Prince of Persia: Sands of Time

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time combines exploration and combat to create a unique synthesis. Both elements make use of the Prince's acrobatic capability and agility. Throughout much of the game, the player must attempt to traverse the palace by running across walls, ascending or descending chasms by jumping back and forth between walls, avoiding traps, climbing structures and jumping from platform to platform, making other types of well-timed leaps, solving puzzles, and using discovered objects to progress. The cultural setting of the game provides many linguistically interesting inscriptions to be found on walls.

During combat, many of the same moves vital to the player in other situations can be put to use to overpower enemies. One example is the ability of the Prince to rebound off walls in order to strike enemies decisively. The player can also vault over the enemies' backs and then finish them off in two hits. The player generally attacks enemies and blocks using a sword, although other factors such as the Dagger of Time and its time-control abilities eventually prove to be critical to victory.

A pivotal gameplay element is the Prince's Dagger of Time. It contains "charges" of the Sands of Time from the hourglass that allow the Prince to control time. The Prince has the ability to "reverse" time and travel up to ten seconds into the past. While using this ability, all sounds and previous action play backwards, and the play environment accurately resets to its previous state. For example, if the Prince was struck by an enemy attack during the rewound period, the health he lost will be given back to him, or a bridge that was destroyed a few seconds ago will repair itself. The Dagger also allows the Prince to slow down time, and freeze his enemies, using it as a main-gauche to attack them directly.

The Dagger only comes with a limited number of uses. However, defeated enemies are absorbed by the Dagger, replenishing its stock. The stock can also be replenished by absorbing Sand Clouds. This encourages the player to confront and vanquish enemies (as opposed to avoiding them) in order to replenish the power to manipulate time during the more tricky acrobatic sections of the game. However, if the player does not absorb the Sand from a fallen enemy in about five seconds, said enemy will come back to life. Extra Sand Tanks can be gained by collecting eight Sand Clouds, and extra Power Tanks (which are used for different powers than the Sand Tanks) are gained by vanquishing sixteen enemies after having collected a new Sand Tank.

Later on, when Farah takes the Prince's sword and dagger, after solving a puzzle he gains an extremely powerful new sword in a large room, which has the capability to destroy the Sand like the dagger.