Idle Thoughts

A great setup, but not much of a punchline (★★★☆☆)

By the standards of visual novels, Slay the Princess was a massive hit. It seems to have had great sales on top of receiving multiple prizes. A lot of that success probably has to do with the simplicity and pure efficiency of its title, which is also the game’s basic proposition. There’s a princess up there in that cabin. You gotta slay her. It’s really important and stuff.

But wait, aren’t we usually in the business of saving princesses? Your character says as much from the start. Why are we slaying this particular princess? What’s so bad about her? What’s up with that cabin? Where are we? For that matter, who are we? Why is there no one else here? Who are these people we’re supposed to be saving? Who is the Narrator?

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out things don’t add up. Maybe you’ve already played a visual novel like this, the kind with a trick up its sleeve, perhaps even with an unreliable narrator to boot. Something like The Stanley Parable, The Beginner’s guide, OneShot, Save the Date or Doki Doki Literature Club.

Anyway, the game knows you want to push back and it will indulge you. Oh boy does it. More than half of the dialogue is about your character questioning the premise. This is both the best and worst part of the game.

It’s the best because it lets you really scratch that itch. You want to walk back instead of forward to the cabin, right? Just for the heck of it? You little contrarian, you. You really want to interrogate that princess before sticking a knife in her, right? It’s almost like giving her due process! Slay the Princess does a pretty good job of rationalizing away the ambiguities, of trying to give you an explanation without actually explaining anything. In fact, it’s nothing less than a valiant effort. “Maybe things don’t fully add up, but look at it this way” the game says “if she’s chained up, there must be a reason, right?” “There’s things we can’t tell you for reasons we can’t divulge, but it’s all for the greater good!” the game explains. “But look at all these lines we’ve written to acknowledge that you think the situation is fishy! That means you’re very smart! Maybe even special!”

The constant questioning of the premise is also the worst part of the game. It’s pretty hard to put the “novel” in visual novel if all the characters are taking jabs at the plot. You get a bit of everything, like complaining that the story makes no sense and that everything in the game is pointless. The game even starts discussing its own symbolism, which is usually a sure sign it’s getting too clever for its own good. The characters also crack a few jokes at the plot’s expense. It can get a bit tedious, especially since some dialogue and situations repeat numerous times. Look sir, this isn’t the Rocky Horror Picture Show, please sit down and listen. Besides, if you’ve played some of the games I’ve named above, there’s nothing new about this “meta” stuff.

All visual novels give the illusion of choice, but here the illusion is particularly plain. No matter what you choose, you will end up at the same place. You will always be brought back to the same premise, the same setup. There’s a cabin in the woods with a princess in it, go Slay the Princess. Yeah, it’s a time loop kind of deal. Good luck building characters and relationships with a setup like that. As for the big reveal, the game quickly shows what it’s about in a matter of 15 minutes or so.

Basically, two very mundane choices take the story in vastly different directions, which have absolutely nothing to do with those decisions. “Directions” is a pretty big word here, because the two dozen tiny stories have no real bearing on the plot. They’re mostly tiny tales of random gratuitous violence and psychological torture. They’re not dead ends in the story or bad endings, they’re just events that happen and get erased by being rewinded back to the start. Nevertheless, no matter what you choose, the plot will progress in the same way. In fact, it’s almost impossible not to reach the normal finale. But you will have to go up to that cabin and (try to) slay that princess again and again and again. The game constantly goes back to its setup because, wisely, it knows that’s all it has.

Apropos of nothing, Slay the Princess gets a point in my book just for having similarities with the game Baroque, as they are both games with a player character with an intimate, mystical link with a distant goddess figure that he’s not sure he has to save or kill.

In the end, the plot of Slay the Princess reaches for Deep Philosophical Concepts and Choices of Cosmic Relevance. It starts swinging for the fences with its big reveal. Interestingly enough, once you’re told what it’s all about, what you’re really here for, Slay the Princess doesn’t care too much about your smart-alecky questions. If you question the goal behind it all, you get this line: “If you need to ask that question, there’s nothing I can say to move you.” Oh, that’s it huh? No more mister’s got an answer to everything? On the one hand, the game giving up on explaining itself at the last moment feels like a cop out. On the other hand, not trying to explain what no human being can explain is wise. What’s the game going to do, pull out a treatise on moral philosophy? Taken in context, it’s the best line in the game. The narrator is weakened, weary, out of energy to receive more pushback. Heck, the entire game is tired of your silly questions. I hope you’re proud of yourself.

Despite my comments above, I’ve played the entirety of Slay the Princess in one sitting one evening. Sometimes you can’t ask anything more from a game.

There’s a Pristine Cut coming out soon that apparently makes the game slightly longer. It should also let you follow the different threads more easily, but it’s really not the kind of game that gets better with a completionist mindset.