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How purple skin and a Spanish phone number almost sank The Rogue Prince of Persia

by admin August 23, 2025

The Rogue Prince of Persia celebrated its 1.0 release yesterday with a remarkably honest behind-the-scenes video from developers Evil Empire, detailing the ups and downs of a year-long Early Access period, including the decision to completely overhaul the game’s art style and redesign its purple-skinned protagonist.

The video opens with the admission that this Roguelike take on the wall-jumping, time-rewinding Prince suffered multiple blows upon its Early Access release in May 2024. The first of these was the surprise drop of heavyweight Hades 2, which also launched in May and stole most of the Prince’s limelight. The second was the negative player response to both the game’s lack of content and its colourful visual style, which was inspired by Persian miniature paintings and the artwork of Mœbius/Jean Giraud.

Watch on YouTube

Notably, the decision to give the titular Prince and all NPCs a purple skintone was met with confusion. In a developer diary from 2024, it was revealed that this was intended as a direct ode to the PC CGA port of Prince of Persia from 1990, which featured neon skin for all due to a limited 4-colour palette. Unfortunately, this homage went over the heads of most players.

“During a brainstorming session about skins, our art director had raised a seemingly innocent question,” says Evil Empire Marketing Manager Matthew Houghton in the video. “Are we sure that making the Prince purple won’t be a problem? At the time, everyone told him no. He was overthinking it; colours are cool, they’re stylish, it adds a bit of fantasy! Well…now we all know how that turned out.”

The Prince’s purple look, along with its original inspiration. | Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun/Evil Empire/Ubisoft

The rest of the footage details how Evil Empire not only packed The Rogue Prince of Persia with additional content, but also revamped the art style – a decision that is now conveyed in more detailed levels and a decidedly less-purple Prince adorning everything from the game’s key art to the album cover of its impressive soundtrack by Persian American musician ASADI. Alas, even this visual update faced unexpected friction in the form of a bizarre Steam issue which required the devs to use a Spanish phone number to get their own product updated.

“Through all those problems and roadblocks,” Houghton continues, “we’ve had a great community giving us a helping hand the whole way. Even when it was clear we had a tonne of work to do, they’ve been there giving us support, feedback and encouragement. So a special shoutout to you guys for sticking with us on our crazy journey.”

Despite these nice words, Houghton acknowledges that the game has faced a low player count during its Early Access. The 1.0 release is now considered final, and throughout the video there does seem to be a slight feeling of “well, we sure hope more folks play this, or else we’ll never make a sequel.” Which would be a shame, considering that last year’s Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown was a superb effort that Ubisoft sent out to die with poor promotion before disbanding the team behind it.

I intend on giving the Rogue Prince of Persia a proper go this weekend and am looking forward to it. I also liked the purple Prince look, because I can’t help but admire unorthodox art design decisions, especially when they’re an ultra-niche homage to computer colour schemes that existed when I was a kid. But I can see how his grape skin along with the game’s more cartoony and dreamy original visuals failed to latch onto players, and it does feel as if the final result is actually a tad more reminiscent of the Persian miniature inspiration.

Most of all, however, I’m sticken by the frankness of Evil Empire in this video. Despite taking over Dead Cells DLC from Motion Twin, Houghton consistently acknowledges that the team was inexperienced in certain regards, and that this was their first fully-fledged project. It’s rare to see admissions of setbacks that aren’t couched in corporate industry speak (particularly for a gaming brand owned by Ubisoft). I only hope that the Rogue Prince of Persia manages to catch a few more eyes because of it.

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August 23, 2025 0 comments

Gaming Gear

Africa Is Buying a Record Number of Chinese Solar Panels

by admin August 21, 2025

While overall sales to African countries are still small compared to these traditional export markets, the Global South appears to be at a turning point in how it thinks about energy. For decades, energy-starved countries largely had one default option when they wanted to add new power supply: import coal and gas. Now, for the first time, solar energy is emerging as the cheaper and greener way forward, so there’s no need to sacrifice the environment for development.

Familiar Story

What’s happening in Africa right now might sound familiar, especially if you know anything about the global green energy industry. We’ve seen several versions of this story before, most notably in Pakistan last year.

In 2024, Pakistan installed about 15 Gigawatts of solar panels; for context, the country’s total peak electricity demand is about 30 Gigawatts. Households put so many panels on their rooftops that Pakistani cities now look visibly different on satellite maps. The trend is threatening the future of Pakistan’s national grid because people are using their own panels to generate power, reducing the need to buy electricity from the grid. And almost all of this happened because the country was mass-importing solar panels from its neighbor and ally, China.

A similar trend happened in South Africa in 2023. The utility infrastructure in both countries is not resilient enough to meet peak demand, causing consistent blackouts that pushed consumers to look for alternative energy sources. The government introduced policies that made solar especially attractive, like tax breaks for buying panels or paying people for transmitting excess energy to the grid.

But across the board, the main thing driving the popularity of solar is simple: the cost to purchase and install Chinese panels has gotten so low that the world has reached an inflection point. Even if a country isn’t particularly worried about climate change, it simply makes economic sense to generate energy from solar, says Anika Patel, China analyst at Carbon Brief, a climate policy publication.

“A lot of African nations right now just need more electricity. And the fact that there is this option to install solar plants at a fraction of the cost of building a new coal or gas plant is attractive,” she says.

Price is an especially important factor for African countries, because it’s harder to get a loan to fund a solar power plant project there than in developed countries, says Léo Echard, policy officer at the Global Solar Council and the author of a report on Africa’s solar market. Since Chinese solar companies have significant price advantages over manufacturers in other countries, they are always the go-to option for supplying Africa’s solar demand.

From Massive Plants to Rooftops

There are two types of demand driving the solar boom in African countries, Echard says. In North Africa, countries like Algeria and Egypt are building massive utility-scale solar power plants that require large numbers of panels. But in Sub-Sahara Africa, the panels are being imported by more rural communities in places that traditionally haven’t been connected to the grid at all.

Just like in Pakistan, this network of distributed rooftop solar panels is transforming the energy landscape. People are getting access to energy, and that access isn’t dependent on government spending or foreign loans. Instead, it spreads organically, household by household, as long as the panels are cheap enough.

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August 21, 2025 0 comments

Esports

Cloud Chamber lays off “unspecified” number of staff as Rod Fergusson is parachuted in to lead troubled BioShock 4 production

by admin August 21, 2025

Update, Wednesday August 20, 2025: 2K Games has confirmed it has “reduced the size of the development team” working on BioShock 4.

Sharing an internal Cloud Chamber memo with our sister site, Eurogamer, 2K president David Ismailer told staff “we’ve made the decision with studio leadership to rework certain aspects that are core to a BioShock game, and in doing so are reducing the size of the development team to focus on this work.”

“BioShock is woven deeply into the fabric of 2K,” Ismailer wrote. “It’s one of our most beloved franchises and respecting its legacy and meeting our fans’ expectations is critical to its future success.

“Work on the next BioShock game has been underway for several years. While we’re excited about the foundational gameplay elements of the project, we’ve made the decision with studio leadership to rework certain aspects that are core to a BioShock game, and in doing so are reducing the size of the development team to focus on this work and give the game more time in development.

“I know this is tough news for everyone. If your role is being affected, you’ll hear from your manager or studio leadership today with details on severance, career services and support resources. There is no easy way to do this, but we hope to do whatever we can to support you through this. I want to thank each of you for your dedication and hard work.”

“I recognise that today is a day of mixed emotions,” Ismailer concluded. “We’re excited to have Rod [Fergusson] joining us, and are equally grateful to everyone at Cloud Chamber who has helped us get this far. These changes are rooted in 2K’s firm confidence in BioShock as one of the most beloved franchises, and our commitment to deliver the best game in franchise history.”

2K did not confirm how many developers have been impacted by the cuts.

Original story:BioShock 4 developer Cloud Chamber has reportedly appointed former Diablo boss Rod Fergusson as studio head and laid off an “unspecified number of staff.”

Firaxis veteran Kelley Gilmore departed earlier this month after Take-Two Interactive reportedly overhauled parts of the upcoming BioShock and reshuffled its leadership team following a failed internal review by publisher 2K Games.

At the time, “people familiar with the situation” claimed the next entry in the BioShock series “recently failed a review by executives at 2K Games,” with the game’s narrative highlighted as needing improvement.

Now, Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier reports layoffs at the BioShock 4 developer as Rod Fergusson takes over as Cloud Chamber’s new studio head.

Fergusson announced his departure from Blizzard on August 8. While there’s been no formal confirmation that he has joined the BioShock production, he was similarly parachuted in to lead the troubled BioShock Infinite project, staying at Irrational just eight months before moving on.

In a post on social media, Fergusson wrote: “Would you kindly allow me to share some news? Some of you guessed it, I’m returning to 2K to lead a series that means a lot to me as the new Head of the BioShock Franchise. I’ll be heading up Cloud Chamber and overseeing development of the next BioShock game, along with franchise extensions like the in-development Netflix movie.

“While I’m excited to get started in the coming weeks, I recognize the studio restructuring is a difficult time for the team. I’m deeply grateful for the work done so far, and I’m committed to building a BioShock game we’ll be proud of and that our players will love. For now, the firehose of onboarding awaits, and I look forward to sharing more when I can.”

The fourth mainline entry in the BioShock series was confirmed to be in development at 2K Games-owned studio, Cloud Chamber, back in 2019. This upcoming entry will be the series’s first new entry since BioShock Infinite’s release in 2013.

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August 21, 2025 0 comments