Description
Cruel World is about as obscure as games on this database get — a 1993 DOS platformer made by Israeli developer Makh-Shevet that is, by every honest measure, a Prince of Persia clone. An unnamed man is thrown into a dungeon without trial or explanation and must escape through a series of trap-filled corridors, fighting skeleton soldiers and solving light environmental puzzles along the way.
The rotoscoped movement, the combat system, the health potions, the screen-by-screen structure — all of it is lifted almost directly from Jordan Mechner’s classic. It is not a game that pretends otherwise, and it is included here for completeness rather than as a hidden gem.
Year: 1993
Developer: Makh-Shevet Ltd. Atmosphere: Dystopian · Bleak · Oppressive
Visual Style: Gritty Pixel Art · Industrial
Focus / Pace: Puzzle Platforming · Methodical
Platforms: MS-DOS
The Game
Cruel World plays exactly like Prince of Persia — rotoscoped movement, deliberate jumps, real-time sword combat against skeleton soldiers, red health potions scattered through the levels. The screen-by-screen structure and the trial-and-error trap design are lifted wholesale from Mechner’s template. There is even a time limit pressing you forward, another idea borrowed directly from the original.
Visually it is functional at best. The dungeon corridors are grey and repetitive, the colour palette drained of almost any warmth or variety, and the environments blur into one another without ever giving you a reason to look up from the next obstacle. The character animation approximates the fluidity of its inspiration without quite achieving it — movements feel slightly stiff at the edges, and the controls require a period of adjustment that the original never demanded.
The atmosphere is oppressive by default rather than by design. There is nothing wrong with a bleak, dark dungeon crawler in principle — Prince of Persia itself is hardly cheerful — but Cruel World mistakes grimness for atmosphere. Nothing here feels intentional in the way that the best cinematic platformers feel intentional. It is a game going through the motions of a genre it clearly admires, without fully understanding what made that genre worth admiring in the first place. Which is a shame, because the bones are there — the formula works, even in lesser hands — and with more visual imagination and tighter level design it could have been a genuine hidden gem rather than a footnote.
🎮 Honest verdict
Cruel World is a below-average Prince of Persia imitation — duller level design, clunkier movement, and a drab colour palette that drains the original formula of most of its energy. The controls require patience to adapt to, the environments lack visual variety, and there is nothing here that the games it borrows from do not do considerably better.
That said, it is a curiosity worth knowing about for fans of the genre’s history. The fact that a small Israeli studio in 1993 was producing cinematic platformers in the Prince of Persia mould — however imperfectly — says something about how widely that template had travelled by the early 1990s. It is not worth seeking out for the experience. It is worth knowing exists.
It is available through abandonware archives and runs via DOSBox.
Similar games
If the dark fairytale atmosphere, hand-drawn animation, and brutal trial-and-error challenge of Heart of Darkness resonated with you, these two cinematic platformers deserve your attention next.
Prince of Persia (1989)
The game Cruel World is directly modelled on — and the obvious recommendation for anyone who finds themselves curious about this corner of the genre. Everything Cruel World attempts, Prince of Persia does with infinitely more craft and elegance. Start there.