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''Slay the Princess'' is a 2023
horror Horror may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Genres *Horror fiction, a genre of fiction **Japanese horror, Japanese horror fiction ** Korean horror, Korean horror fiction *Horror film, a film genre *Horror comics, comic books focusing on ...
adventure game An adventure game is a video game genre in which the player assumes the role of a protagonist in an interactive story driven by exploration and/or puzzle-solving. The genre's focus on story allows it to draw heavily from other narrative-based m ...
developed and published by Black Tabby Games for Microsoft Windows,
Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which i ...
, and
macOS macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. Within the market of ...
systems. It was released on October 23, 2023. The game is conceptually a twist on the
damsel-in-distress The damsel in distress is a recurring narrative device in which one or more men must rescue a woman who has either been kidnapped or placed in general peril. Kinship, love, or lust (or a combination of those) gives the male protagonist the motiv ...
archetype; rather than saving the princess, the objective is to kill her. An expanded version, subtitled ''The Pristine Cut'', was released on October 24, 2024 for consoles, alongside a free update for existing versions of the game. The console ports are published by
Serenity Forge Serenity Forge LLC is an American video game developer and video game publisher, publisher based in Boulder, Colorado. The studio was founded in 2014 by Zhenghua "Z" Yang. History Upon graduating from the University of Colorado Boulder's Lee ...
. ''Slay the Princess'' received critical acclaim for its narrative, art, music, and voice performances.


Gameplay

''Slay the Princess'' is a
visual novel A , often abbreviated as VN, is a form of digital semi-interactive fiction. Visual novels are often associated with and used in the medium of video games, but are not always labeled as such themselves. They combine a textual narrative with sta ...
, wherein the player advances through hand-drawn scenes from the
player character A player character (also known as a playable character or PC) is a fictional character in a video game or tabletop role-playing game whose actions are controlled by a player rather than the rules of the game. The characters that are not control ...
's perspective. The player's primary interaction with the game is selecting dialogue or action options. How the story unfolds depends on the player's choices and dialogue responses. It features a branching and looping narrative structure. Each loop is generally centered on the player's choice to save or slay the titular princess, and the actions they take towards that goal. The initial loop, or chapter, of each narrative branch is always the same, and the choices made by the player affect the narrative and visual design of the next loop and the princess's appearance and character, generally along the lines of
eldritch Eldritch, a Scottish word used to describe something otherworldly or uncanny, may refer to: * Eldritch (band), an Italian heavy metal band * ''Eldritch'' (video game), a 2013 first-person shooter based on the works of H. P. Lovecraft * Andrew El ...
or
body horror Body horror or biological horror is a subgenre of horror that intentionally showcases grotesque or psychologically disturbing violations of the human body. These violations may manifest through aberrant sex, mutations, mutilation, zombification, ...
. The player can once again attempt to slay or save the princess in the successive loops. Narrative branches may have two or more loops before they conclude. A narrator and other unseen, named voices comment on and attempt to influence the player's choices. The initial loop features only the narrator and the Voice of the Hero, with different voices added in subsequent loops depending on the narrative branch. Five branches can be completed in a single playthrough, with the game resetting to the initial loop in between them, but the player is restricted from repeating a narrative branch within a single playthrough.


Plot

An unnamed hero appears in a forest and is instructed by an off-screen narrator ( Jonathan Sims) to slay the princess imprisoned within the basement of the cabin in the forest, who he claims will end the world if she escapes. From there, the Hero can make several decisions, including following the instructions, attempting to save the Princess (Nichole Goodnight), or even refusing to enter the cabin altogether. If the Hero successfully slays the Princess as directed, he leaves the basement to discover the outside world has vanished, which the Narrator claims is his reward. If the Hero refuses to commit suicide, he spends eternity alone in the cabin and the game ends. Any deviation from this course of action inevitably results in his death. After dying, the Hero awakens back in the woods in a parallel world, and is once more ordered to slay the Princess. The Hero and the Princess share a continued existence from the past universe and remember their previous interactions, while the Princess's appearance and demeanor have shifted depending on the last encounter. The new universe's Narrator is dismayed but unsurprised to learn of the Hero's previous death. After further actions from the Hero, the world devolves into an empty void called the Long Quiet (the same void seen in the "Good Ending") and the Princess's current form is absorbed by an amalgam entity later identified as the Shifting Mound. The Shifting Mound explains that the Hero is the only being in the world that she knows, but other worlds exist that she hopes to escape to. She instructs the Hero to bring her more "Princess" forms for her to absorb, so that she may gain new perspectives and become whole. The Shifting Mound erases the Hero's memory and sends him back to the beginning of the loops. Despite having no knowledge of previous loops, he is unable to repeat his actions in past iterations exactly, resulting in varied Princess forms after each reset, which he can alternatively help or harm. Every "second" world contains a mirror in the cabin that the Narrator denies knowledge of, which disappears when the Hero attempts to touch it. Additionally, the Hero is accompanied by various internal Voices separate from the Narrator who each provide conflicting advice. The Hero returns to the Long Quiet and the Shifting Mound multiple times, each time briefly regaining his memories. After the Hero has brought the Shifting Mound several Princess forms, he encounters the mirror again and finally sees the Narrator's true form of a bird-like humanoid before the mirror shatters. The Narrator identifies himself as an "Echo" of the being that created the protagonist and reveals the Hero to be the Long Quiet itself and a nascent god. The Narrator explains that he was once a death-fearing mortal who created the Hero, the Princess, and the multiverse-spanning construct they currently reside in by splitting a cosmic entity in two. The Princess is the Shifting Mound, a cosmic entity that embodies continual change, destruction, and rebirth and is based on others' perceptions of her. Killing her would prevent the death of the universe and allow its inhabitants to live forever, but also prevent new life and growth. The Narrator pleads with the Long Quiet to slay the Princess and dies as the construct shatters. The Shifting Mound, now awakened as a goddess, appears and declares her intentions to let the universe die and create a new one in its place. She invites the Long Quiet to eternally watch over each universe alongside her as a god. However, she can still be defeated by finding and attacking her "heart", manifested as the mortal Princess in the cabin basement. The game has multiple endings depending on the player's choices. These endings include the Long Quiet accepting the end of the universe and watching the birth of a new one alongside the Shifting Mound, killing the Princess permanently to preserve the current universe, the Hero and the Princess agreeing to forget everything and reset the construct to remain in the loop indefinitely, or the two mutually rejecting godhood and leaving the cabin to face an uncertain future together. In most endings, the Hero and the Princess affirm their mutual love.


Development

''Slay the Princess'' was developed by Black Tabby Games, a Canadian indie studio consisting of husband and wife Tony Howard-Arias and
Abby Howard Abigail Howard (born August 3, 1992) is an American webcomic artist and video game developer from Charlotte, North Carolina. She is the creator of ''Junior Scientist Power Hour'' and ''The Last Halloween''. Biography Howard was born on August 3, ...
. The studio's only previous game was ''
Scarlet Hollow ''Scarlet Hollow'' is a visual novel developed and published by Black Tabby Games. It entered early access on June 11, 2021 for Linux, MacOS, Microsoft Windows systems. As of 2024, four episodes have been released out of a planned seven. Gamep ...
'', an episodic horror game released in early access beginning in 2020. Development of ''Slay the Princess'' began in May 2022. At the time, they felt that ''Scarlet Hollow'' was not financially successful enough to support the studio on its own through a projected five-year development timeline, and wanted to pursue a second game with fewer assets and shorter development timeline. The pair were first inspired by a
game jam A game jam is an event where participants try to make a video game from scratch. Depending on the format, participants might work independently, or in teams. The event duration usually ranges from 24 to 72 hours. Participants are generally program ...
entry, ''Claim Your FREE BitBuddy™ Today!'', which impressed Howard-Arias with how much "emotional storytelling" was put into a small game. The pair began discussing a concept of a horror story confined to a few locations and a single character on screen at a time. A major inspiration for the concept of ''Slay the Princess'' was a scene from episode three of ''Scarlet Hollow'' with nine different characters having a complex interaction, which led to the idea of one character being multiple different characters at different times. The initial concept was of the player character being ordered to kill a seemingly innocent person who is allegedly dangerous to leave alive and changes shape to be whatever the viewer expects them to be. Howard then suggested " Save the Princess" as a name, and upon finding that "Slay the Princess" was unused as a title the name was taken as a central concept. The couple rapidly iterated on the concept, with the game announced along with an initial demo in July 2022. In the two weeks following the announcement, the title garnered 25,000 wishlists on its
Steam Steam is a substance containing water in the gas phase, and sometimes also an aerosol of liquid water droplets, or air. This may occur due to evaporation or due to boiling, where heat is applied until water reaches the enthalpy of vaporizat ...
page. All of the artwork for the demo was made in a week. The pair worked on the game during gaps in the production of episodes of ''Scarlet Hollow'' over the next fifteen months, with full-time work beginning in February 2023. They estimate that Howard worked the equivalent of three months on the game over the time period, while Howard-Arias worked seven to nine months. Howard's pencil drawing art style was initially chosen to save time over the more elaborate artwork of ''Scarlet Hollow'', but was kept as they felt it fit the "dreamy, ever-shifting aesthetic" of the game. The voices in the player character's head were inspired by ''
Disco Elysium ''Disco Elysium'' is a 2019 role-playing video game developed and published by ZA/UM. Inspired by Infinity Engine–era games, particularly '' Planescape: Torment'', the game was written and designed by Estonian novelist Robert Kurvitz and featur ...
'' as a way to steer how the player felt about the princess or situation, so that changes in the next loop would align with those feelings. Voice acting is provided by Jonathan Sims and Nichole Goodnight. The developers wanted to add voice acting to all of the dialogue in the game as the size of the script in ''Scarlet Hollow'' had been prohibitive. Goodnight was chosen for the Princess based on a charity stream she had done in which she played ''Scarlet Hollow'', where she voiced all the characters' lines, while Sims was chosen for the Narrator and internal voices as they were fans of his work in ''
The Magnus Archives ''The Magnus Archives'' is a horror fiction podcast written by Jonathan Sims, directed by Alexander J. Newall, and distributed by Rusty Quill. Sims narrated the podcast in-character as the main character, Jonathan Sims, the newly appointed Hea ...
''. The initial demo, released in 2022, had six variations of the Princess, which was expanded to ten in a second demo to better encapsulate the varying possible choices; for example, the same princess version was reached by trying to save her whether or not the player brought the dagger with them, even though it changed the tone of the dialogue. A second demo was released in March 2023 for the
PAX East PAX (originally known as Penny Arcade Expo) is a series of gaming culture festivals involving tabletop, arcade, and video gaming. PAX is held annually in Seattle, Boston and Philadelphia in the United States; and Melbourne in Australia. PAX was ...
convention, where several media outlets named it among the best of the event. PAX East included ''Slay the Princess'' among the ten finalists of their Rising Showcase. On September 6, Black Tabby Games participated in Feardemic's Fear Fest, debuting a new trailer announcing a release date of October 20, 2023. However, due to last-minute issues regarding the game's Steam certification it was delayed a few days. The game was released for
Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ...
,
macOS macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. Within the market of ...
, and
Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which i ...
on October 23, 2023. On December 16, 2023, Black Tabby Games announced that an expanded version of the game, named ''The Pristine Cut'', would be released in 2024. The expansion was planned to add new chapters to the game, expand some existing chapters, as well as other, unspecified additions. The patch would be made available free of charge, and the price of the full game would not change. An intermediate version, ''The End of Everything'', was released on March 25, including the small changes to the ending and updates to the music to use a live orchestra in the tracks. It was intended to alleviate concerns from potential players about waiting for ''The Pristine Cut'' in order to see the final version of the ending. More details about ''The Pristine Cut'' were revealed in the Future of Play show as part of Summer Games Fest 2024, including the news that it would be arriving Fall 2024 and would be localized in ten other languages. Additionally, console ports were announced for the same release window, including limited run standard and collectors physical editions for
Nintendo Switch The is a hybrid video game console developed by Nintendo and released worldwide in most regions on March 3, 2017. The console itself is a tablet that can either be docked for use as a home console or used as a portable device, making it a ...
and
PlayStation 5 The PlayStation 5 (PS5) is a home video game console developed by Sony Interactive Entertainment. Announced as the successor to the PlayStation 4 in April 2019, it was launched on November 12, 2020, in Australia, Japan, New Zealand, North A ...
. The console ports are published by
Serenity Forge Serenity Forge LLC is an American video game developer and video game publisher, publisher based in Boulder, Colorado. The studio was founded in 2014 by Zhenghua "Z" Yang. History Upon graduating from the University of Colorado Boulder's Lee ...
. The update was released on October 24, 2024.


Reception

''Slay the Princess'' received "universal acclaim", according to review aggregator
Metacritic Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...
. 96% of critics recommend the game on
OpenCritic OpenCritic is a review aggregation website for video games. OpenCritic lists reviews from critics across multiple video game publications for the games listed on the site. The website then generates a numeric score by averaging all of the numeric ...
. Writing for ''
Polygon In geometry, a polygon () is a plane figure that is described by a finite number of straight line segments connected to form a closed '' polygonal chain'' (or ''polygonal circuit''). The bounded plane region, the bounding circuit, or the two t ...
'', Cass Marshall praised the branching narrative and described the game as a "Halloween treat". Sims and Goodnight both received widespread praise for their vocal performances. Aaron Boehm of ''
Bloody Disgusting Bloody Disgusting is an American multi-media company, which began as a horror genre-focused news site/website specializing in information services that covered various horror medias, including: film, television, video games, comics, and music ...
'' wrote that, "There are times that just the change in tone of Goodnight's voice sent a chill up my spine as the mood of a scene shifted towards the macabre."


Sales

On November 30, 2023, Black Tabby Games announced that ''Slay the Princess'' had sold 100,000 units. By March 2024, the game had sold 200,000 units, and by November 2024 over 500,000 copies.


Awards

''Slay the Princess'' was included on lists of the best games of 2023 compiled by ''
Kotaku ''Kotaku'' is a video game website and blog that was originally launched in 2004 as part of the Gawker Media network. Notable former contributors to the site include Luke Smith, Cecilia D'Anastasio, Tim Rogers, and Jason Schreier. History ...
'', ''
Inverse Inverse or invert may refer to: Science and mathematics * Inverse (logic), a type of conditional sentence which is an immediate inference made from another conditional sentence * Additive inverse (negation), the inverse of a number that, when ad ...
'', '' TheGamer'', ''
GameSpot ''GameSpot'' is an American video gaming website that provides news, reviews, previews, downloads, and other information on video games. The site was launched on May 1, 1996, created by Pete Deemer, Vince Broady and Jon Epstein. In addition ...
'', and ''
Destructoid ''Destructoid'' is a website that was founded as a video game-focused blog in March 2006 by Yanier Gonzalez, a Cuban-American cartoonist and author. Enthusiast Gaming acquired the website in 2017, and sold it to Gamurs Group in 2022. History ...
''.


Notes


References


External links


Official website

Black Tabby Games
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