The Rogue Prince of Persia is now in Early Access on Steam, and the good news is that it should already work well on Steam Deck but the developer plans to keep improving it. So that's good news for desktop Linux players too. Since it uses Proton, as long as it performs well on Steam Deck, it should be no problem for a bigger desktop Linux PC.
It was entirely developed by Evil Empire, who previously maintained the very popular and rather brilliant Dead Cells, and you can definitely see they've learned some valuable lessons from their time working on it. Nice to see a developer who knows their stuff working on such a classic game series, one I started all the way back on the Amiga.
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Speaking in a post on Steam the developer noted "We will be constantly working on optimisation for the Steam Deck throughout Early Access too :)" and that they're waiting for Valve to verify it right now.
Early Access should last for around a year, and they have a lot of plans to expand it with double the current content planned for the 1.0 release. They said:
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.
Check it out on the Steam page.
Interesting to see that the devs apparently had so much pull that they talked Ubisoft into releasing it on Steam - with no Uplay Account nonsense being required.
I wonder how long that will last. I will be the least surprised Picachu if it gets out of early-access and suddenly a Ubi account becomes mandatory.
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