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Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown will include an accessibility feature that you’ll probably want in every Metroidvania from now on.
A thing that’s pretty much universally agreed upon is that Metroidvania’s can be a bit confusing. I’m sure if you’ve played one you’ve found yourself thinking, “hang on, where was that one place again? What did it look like?” And then you go round for an hour looking for it until you accidentally stumble across where you were meant to be. Well, at least with the upcoming Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, you won’t have to worry about that so much anymore, thanks to its Memory Shards feature.
As detailed in a recent accessibility deep dive video from Ubisoft, the Memory Shards feature is a simple one: it takes a screenshot of wherever you are, and pins it to the map. If you hover over that section on the map, you can then see that screenshot, serving as a reminder of how it looked when you were there. “Actually, it’s a new feature for these kind of games,” explained senior gameplay programmer Cristophe de Labrouche in the deep dive.
“We’ve made a lot of tests because we didn’t know if the players would use it. And once they get it, they love it. They place them everywhere in the game. They really use it very much.” Honestly, this sounds like an incredible feature. Sure, sometimes getting lost is part of the fun, but sometimes you don’t want to have to waste your time finding your way back somewhere only for it to not actually be the place you’re thinking of.
“A lot of players said that it was helpful and that it seems natural,” Rémi Boutin, senior game designer, also noted. “I think it really pushes the boundaries for the genre, and I hope to see this feature in other games.”
There are a lot of other cool features highlighted in the deep dive video, like a Guided Mode, as well as a number of other options.
Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, the best game Dom played at Summer Games Fest, is out January 18, on PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo Switch, and PC.