The Rogue Prince of Persia gets new Early Access release date at the end of May

thesixthaxis.com:

Evil Empire has announced a new Steam Early Access release date for The Rogue Prince of Persia, having nudged the game’s preview release back in the wake of Hades II’s own Early Access release. The Rogue Prince of Persia will now head into Steam Early Access on 27th May.

“Seeing as everyone and their mum is playing that game (including our entire team… and their mums),” Evil Empire wrote last week, “we have decided to let people have their fun with it before we release The Rogue Prince of Persia.

“While we have every confidence in The Rogue Prince of Persia, it’s not every day that a game in the same genre as you, which is one of the most anticipated upcoming games of 2024, will release into Early Access a week before you plan to do the same.”

The decision made an awful lot of sense, in the same way that publishers and developers will almost certainly flee whatever release window Rockstar settles on for GTA 6. On top of that, Hades II and The Rogue Prince of Persia both inhabit similar space within the roguelike genre, though Hades II blends it with an action RPG and The Rogue Prince of Persia with an action platformer.

Announced just last month, the game traps the Prince in a never-ending cycle of roguelike death. His bola, which was gifted to him as a baby, constantly resurrects him to the last truly safe place he was in before he dies, with this safety net both allowing to master formidable acrobatic and combat techniques, but also leading to rash actions that have triggered an invasion by Huns.

There’s good reason to be excited for this, as developer Evil Empire was spawned out of original Dead Cells developer Motion Twin. Back in 2019, Motion Twin started work on a new project, but spun off the Dead Cells team into a separate entity to keep on supporting their hit game. It remained a cross-studio effort though, with Motion Twin and Evil Empire bringing numerous updates and expansions to the game in the years since, culminating the the fourth and final paid expansion