Quest of Persia: Lotfali Khan Zand Preview

BY Soheil Sadeghi | POSTED: 20 May 2008

We delve into the lives of adventures Arashk and Leyla exploring secrets of the anicent Persia.



Quest of Persia" is a series of games based on the historical events of the land of Persia (Currently known as Iran). The games tell the adventures of Arashk, and Leyla who try to explore the secrets of the ancient Persian sites and in the process of the game they come across different situations related to them. What makes Quest of Persia completely different from other games about Persia is that it is by its own a 100% Persian game. Music, environments and characters have a complete Persian theme. Furthermore, Quest of Persia promises to show the players what the land of Persia is all about, getting you involved in its true historic stories, and gives a unique gameplay never experienced before in any other game.

The game series have been developed independently by Puya Arts, an independent gamedeveloper in Iran. The first game of the series was "The End of Innocence" which was released in October 2005, and won the award for the best Iranian game of the year in WCG 2007 tournaments held by Samsung.  The January 2006's issue of UK based PC Zone described it as: "With a meager budget and no publisher support, its darn sight better than some of the other first-person shooters out there." The Second installment of "Quest of Persia" is "Lotfali Khan Zand" which will be released in May 2008.

The game starts in the final era of the monarchy of Lotfali Khan Zand who was the last king of the Zandieh kingdom of Iran. His story happens in the17th century when Agha Mohammad Khan Ghajar (who later became the new king and the one who started the Ghajarieh dynasty at the end of the Zandieh) gained the control of north and central parts of Iran. After Lotfali Khan Zand got betrayed by his minister Ebrahim Kalantar and lost the control of his capital city "Shiraz", he decided to take shelter in a fortress near a place called Zarghan and made it his command center. Later he found out that Ebrahim Kalantar, and Agha Mohammad Khan Ghajar have already prepared a huge assault on Zarghan. So he escaped to city of Kerman, where the second part of the game takes place…

QoP: Lotfali Khan Zand is a 3rd person action game by nature. The developer has promised unique fighting techniques and the ability to use various weapons for the players, also by giving the main character a very agile body thus making him capable of performing acrobatic moves it gets fun and easy to overcome the enemy. The developer has tried hard to deliver a very realistic environment coupled with good visual effects to bring the ancient Persian period to life and with a true unpredictable and exciting story they hope it will please the players who always wanted to know about the civilizations less focused on in the games. They have tried to make the game world as interactive as possible and the enemy AI a challenging one. Graphic wise while the game is not in the same league as the current major hit action titles, it is a very big leap in the Iranian game industry. They have composed the theme music based on the atmosphere of the 17th century Persia, and they were successful in creating the mood.

Game development in Iran is a very sophisticated yet new process. Huge amounts of money have been invested by various organizations mostly governmental to help the game development throughout the past years but the results were not satisfactory at all, which brings the notion that the target game developers have not been chosen from the capable or creative groups. In a country without a proper copyright law to protect foreign or even domestic computer products it is a really hard to develop anything. But in this environment came a handful of developers who have done this for the love only. Because they all know the treats of unofficial marketing of their hard work and the impact it has on their primary investment. It forces the developers to sell their game with prices so cheap to make the buyer change his/her mind about getting the illegal copy. This is the same story for Pouya Arts company which made the game with the money they have achieved through software development projects and as an independent company has managed to fulfill the task of creating one of the best Iranian games so far (Quest of Persia: The End of Innocence in 2005) and has also tried to make a new approach by making a sequel and creating a better game.

This could not have been achieved if the game players in Iran did not support their first product. Iran is a country with a high percentage of youth population and computer and video games are of the highest attractions for them. The game industry in Iran was limited to buying illegal duplicates of the grand gaming titles. One reason is because no game company or hardware manufacturer is officially offering any of their products in Iran and the other reason is the Iranians although having a rich country do not get salaries on par with the standards of a European or an American and even so many of the residents of the region's countries, so paying for a 60 dollars game is like spending one sixth of a monthly income for most of them. Although great efforts have been made by talented individuals, unfortunately the lack of proper attention to the copyright laws has made the industry's future a very grim one and one cannot see any positive outlook for this in Iran.

It is the efforts done from companies like Pouya Arts that have kept the industry going. We will wait for their May 2008 release of Quest of Persia: Lotfali Khan Zand to see how much they have developed since their previous successful first attempt in making a respected computer game title.