rocky41_7

Before I got majorly distracted by getting Dragon Age Veilguard for Christmas, I was occupying myself with Slay the Princess, and having made a return to it last week, it feels like a good time to do a review of it.

Slay the Princess is a visual-novel type game, which is not usually my taste. But it is also a heavily choice-dependent narrative with a range of broad outcomes, and that is my bread and butter.

The game premise is simple: You, the hero, are on a path, in the woods. At the end of that path is a cabin, and in the basement of that cabin, is a princess. Your job is to slay her. If you don't, she will end the world.

Everything after that is up to you.

Slay the Princess deserves massive credit for the sheer number of branching paths available to you, for every decision, from things as basic as deciding whether to take your knife down into the basement, or try to talk to the princess unarmed first. Everything you do has the potential to impact the story, and both the PC and the princess will react and adapt to your choices.

And what a beautiful story they are telling! I thoroughly enjoyed the themes and narratives of this game, and it presents them so well. If you really let yourself sink into the text, you'll come away from it really feeling like you've been through something. I can't really say much more on specifics without giving things away, and I think anyone playing this game deserves to see the truth unfurled organically, so I'll leave it at that.

There are some animations in the game, but it's mostly brought to life with lovely, loose hand-drawn sketches which do a fabulous job of capturing the atmosphere.

Similarly, there are only two voice actors throughout the entire game, but they both do a superb job, both with a range of characters and a range of complex emotions they needed to convey.

The music is just as pleasing, with a variety of themes to fit the various directions the story can take, all of them deeply evocative without distracting from the gameplay in the moment.

On a final note, this game is not for the faint of heart. It includes a list of trigger warnings at the start, and you should definitely read through that if you're sensitive to potentially upsetting stories.

Overall, I am simply delighted with this game. I got my sister playing it too, and I would definitely throw this one out as a recommendation. It's a game where I want to experience absolutely every part of it, which keeps me coming back again and again for another playthrough slightly to the left of the last. I want to see everything this game has to offer. And the in-game gallery makes it easy to redraw scenes from the game, which with I've also been having fun!

And remember: There are no wrong choices, only different outcomes.