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Infinite paths lead to infinite truths
You find yourself in a cabin, with no clear direction as to why you're here or who you are. The only company you keep are two disembodied voices - one who is an aspect of yourself, and one who is very clearly not. That other voice is The Narrator, and he's not too keen on telling you who or what you are, or just why he's so sure the princess needs to be slain.
Even so, you must continue. The game offers you a chance to turn around and leave, but if you take it, you only end up where you started (your first hint something is amiss). Beyond that, the first major choice is deciding on taking the pristine blade atop the table or not - even something as simple as this changes everything.
Therein lies the true conceit of Slay the Princess - every decision matters. Truly matters. Each option could change the tenor of the conversation, or lead to new outcomes. Every choice may open new doors, but they also close others.
This truth makes speaking about the game without spoilers an impossibility. At least, speaking about it in any meaningful way. So, for this review, there are major spoilers. If you want just the basics, here they are: Slay the Princess is a visual novel style Horror adventure game and it's one of the best games you'll play all year.
Now that you have been freed from the burden of wanting - SPOILERS
Publisher: Black Tabby Games, Serenity Forge Developer: Black Tabby Games Platform: Played on PC Availability: October 23, 2023 on PC, October 24, 2024 on Nintendo Switch, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series S/X |
Slay the Princess is a visual novel styled horror game, with a heavy focus on psychological and body horror, and story. This latest updated version, Slay the Princess – The Pristine Cut, adds new illustrations, new princesses, a gallery, and more to the already massive visual novel. The mechanics to playing the game are simple: Click the choices you want to select, listen to or skip the dialogue, then click the next choices you want, and so on. You really should not skip the dialogue, unless you’ve seen that particular scene before – it’s hugely important for informing any future decisions.
The story and writing, and its progression, are phenomenal. Pick up the knife or not, talk to the princess or not, try and save her or kill her – each individual decision opens up new pathways to completing this chapter. And once you die, save the princess, or kill her, you wake up once again in the forest on the pathway to the cabin. You’re stuck in a time loop, and the only way out is to end things. But end them how?
One way is to just kill the princess, no questions asked, and accept your fate. You will get an ending this way. More interesting, however, is if you fail – purposefully or not. Remember that time loop I mentioned earlier? Well, once you reach the second chapter on any individual run, the world will shift based on your decisions in the previous chapter. The choices are not just self-contained in a chapter – they ripple throughout an entire run. They inform the shape of the world, the princess you get – how she looks, speaks, and responds to you – it even changes the music that plays. Once you reach the end of a path, you and the princess are sucked into the void, where you’ll find a mirror and the princess. Or something like the princess. It’s an amalgamation of all the princesses you’ve encountered and ended the plotline of an individual run, and this “princess” is asking you to bring them more.
And so, you must complete several runs, taking different choices here and there as you go, in order to get different outcomes and princesses. Once you have gathered enough, you end up back in the void where your choices throughout culminate, and you face the truth of the world. That I will not spoil. But it’s complex, it’s messy, and it’s amazing. It never feels like it gets tedious, or the dialogue drags on too long.
Each individual chapter is paced, in many respects, exactly to the players’ liking – each dialogue choice gives you your response, but also tells you if it is exploratory dialogue or will advance the scene. Depending on your choices, and if you actually read the text, a run could be anywhere from 5 minutes to a few hours. But with so many different ways to go through each chapter, the game feels like it might actually be endless. At time of writing, I have roughly 40% of the achievements on steam for the game. I don’t think you need to play more than that to understand how great this game is, but the more I play, the greater appreciation I have for this game. Absolutely nothing feels wasted here.
As I tumbled through the existential journey, I never quite landed on what this game is. It’s everything. It’s sometimes somber, sometimes hilarious, and other times horrifying - the story isn’t just one thing. It’s begging for a deep dive analysis at some point as there’s so much going on and worth examining. On a surface level, I gather it’s about the choices we make and how they affect us and those around us. Every decision, every action (or inaction) shapes us in some way. They can scar us or even heal us, if we let them. It’s a reminder that everything matters to someone, even if you don’t see it at the time. It's about love - learning to love others and let go, and learning to love ourselves, even when we've made mistakes.
The artwork is absolutely breathtaking.
The great story and writing is elevated in no small part by the impressive presentation. The art style is akin to a sketch book, but holds so many details it is hard to wrap my head around it. There’s also a function where you can kind of shift the camera a bit by moving your mouse around – I haven’t seen any practical use yet, but it is cool! Every dialogue in each chapter has unique images associated with it. I cannot imagine how much work went into making all of this. Beyond the sheer scale of the artwork, I quite like that there are varied perspectives, environments, and animations as you go. You’re in a time loop, but it’s not repetitive.
The game makes great use of this highly-detailed, and varied art style to bombard you with graphic, gruesome, and sometimes painful images and effects – I mean that with reverence. Using all the tools at its disposal, it managed to make me laugh, scream, and once even cry. I’m stuck with some images in my head, even as I write this.
The voice acting should be lauded as well, all things considered. Jonathan Sims as The Narrator and disparate voices in your head, and Nichole Goodnight as The Princess, deliver on every line – and there are a ton of them. The range of emotions on display is outstanding, moving from sorrowful, happy, scared, and more not just within the entirety of the game, but sometimes all within an individual scene. Both do surprisingly slick work on their modified voices as well. I wasn’t sure if the voices in your head or forms of the princess retained the original actors throughout, at first.
I also think it’s imperative to commend the music, as well. The staff obviously had high views of it themselves, or they wouldn’t present you with a suggested playlist of songs each time you finish a run. Leitmotifs are a less common tool these days in movie and videogame scores, but used with great effect in Slay the Princess. In fact, I think The Princess’s leitmotif was incorporated in just about every song I can remember hearing. Despite that fact, each track has its own unique voice, accentuating or setting the moods it needs to as you step through your journey.
I’m not an avid visual novel gamer – it’s just not really my nature – but Slay the Princess has given me a much greater appreciation for both the genre and the team behind the game. Every piece of this work is woven so wonderfully together, it’s hard to find any threads to pull and take it apart. The Narrator wasn’t willing to give basic answers on what was going on in Slay the Princess, and I’m not sure I can do that either, but I think it’s worth your time to take those first steps and see for yourself.
Verdict Slay the Princess is a masterwork of storytelling and visual design. Exemplary performances from the cast, and the writing to match it, will keep you hanging on every word. Every element of the game serves to elevate the whole, with the artwork and music being my favorite elements. It’s hard to overstate how much of a triumph this game really is. It’s a game that forces you to examine your choices and ideals, inside the game and without. The possibilities feel endless, and with this latest update, there are even more. I hope you’ll consider playing this game, as I now consider it an essential work in gaming and the best game I’ve played so far in 2024.  |
Image Credits: Taylor Rioux and Black Tabby Games
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