Highlights

  • The Rogue Prince of Persia offers plenty of content at a low price in early access, with plans to double content before full release.
  • Developer Evil Empire plans to add new biomes, story acts, bosses, and more via weekly updates for future gameplay enhancements.
  • While The Rogue Prince of Persia runs on Steam Deck, optimization issues impact performance consistency, hindering potential as a hit game.

The Rogue Prince of Persia has just hit Steam early access, and it's in a pretty solid spot right now. While not nearly as feature-complete as fellow roguelike Hades 2 upon its own early access launch a few weeks ago, The Rogue Prince of Persia still offers plenty of content right out of the gate, and for a fairly low price tag. But of course, there's a lot more content planned for the game's future.

In recent blog posts and interviews, developer Evil Empire has stated that it will double the amount of content in The Rogue Prince of Persia by the time the game is ready for its full release, and its current plan looks set to do just that. In the game's most recent dev diary — located on its Steam page — Evil Empire says it plans to add new biomes, story acts, bosses, weapons, enemies, and upgrades to the game, some of which will appear via weekly updates. While all that's great, what The Rogue Prince of Persia could really use right now is a little more Steam Deck support.

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The Rogue Prince of Persia Could Become a Great Steam Deck Experience

The Rogue Prince of Persia's Gameplay Is Perfectly Suited to the Steam Deck

While the Steam Deck is capable of running thousands of video games from across all kinds of different genres, some of the most popular experiences on the handheld platform are those that can be picked up, played for an hour or two, and put down. Naturally, the roguelike genre has been a particularly popular one with Steam Deck users, with players being able to jump in and complete a handful of runs before the Steam Deck's battery runs out. Games like Hades, Vampire Survivors, and Evil Empire's own Dead Cells are often listed as some of the most played games on the handheld device for this exact reason.

Hypothetically, The Rogue Prince of Persia should be the ideal Steam Deck video game. It's a roguelike with fairly short runs, it's not too graphically intensive so the handheld's battery will last for quite a while, it's primarily designed to be played with a controller, and it's relatively cheap to pick up. But there's one big issue that stands in the way of Rogue Prince of Persia becoming the next big hit for the Steam Deck, and that's optimization.

The Rogue Prince of Persia's Steam Deck Support Isn't There Yet

Technically speaking, The Rogue Prince of Persia does currently run on the Steam Deck. Occasionally, it even runs quite well, looking crisp and hitting framerates of around 60fps. But the big problem is that The Rogue Prince of Persia's performance on Steam Deck isn't consistent. While players can experience 60fps, they can just as easily experience framerates that dip well below 30fps, and more often than not, their game struggles somewhere in the middle, resulting in a rather stuttery experience overall. Things get particularly hairy when there are multiple enemies or traps on screen at once, and when the game is loading the next biome.

The Rogue Prince of Persia also doesn't have many graphical options right now, so Steam Deck players will need to enter the handheld's developer mode to manually change any settings.

Of course, The Rogue Prince of Persia has only just entered early access, and it's honestly impressive to see it run as well as it does on Steam Deck so soon. Hopefully, though, Evil Empire can improve The Rogue Prince of Persia's Steam Deck performance before too long.