'If Silksong shadow drops … I'm burning the whole thing down': Dead Cells devs announce second release date and gameplay trailer for upcoming roguelike, after Hades 2 shattered original plans

Harvey Randall
·2 min read
Evil Empire's mascot sits in a flaming office as per a parody of KC Green's famous "This is Fine" comic.
Evil Empire's mascot sits in a flaming office as per a parody of KC Green's famous "This is Fine" comic.

The Rogue Prince of Persia looks pretty good—and I'd probably be playing it later this week, if only Hades 2 had not devoured my entire attention span this month. Its developers Evil Empire (an arm of Dead Cells creators Motion Twin, who've developed a ton of content for it over the past few years) seemingly agreed, since they delayed the whole thing last week.

Evil Empire's reasoning was, and this is a direct quote, because "everyone and their mum" was playing Hades 2: "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."

Fair enough, honestly. The team took some time to deliberate on when it'd be releasing The Rogue Prince of Persia into early access over the weekend—promising it'd still wallrun onto Steam near the end of May.

That promise has been thoroughly kept as per a recent Steam announcement, though with one major asterisk: "If Silksong shadow drops in the next two weeks I'm burning the whole thing down!" Otherwise, The Rogue Prince of Persia will be heading into early access May 27.

"In the meantime, we have some juicy bits to keep you going until launch day - a full gameplay trailer featuring our theme song and (finally) the game's price! We think you'll like both." The Rogue Prince of Persia will be priced at a reasonable €/$19.99 (no £ price since it's not available for purchase on Steam yet, but that should shake out to around £16.00).

Honestly, I'm actually pretty excited. Despite how obsessed my brain is with The Silver Sisters & Co. right now, the gameplay above looks really sick—the Prince of Persia's got plenty of movement tech. Besides, considering the amount of time Evil Empire worked on Dead Cells, I'm sure it knows how to make a 2D platformer roguelike at this point—especially after four DLCs and 18 different updates to said classic.

In the same vein, tying Evil Empire to the Prince of Persia brand seems like a strange move. It's definitely neat for us to be getting not one, but two smaller-scale PoP games this year—but I feel like Dead Cells fans would be more excited for another original IP out of its team. Here's hoping that word-of-mouth picks up where hesitancy left off, because I've liked everything I've seen so far.