Slay the Princess Review — It’s in the title

Slay the Princess is a story about perspective. It is a story about beginnings, endings, and experiences. It is a love story in the most surreal, broad, and often violent expressions of one. It is a game that I struggle to describe, and one with a message and story that, even after completing the game, I still don’t fully understand. Above all else, Slay the Princess is a brilliant game, with some of the best writing I’ve ever seen and something that you must experience for yourself.

Slay the Princess opens with a sepia field of grass and a time-worn trail leading deeper into the woods. The voice of a narrator appears and tells you your simple goal. You must venture to a cabin and slay the princess imprisoned beneath. If you don’t do so, the world will end. This is all the information you are given.

You may already be wanting to ask this supposed narrator a ton of questions, and Slay the Princess provides you with an absolutely massive list of dialogue choices, each of which the narrator will respond to. This becomes the norm of the game, with almost every interaction coming with a ton of options for you to respond with. Best of all, you never know just how impactful any of these responses are going to be.

Slay the Princess takes you down an absolutely massive rabbit hole of branching options based on your dialogue. To get to my first ending, I had to play through the ‘story’ about five or six times, each one beginning the same and ending completely differently. To put this into perspective, it took me about three hours to experience six different branching narrative paths in this game, and according to the developers, you can expect about twenty hours of playtime if you try to go for everything, which I will be aiming for long after finishing this review.

Not to spoil the game’s story, which is full of incredible surprises and concepts so deep that I actually feel a little shaken after playing, but the seemingly infinite branching paths available in the game sort of tie into the themes of the story. Themes such as choice, the value of experience, and the influence of perspective appear to be central to the game. If there are a few themes I’ve missed there, it’s because this high-concept writing frankly made me feel a little stupid with its unexpected depth of meaning. It’s a psychological and cosmic horror that constantly shifts in new directions you won’t be able to expect and shocks you with its ending.

One theme the game definitely highlights a lot is trust. Everyone in the game speaks to you so matter of factly, explaining the things you must do without giving you a lot of explanation as to why and locking up when you pry for answers. You’ll have to ask yourself who you can trust. The narrator who insists you murder a princess chained to a wall? Or the supposed monster princess who won’t tell you her name even as you offer to free her? It never feels like there’s a right answer, and just as you start to trust a character, they’ll break it, only for you to go right back to wondering if they are, in fact, trustworthy after all.

Even as the ending illuminates everything that was well hidden before, the game is still worth replaying just to find the massive collection of choices and outcomes you missed in your first playthrough.

A host of new personalities join the story each time you attempt to slay the princess without any new characters actually being written into the story. The princess is not the same person every time you see her. You aren’t the same person every time you head to the cabin. The only constant is that each experience comes with new perspectives that will define who you are in that moment.

It’s really hard to explain why I like the writing of this game so much without spoiling anything, but what I can compliment without ruining what is a truly unique experience for anyone curious to try is the game’s beautiful artwork. Each scene is drawn by Ignatz-winning graphic novelist Abby Howard, and to my surprise, is all hand-drawn on paper. The game has an absolutely beautiful style that you just don’t see in any other games, and without it, the game just wouldn’t capture the same feeling it manages to.

All of the characters in the game are voiced by Jonathan Sims and Nicole Goodnight, who absolutely knock it out of the park with their delivery. They each do a phenomenal job of delivering their lines under the guise of multiple split personalities, creating a cast of what feels like many wonderful and unique characters with all the same voices.

Neither the story nor the art are afraid to get violent. On-screen discussions of serious topics, such as suicide, along with drawn portrayals of unusually gory violence, contribute to the game’s distinctly terrifying vibe. It feels like an old obscure horror movie your parents would not allow you to watch and one that never airs on any channel. It all just comes together perfectly, creating a game that’s as memorable for its horror as for its thought-provoking themes.

Try Hard Guides was provided with a PC review copy of this game. Find more detailed looks at popular and upcoming titles in the Game Reviews section of our website! Slay the Princess is available on Steam.