Ubisoft deems to have found the sweet spot with Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown.
In the age of technological advancements, most game developers are incentivized to implement an accessibility mode so that everyone in their audience can enjoy their craft. While accessibility modes are not something new, as time goes on, they are becoming more and more important. For people who cannot read small texts, have hearing aids, or have color blindness, having a toggle to disable or enable some of the options can be a lifesaver.
Usually, adding the accessibility mode does not take much effort, as QA testers and feedback from short-time demos could help developers identify what people want and change things accordingly. Although this sounds very simple, Namco, unfortunately, hit a giant rock while trying to implement an accessibility mode of their own and failed hard at getting a green light from their player base. The supposed colorblind mode did not help people who are colorblind at all and even triggered epilepsy amongst people without a warning.
But on the other hand, Ubisoft seems to have done a great job with their newest title, Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown. Unlike the previous entries to the Prince of Persia series, The Lost Crown is a 2.5 Metroidvania that does not heavily rely on fast-paced movements; therefore, it is easy to track what is going on the screen.
Despite the game being easy on the eyes, Ubisoft allowed people, who struggle to play games, to have fun as well with their own accessibility mode. Options such as big texts, higher volume, skipping quick-time events, and “no-color feedback” can be toggled to give a better time to players who got into Metroidvania new, or have problems with hearing/seeing.
There is another side of accessibility mode, which allows players to pick what they want to experience through the story and tweak the difficulty setting to their liking. It is very much reasonable to come across a dead end in a video game, and Ubisoft has also thought about it and added a guide mode to let players know what to do next. The new accessibility mode happens to be called “High-contrast mode”, which allows entities on the screen to be more pronounced and visible. With the amount of accessibility added to Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, it seems like it is going to be a pretty welcoming title for everyone.
Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown is set to be released on the 15th of January for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, and PC platforms. However, if you want to see a little sneak peek of how it plays, you can try the demo version of the title on the respective game stores as well.
