How Prince of Persia Made its Double Comeback in 2024

After a relatively quiet period following the release of 2010's Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands, the series came roaring back with not one but two critically acclaimed PC and console games: Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, which launched in January, and The Rogue Prince of Persia, which released in Steam Early Access in May. With Prince of Persia celebrating its 35^th anniversary this month, we're concluding our retrospective series by speaking to key developers about how these two games - both side-scrolling action-adventures that take markedly different approaches - spun Prince of Persia's fantastical premise into a Metroidvania inspired by superheroes, fighting games, and "musicality," and a roguelite action-platformer about an arrogant Prince destined to keep learning from his (fatal) mistakes.

Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown

"If we are trying to bring back Prince of Persia, we need to take a new identity, very far from Assassin's Creed," says Abdelhak Elguess, The Lost Crown's senior producer. Plenty of ideas for what this could be were thrown around, but it wasn't until Elguess brought in Game Director Mounir Radi that the first puzzle piece of Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown clicked into place.

"His proposal was immediately for a Metroidvania; he had already been thinking about how Prince of Persia could be a Metroidvania," says Elguess. Approaching Prince of Persia as a 2.5D Metroidvania allowed the developers at Ubisoft Montpellier to implement the kinds of ideas for exploration, puzzles, and combat that would work in an open-world game, while also taking advantage of their considerable expertise in side-scrolling platform games (the studio also created Rayman Origins and Rayman Legends).

"The Metroidvania approach was really an idea that came up from us, not a mandate," says Radi. "We wanted to be sure that we could make a true Prince of Persia and still surprise our players; it would have been too easy just to come up with something players were expecting."

"Even if it's a Metroidvania, we wanted to do a bigger game, and we need to create something new," says Elguess. "It was important for us to push the fantasy aspect, the superhero dimension; to push the limits far from realistic games and really bring Prince of Persia back with its own identity." 

To that end, he says, the team turned to Persian mythology and history, bringing creatures like the benevolent Simurgh bird-deity and the massive snake-monster Azhdaha to Mount Qaf, a legendary mountain with a prominent place in myth. The story centered on the Immortals - historically an elite military unit that served Persia's ancient kings - and re-imagined them as a squad of superhero-like warriors. Anime and fighting games (particularly Street Fighter) were big influences as well, helping shape the pacing of combat as well as the game's look and aesthetics.

The resulting 2.5D Metroidvania-inspired adventure focused on Sargon, youngest of the Immortals, and his quest to rescue the kidnapped Prince Ghassan of Persia. Borrowing and reinterpreting some of the best ideas from the Prince of Persia games that had come before, The Lost Crown roared to life  as a fast-paced, almost merciless action-adventure filled with deadly traps, complex boss fights, and platforming sequences that pushed players to use all the powers and skills they'd acquired, often in quick succession and with little room for error. 

Part of why The Lost Crown's formula works well is because of what Radi calls the game's musicality, a way of viewing platforming and combat challenges like carefully paced musical partitions for players to learn. "When I'm talking to people, sometimes it's funny, I can use just sounds to talk about a combo, to talk about a sequence, like piff-paf-boom-blam-PAF!" says Radi. "The musicality and the pacing are always the most important in each aspect, whatever the type of gameplay loop."

Radi compares The Lost Crown's approach to jazz, in that it allows for expression - players are free to use the tools they have to overcome obstacles as they see fit - but encourages players to maintain that feeling of musicality through its pacing.

"Each time there is friction - like if you miss a jump or a combo - there are small hints that you are not in the right pacing," says Radi. "Like, if you do not perform a long jump well, you have this little friction, because Sargon is gripping the edge. It kills the flow, but that's intentional so that we push you to stay with the pacing."

"The team did a really smart job of combining what we think of as Prince of Persia DNA, drawing on all of the past games and on Persian mythology, while making it a very modern Metroidvania," says series creator Jordan Mechner. "It's something new, but you also instantly recognize that it has the Prince of Persia spirit. And no matter which of the past games you played and loved, and whatever Prince of Persia means most to you, I think all Prince of Persia players will find 'their' Prince of Persia acknowledged in The Lost Crown." 

The Rogue Prince of Persia

While Ubisoft Montpellier was working on Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, developer Evil Empire approached Ubisoft to pitch its own vision for Prince of Persia: a 2D side-scrolling roguelite starring a cocky Prince who's dealt with death and rebirth his entire life. Ubisoft greenlit the idea, and Evil Empire began communicating with Ubisoft Montpellier to ensure that they created complementary games, rather than ones with overlapping ideas.

Launched in Early Access in May, The Rogue Prince of Persia centers on a Prince whose magical bola, given to him as a baby, restores him to the last safe time and place he was in whenever he dies. This gives him insight into how to avoid death, and provides the perfect setup for a game where continual death and resurrection are important parts of progression. It also makes him incredibly reckless, something he understands too late after he provokes a Hun invasion, dies, and returns to a time and place after the invasion has already begun.

"When I was little, I had a 'wow' moment when I made the first wall-run [in The Sands of Time]," says Game Director Lucie Dewagnier. "I remember the scene; it's when you're attacking the palace of the Maharajah. You're running along the wall to go over a chasm, and I had this moment of, 'Wow! Wow! it's awesome!' It changed everything. I wanted to recapture that in The Rogue Prince of Persia."

The Rogue Prince's wall-run can be performed up or across any place where there's a visible wall in the background layer, making it simultaneously unique and an homage to the series' past. Where The Lost Crown's Sargon is inspired by superheroes, however, Evil Empire wanted to make their Prince more human; powerful, but not super-powered - and so the wall-run changed gradually during development and iteration, with the Prince's ability to sprint for long distances eventually nerfed to become more realistic. "We wanted to stay true to the fact that, in The Sands of Time trilogy and in the first game, the Prince doesn't have a lot of power," says Dewagnier. "[The Sands of Time Prince] is very acrobatic and very, very agile, but he has no real power; the power comes from his dagger."

That said, it was very important for Dewagnier's team to incorporate the element of time - one of the series' most consistent themes - into The Rogue Prince of Persia. While they ultimately didn't fit with the game's design and intention, time-based levels, an alternate-timeline Prince, and even rewind powers were considered, but ultimately what stuck was the Prince's bola, which moves him through time as well as space. "It was sad for me to remove the time rewind, especially because as a programmer, it was one of the most complex things I've done in my career," says Dewagnier.

"Prince of Persia is a very special franchise in the video game industry," adds Dewagnier. "It's an old one, with a very special personality. I'm so happy that we get to see new games, and to be able to participate in the creation of those new games. I cannot wait to see the Sands of Time remake, and I hope there will be a lot of new Princes again."

Refilling the Hourglass

Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown and The Rogue Prince of Persia are only the beginning of the franchise's comeback. For starters, the latter hasn't even fully launched yet, and in fact just received its Risk-Reward update, with the even-bigger "Mother of All Updates" slated to bring new biomes, bosses, and enemies in November, along with more of the story. Ubisoft Montreal is also working on the remake of Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time for 2026, with a team that includes developers who worked on the original Sands of Time and its sequels (some of whom spoke with us for this feature series).

"It's very humbling, working with people that have worked on one of Ubisoft's best-reviewed games," says Bio Jade Adam Granger, creative director on the remake. "They've been so generous with their experience, but also they're not stuck in time. They really want to evolve with the game, to bring their open-mindedness, their experience, their context - but really, they're super-willing to try wild stuff! Sometimes these are the people we have to reel in the most, because they will go crazy, and they know where the recipe could go. I really was glad to see how willing they are to push the envelope."

"It was striking, playing [the earlier games] again in preparation for the remake," says Michael McIntyre, the remake's game director. "You realize the game that exists in your head is not the same as the game that was. Our memories soften things, and rewrite history a little bit with similar games that we've played since then, into this idealized version. That became our guiding light: We are making the game we remember, not the game that was.

"What's nice, though, is that even though the game is 21 years old, there are elements of it that are just absolutely timeless," McIntyre adds. "Even with technology as it was, there are ideas, designs, and execution that are like, 'look, that's good for all time.' There's no reason to change those things."

The Rogue Prince of Persia is available in Early Access via Steam and GeForce Now. Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown is available on PC (via the Ubisoft Store, Epic Games Store, and Steam) as well as Switch, PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and Amazon Luna; is coming soon to Mac; and is included with a Ubisoft+ Premium subscription.

For more Prince of Persia, check out our retrospectives on the 2008 reboot and Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands, the creation of The Sands of Time trilogy, our look back at the original 1989 game, and the first details on the remake of Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time.