Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown is built to be ‘accessible by design’

Ahead of the launch of Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown later this month, the team at Ubisoft Montpellier released a video detailing the game’s accessibility features, explaining how ensuring the game is as approachable as possible was always a key priority.

For starters, in-game text is large by default, and The Lost Crown completely omits gameplay features like quick-time events and color-based feedback. There are even “invisible assists” to help with wall jumping, added following playtests. “Our approach was to be accessible by design […] I think that accessible design is good design,” says senior game designer Rémi Boutin.

While The Lost Crown has default features to aid players, certain aspects can be tweaked even further in the options menu. One example is the addition of a high contrast mode, a first for any Ubisoft game, which makes it easier to distinguish elements in the foreground and background for players with poor vision.

Other features not touched upon (that you can see in the video) include timing adjustments for parries and scaling how much damage you take from enemies and environmental hazards. “We want to provide a challenging game, but we really want to be sure that everyone can tweak the experience to their fitting,” continues Boutin.

Personally, my favorite feature demonstrated in the video is the Memory Shard, which lets you save a screenshot of what a specific area looks like and pin it to the map. It’s perfect for Metroidvanias like The Lost Crown and I share Boutin’s hope that future entries in the genre make use of this feature too.

While The Lost Crown is scheduled for Jan. 18, 2024 for PlayStation, Xbox, PC, and Nintendo Switch, a demo will launch next week on Jan. 11 and will include most of the full game’s accessibility features. So, you can test them out for free before committing.

For a game that’s ticking all the right boxes and just looks a lot of fun, there has been some strange hostility towards The Lost Crown among a certain subset of Prince of Persia fans. Possibly because it’s not the Prince of Persia game most people have been waiting for, that being the Sands of Time remake that has been MIA for a while.