Dead Cells devs’ The Rogue Prince of Persia dodges Hades 2 with a release date delay

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It had been due to hit early access next week, but will now land later this month

Image credit: Ubisoft/Evil Empire

The Rogue Prince of Persia, a game that is pleasingly candid in choosing its name for a roguelite Prince of Persia spin-off, has been delayed. It turns out that developers Evil Empire – they of very good roguelite platformer Dead Cells – saw the Hades 2 train steaming down the tracks, and decided to sensibly dodge-roll out of its way.

The Rogue Prince of Persia only surfaced for realsies about a month ago, following rumours not long before that the current Dead Cells custodians were working on a standalone 2D entry in the long-running platformer series, having finally brought an end to Dead Cells’ development after many, many (35!) post-launch updates.

Worth noting here that The Rogue Prince of Persia is a separate game to The Lost Crown, a different official spin-off of Prince of Persia that also happened to take the form of a classic 2D platformer harking back to the series’ roots – albeit more in the metroidvania vein than the roguelite one. It was pretty bloody good, and only came out in January – meaning we might be in for a bumper crop of good Prince of Persia games after a long drought.

If you haven’t yet finished The Lost Crown, there’ll be some time to give it a whizz before The Rogue Prince of Persia (which, the more I type it, the clunkier it feels as a title) arrives. Evil Empire have delayed its early access release date from its planned arrival next week on May 14th, citing – what else – the early access release of Hades 2 earlier this week as a reason to hold their horses.

Image credit: Ubisoft/Evil Empire

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

“While we have complete 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. We are not prideful enough to ignore the implications of that, and we truly believe that this short delay is the best decision for us and our Early Access journey.”

It’s hard to argue with that, really – Hades 2’s incredible popularity and similarities to TRPoP as a roguelite aside, this week is also chocka with the likes of Crow Country, 1000xResist and Animal Well as acclaimed indie offerings, so some breathing room on the part of players and developers alike seems prudent.

Evil Empire say they’ll announce the new release date on Monday, but it’ll still hit Steam before the end of May. The extra time will be spent giving TRPoP even more polish, squashing some bugs and adding “even more cool things”, on top of some bits due to arrive in an already “pretty hefty” Day 1 patch.

Alice found her time with The Rogue Prince of Persia last month to be plenty demanding in that way of early run-based games, with lots of wall-running, fighting and colour – you’ve got some more time to hone those roguelite reflexes in Hades 2 before then, at least.