean Giraud, was a big inspiration in particular. His work also used vivid colours, like the Persian miniatures, with clean lines that are occasionally broken, giving it a distinct style.



Epic backdrops framed central characters with unusual colours, inspiring your imagination to run riot and lending a dreamlike quality to the image.

This was particularly inspiring to us as the game’s story IS a dreamlike myth – the Prince has a bola which takes him back in time every time he dies, and he needs to save his country from an invasion that’s using a dark magic that corrupts those who use it. It’s not exactly grounded in reality.



Of course, working on the Prince of Persia IP also means that we’re also going to draw inspiration from the series, and you’ll see the impact of every entry in the series on our game, from the rotoscoped sprites of the 1989 version (and its purple skin Prince in the DOS version ;) ), to the classic Sands of Time and beyond.



Put this all together and you end up with the unique visual identity of The Rogue Prince of Persia, and it’s one that we are proud of.

So we’ve covered the art direction, now let’s go into an immensely important element of any game -the soundtrack.

[h3]The Soundtrack[/h3]

We really wanted to pay respect to ancient Persian music styles, but with a modern, urgent twist that would fit the action-platforming gameplay. The idea was to make you feel immersed in the world our artists have created, but to also have a beat always driving you forward, just as the Prince cannot rest until he has saved Persia.

We were a bit stumped here because let’s be honest, that’s quite a niche request. But then Yoann Laulan, who was working on the music for Dead Cells with us at the time, mentioned “Persian trap”. Curious, we turned to Google and an artist called Asadi popped up.

From the first listen we knew it could only be him.



Asadi is a Persian-American electronic music producer and artist with a unique sound. Using a wide array of traditional Persian instruments such as the Setar, the Tar and the Daf, Asadi expertly blends the unique melodies he creates with electronic, hip-hop and trap influences. The result is inspiring (check out the YouTube video above from 4:00 to hear some of his creations).

Asadi has tailored each track to fit perfectly into its own level, whether that’s the heavy oppression of the Tower of Oblivion, the tranquility of the Oasis, or the pulsating boss fight against Berude the Unstoppable. Without his efforts and enthusiasm, The Rogue Prince of Persia would be much poorer.

We finally have news about the release of the OST, which will be on 31st May and you can pre-save it here - https://ubisoftmusic.ffm.to/therogueprinceofpersia-ost


Last but definitely not least, he also worked to elevate our animated trailers to a whole new level. And yes I said trailers plural, because there’s one you still haven’t seen yet…

[h3]Animated Trailers[/h3]

Speaking of the animated trailers, let’s talk a little bit about how the animation studio La Cachette brought our version of the Prince to life!

La Cachette are the talented studio behind the animation of the award-winning series Primal –the series where a dinosaur and caveman team up to kick ass and take names. They’ve also made episodes for Love, Death and Robots, Star Wars: Visions and more. So we were pretty confident in their ability to make us some amazing character-based trailers, and they definitely delivered.



They’ve already helped us to show you a Prince who is highly skilled in acrobatics and combat and who will stop at nothing to stop the Hun invasion of his beloved Persia. Who can’t stop himself from helping anyone in need of aid, bound by his duty to protect his people.

Combined with Asadi’s stirring compositions, these trailers reflect the headstrong yet caring hero you will discover in the game.

So that’s about it, I hope that this has given you a better idea of our inspirations and how much care we have put into designing the Prince and this game. We are all extremely excited to have the opportunity to make our own entry in this historical and iconic video game series and can’t wait to share it with you all.

Thanks for being here and we'll be back soon!
Matt and the Evil Empire team

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