The Rogue Prince of Persia Accessibility Spotlight

The Rogue Prince of Persia just released its 1.0 version on PC via Steam, Ubisoft Connect, and the Epic Games store, as well as PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and Amazon Luna. The action-packed roguelite whisks players to a city overrun by possessed Hun warriors. As the titular Prince, players can master the wall-running platforming action and thrilling combat, made even more so by medallions that power up weapons and put enemies in sticky (or explosive) situations.

The Rogue Prince of Persia is developed by Evil Empire, and the team worked hard to ensure the game would be accessible to everyone who wanted to play. To learn more about the team's accessibility philosophy, the development process, and which features they're most proud of, we spoke to Matthew Houghton, marketing manager at Evil Empire.

What is Evil Empire's guiding philosophy when it comes to accessibility in The Rogue Prince of Persia?

Matthew Houghton: Seeing as The Rogue Prince of Persia has a big focus on precise parkour platforming and fighting multiple enemies at the same time, we need to make sure that the controls and visibility are accessible to everyone, otherwise it could quickly become a frustrating experience.

Other accessibility features have been considered, but these two aspects are really key.

What are some practical ways that this philosophy has manifested in your development process?

MH: For starters, this informed our game design itself, not just specific features. Things like enemy pathing and visual effects have all been adjusted as the gameplay has evolved, to ensure that players don't get visually overwhelmed.

The controls were also adjusted halfway through Early Access (they are also rebindable) to give a better experience to new players.

Can you outline some of the key accessibility features in The Rogue Prince of Persia?

MH: The fully rebindable controls allow players to really bend the controller to their needs. We also have plenty of options for sensitivity, deadzones, and inversion to go even further.

We have Color Filters for Deuteranopia, Protanopia and Tritanopia.

Has the suite of accessibility features grown during, or otherwise benefitted from, the game's time in Early Access?

MH: We wanted to focus purely on gameplay first, so there were few accessibility features when Early Access began. We knew the gameplay would evolve, so we needed to have that happen first before adding the features.

It helped us build a list of things that could be useful as we collected suggestions from the Early Access community.

Did Evil Empire draw any accessibility inspiration from their previous work or other games in the franchise, like Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown?

MH: Yes. Especially on controls such as Axis Inversion, but we would also like to reproduce The Lost Crown's High Contrast filter to replace our current color filters.

ACCESSIBILITY FEATURES LIST

VISUALS

• Color Filters (currently using Color Filters for Deuteranopia, Protanopia and Tritanopia, with hopes to replace these with a single High Contrast filter like in The Lost Crown)

• Screen shake intensity option

• Dialogue and item text size can be adjusted independently

AUDIO

• Music and SFX can be adjusted independently

NAVIGATION & GUIDANCE

• Mind Map: regroups all your narrative clues to help you understand the next move

• Story Objectives: reminds players of their high-level objectives while not taking them by the hand

• Mini Map: Helps navigate each level

• World Map: Helps players understand the global structure of the world and the runs, but also help them plan ahead

CONTROLS

• Full Rebind for both gamepad and KBM

• KBM available on all platforms (except Switch)

• Stick Swap

• Movement axis inversion

• Camera axis inversion

• Stick deadzone customization

COMBAT

• Awakening Runs: The Rogue Prince of Persia's version of New Game + that allows players to configure their difficulty like they want by choosing how it will increase

Play The Rogue Prince of Persia now on PC via Steam, Ubisoft Connect, and the Epic Games Store, as well as PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and Amazon Luna.