The latest Prince of Persia game is a delightful mix of old and new. Metroidvania DNA seeps through and through, but combat contains sprinkles from other games outside the Metroids and the Castlevanias as well. Two of the lead devs of Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown recently did an enlightening Reddit AMA on Jan. 16th, sharing some of their influences and design choices. The main inspiration behind Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown’s combat may surprise you; it’s a familiar, yet unexpected Nintendo game.
Structure Inspiration For The Lost Crown
But first, structure and pacing inspiration gets brought up pretty early on in the Reddit AMA.
Reddit user Spark11A asks “What games did you look into for inspiration while developing The Lost Crown?”
Christophe Pic, the world director for PoP: The Lost Crown, responds:
“For the world, we took some inspiration from Hollow Knight, Dark Souls… I really like the way areas are smartly imbricated, creating surprising shortcuts.”
“Metroid Prime too, for their mastery in managing the pacing and the difficulty in an open progressive structure.”
“And of course, Castlevania SOTN as a whole!”
It’s no surprise that a game so rich with Metroidvania level design would derive influence from Hollow Knight, Castlevania, Metroid Prime, and Dark Souls. These games all feature paths that fold into themselves with ingenious shortcut design that makes backtracking engaging and purposeful. Also, I’m totally adding ‘imbricated’ to my collection of verbs to use in the future.
The next discussion goes over the combat inspirations for Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown.
Combat Inspiration Behind The Lost Crown
Senior level designer, Rémi Boutin, follows up the same question, but focuses particularly on the combat inspiration, saying:
“For the fight, we aimed for the spectacle you can find in VS fighting games like Street Fighter but keeping the elegant design of 1 action = 1 button you can find in Smash. Of course “character action game” like Devil May Cry / Bayonetta were also huge influence for us.”
So, what we have here is a blend of fighting games and character action titles that inspired The Lost Crown. This response confirms what I said in my review regarding the satisfying combat in Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown. The latest Super Smash Bros. titles control so fluidly and smooth, that doing aerial combos and juggling our favorite Nintendo characters in the air feels like an extension of our body. It’s no surprise that the same combat fluidity is present in Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown.
Rémi Boutin answers another question regarding the inspiration behind the smooth controls in general, saying:
“Celeste and Castelvania : SOTN are some of our inspiration for fluidity and controls. For the combat, Smash Bros is a monument as it’s so simple to control but offer so many depth and precision.”
The Foundational Influence
And for those who still question whether or not the devs for Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown respect the legacy of the series, here’s what they say they focused on first before all else.
Reddit user Spark11A asks: “This is the first PoP Metroidvania game since the Sands of Time GBA title. What made you choose this genre specifically?”
Christoph Pic:
“Actually, we didn’t start by a Metroidvania structure. We first focused on the core pillars of prince of persia’s game, platforming, puzzles and acrobatic fight try to understand them . The idea of this structure came more when we started to think about new powers of Sargon. It was natural that we have to move to metroid structure.”
Even I’m a little surprised that the devs didn’t have the Metroidvania structure in mind very early on. It’s great that they zeroed in on the acrobatics and platforming first and foremost since that’s the space Prince of Persia originally came from. As I stated in my review, the puzzles are an absolute delight throughout Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, especially the time-based ones!
You can read all the interesting responses from the two devs from the Reddit AMA here. Be sure to hang out here on Twinfinite for more of your favorite gaming news and reviews!