I Had To Slay the Princess
Slay the Princess is a breathtaking visual novel that explores obedience, rebellion, heartbreak, love, and everything in between. Emotional voice acting, unreliable narrators, and multiple player “personalities” set this game apart.
Slay the PrincessEditorial
This section explores the first twenty minutes or so of the game, highlighting various praises and critiques I noted therein. If you wish, you can skip ahead to the §Critical Analysis.
You’re on a path in the woods. And at the end of that path is a cabin. And in the basement of that cabin is a princess. You’re here to slay her. If you don’t, it will be the end of the world. The Narrator
Chilling words form the bare-bones opening scene of Slay the Princess. You’re given the opportunity to ask a few clarifying questions, but The Narrator provides little insight. This lack of clarity makes the grim mission somehow clearer: we have one job to do. If we’re to take The Narrator at his word, the stakes are high, and we must grit our teeth and continue on. Narrators are to be trusted… aren’t they? They are oracles of omniscient fact, what he says must be true.
We’re not going to go through with this, right? She’s a princess. We’re supposed to save princesses, not slay them. Voice of the Hero
A second voice, suggestively named Voice of the Hero, picks up a dialog with The Narrator. Is this who we are? The game does not make it clear, though there’s clearly no one else present. I chose to believe that this voice is essentially a voice of our subconscious; a way for the game to put words in the player’s mouth without stepping on toes. Soon more voices than just the Voice of the Hero will chime in, but I’m getting ahead of myself.
If we are The Hero, we make a good point… Heroes don’t slay princesses, they save them.
A word of warning before you continue. She will lie, she will cheat, and she will do everything in her power to stop you from slaying her. Don’t believe a word she says. The Narrator
At this point I’m getting a bit nervous – who’s to say that The Princess really is evil? Or perhaps she’s not evil, but truly innocent, a pawn in someone else’s scheme to end the world, a victim in some vile plot to control me, the player… the Hero? We are faced with only two sources of information from which to try and separate fact from fiction: The Narrator, whose motives are unknown; and the as of yet unmet Princess, who may not have any more context than we do. The only real choice is to continue on and try to make the choice for ourselves.
Continuing into the cabin we’re presented with another choice: there is a dagger on the table, ahead of the stairs leading to The Princess. Taking the dagger feels like a step in the direction of The Narrator’s goals – but leaving it may prove unwise as well. Hovering the mouse cursor over the dagger, I notice something I hadn’t before: the cursor is a dark, clawed hand, almost reminiscent of a bird’s claw. What sort of hero are we? Are we in fact some monster, typecast into a role as a murderer of princesses? Here again the game pushes subtle burden onto us. Or am I falling into a trap built of my own prejudices, that a non-human in a fantasy story must be evil?
Entering the basement reveals a dark wooden staircase, as The Narrator proceeds to wax long about the conditions of
this environment, claiming that slaying her is probably doing her a favor
; The Narrator is ever so subtly
baiting me towards the path of slaying The Princess. My continuing instinct is to resist this coercion.
Who’s there? The Princess
Her voice is confident, yet guarded. The voice acting is tremendously well done, and I highly recommend listening through some quality headphones to pick up the subtlest of emotions measured carefully into each and every line. As we continue down the stairs we see her for the first time. A smallish woman, slight of frame and with long, straight hear, wearing a simple yet refined dress and a tiara. She’s shackled by one wrist to the wall as she sits on the floor beneath a barred window. The Voice of the Hero chimes in to describe her as “coldly beautiful”. As she continues to speak, her voice is confident and unafraid.
And there you are. Are you here to kill me or something? The Princess
I’d lie if I said I wasn’t taken aback by this. She’s expecting us, and she’s not afraid. Not even nervous; in fact she seems almost… nonchalant? This scenario is perhaps even more complex than I had anticipated. And then she baits you into coming closer…
Caution: spoilers ahead.
Slay the Princess is a tremendously beautiful game. Regardless of how the first chapter ends, the game continues. If we die, we reappear at the beginning, though with a new chapter title. The Narrator seems to not know – or at least, not acknowledge – that the game has reset. The game does save you some time by removing or disabling narrative choices that you’ve made before, which was appreciated. As we continue to the princess a second time, new voices appear in congress with The Narrator and the Voice of the Hero; they seem to represent further aspects of our subconscious, amplified and expressed through the choices we made in the previous chapter. As for The Princess, we can see that she’s changed as well – how so depends on your choices in the first chapter, but she’s become a more intense version of herself towards whatever emotion you evoked from her before, and it’s even altered her physical appearance and that of the cabin and dungeon.
In fact, as we continue it becomes apparent that the goal of the game is to “collect” as many different aspects of her personality together as we can, often greatly at our own expense. The Princess is a complex and nuanced character, and evoking these different emotions from her was a beautiful exploration of the human psyche. You continue this pattern for some time, and while I won’t fully spoil the ending of the game in this editorial, I will say that the endings – for there are more than one – are very complex and nuanced, and I still don’t fully understand everything that this game was trying to say.
But I do know that it was beautiful.
Critical Analysis
Caution: major spoilers ahead.
Plot
The plot of Slay the Princess seems simple enough at first: you are given a task and expected to complete it. But as the game continues it becomes apparent that things are not as simple as they seem. As each series of chapters draws to a close, some aspect of The Princess’s personality is amplified, distilled almost, and then snatched away by a multitude of hands emerging from the ether. The player is then dropped into an endless void in which we find The Shifting Mound, an almost gaia like entity that seems to be the amalgamation of all the versions of The Princess. It’s lost and naive, but it does know that it needs to find more versions of The Princess, and that we can find them for it.
So we continue this pattern for a while, and slowly we come to understand that we are in some way like The Shifting Mound, timeless and detached from these realities, a yin to her yang, almost. Where we came from or how we got into this situation is still unclear, but as there isn’t much else to do we continue collecting princesses. Eventually we find that The Narrator is responsible for our existence, having summoned us into being in order to cleanse death from the world. We were a mighty god-like being, it seems, and The Narrator split us into two parts: The Shifting Mound (The Princess), and The Long Quiet (us, the player). The choice of a princess and a hero was chosen by our subconscious and wasn’t anticipated by The Narrator, but we had to be something. The Narrator’s goal was ultimately for us to destroy (slay) The Shifting Mound (the princess) and thus cut out the part of the deity we once were that is responsible for death’s existence in the world we preside over.
There are many many different incarnations of The Princess that we can collect, and several endings to the game, all of which seem worthwhile to find. In fact, the game unlocks a “gallery” after the first playthrough showing you which branching narrative paths you’ve taken, and which you’ve yet to discover through subsequent playthroughs. In the end, it seems The Narrator was more or less forthcoming at the beginning: his intention was for us to Slay the Princess, and if we failed, the world would end.
Gameplay
Slay the Princess features simple gameplay comprised of artwork of the current scene with a subtle parallax effect, subtitles, and, when relevant, narrative choices for the player to take. The entire setup is extremely simple yet effective for deep storytelling such as this.
Graphics & Art
The artwork of Slay the Princess may be comprised of simple pen drawings, but the care put in to facial expressions and environmental detail is stunning; truly the result of passionate effort on the part of the artists.