Slay the Princess
Introduction
Slay the Princess is a psychological horror visual novel developed by Black Tabby Games, and published by Black Tabby Games and Serenity Forge on October 23rd 2023. It is available on multiple platforms and systems, including Steam, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation, and Xbox.
There's you, and there's the Narrator. He tells you that there is a princess locked in the basement of a cabin, and that you're here to save the world by slaying her. You have the choice to do as you're told and follow his instructions, or to question him. Why are you here, and what will you do? Will you attempt to save the princess, or choose to slay her? This is a love story.
Additional Info
Visually, Slay the Princess is set apart from other games in the genre because all of its assets were drawn with paper and pencil. Because of this, the art style contains almost exclusively tones of black and white. The only exception to this is the limited use of the colour red, which is used only for the princess's dialogue, and the appearance of blood.
To complete the game, the player plays through the same sequence two to three times, where the princess and player character hold onto the memories of the previous loops, before the memories are locked away, leaving a clean slate. As an example, if the player acts hostilely when meeting the princess the first time, she'll act hostile when crossing paths the second time, regardless of what role the player chooses to take.
Horror Elements
Psychological Horror
The largest element of Slay the Princess is making choices that affect not only the current loop of the story, but also how the future loops will unfold. Sean Travers, in Perpetrator Trauma in Video Games, points out how games can use moral choices to make the player feel real-world guilt based on how their actions impact the virtual world. This is something that tends to be true in Slay the Princess. The player is able to respond to most of the other characters' dialogue, each time with numerous options to pick from. Every action the player takes drags them deeper into the game, connecting them to the fictive world and making the consequences of their actions hit harder. Another thing the game does to connect the player to the game's world and protagonist is to add additional "internal voices" for the player to listen to. These voices often reflect the emotions the real player is feeling. For example, if the player goes in and slays the princess without issue the first time, they might be joined by a confident internal voice. Whereas if the player dies while following the narrator's instruction, they might end up with an antagonistic internal voice that feels cheated out and lied to, which is likely to mirror how the real player also feels. EuroBrady, a therapist and digital creator, analyzes this game mechanic, "The way my brain is thinking right now has literally dialed up my skepticism, and here I find that my character is also suddenly a skeptic. This game is perfectly in sync with my train of thought right now, which is amazing and terrifying (00:34:25)." As Travers states, "The game feels real to the player because the world exists in that moment of playing, and moral choices carry a weight similar to real-world choices for the player despite affecting a secondary world (p.170)." Which is to say, the more connected the player is to the game, the more the game can affect their mentality.
A different part of psychology that Travers looks at is the way players choose to play games in the first playthrough. It is found that most commonly, players will try to have their characters take actions most similar to what they would do, as a way to connect more deeply to the game. Most people don't want to take villainous actions, thus end up playing more heroically. In Slay the Princess, the player is given a choice to either kill or rescue the princess, but this choice becomes more limited as the game goes on. Dillon Hampton describes the way the game takes away the player's initiative by saying, "It preys on your own perception of events and punishes you for interpreting its setup a certain way." If the player chooses to try leaving the woods they start in rather than going towards the princess, the game will make every path taken lead back to the cabin where she resides. With the player emotionally invested in the game, it can become devastating for the player to have their hand forced into taking an action they might deem as evil, especially if they aren't prepared.
The repeating nature of Slay the Princess is also a means of psychologically torturing the player. Brian Zager writes about the horror of time loops. He brings to light how there is a loss of agency that is experienced as the player and protagonist together, are forced to repeat actions over and over. With one or two exceptions, in Slay the Princess, the player will always be on a path in the woods, the princess will always be in the basement, and someone will always die. Zager says the idea of time loops in horror brings "the notion of temporal return or repetition as something to be feared (p.64)." If it goes on long enough, repetition can begin to cause the player to feel dread, stuck trying to change or fix things for the better, but not knowing how to. JC Pass describes the looping effect in Slay the Princess as something that "triggers feelings of learned helplessness, where repeated exposure to uncontrollable events leads to a sense of resignation". There are nearly endless options in Slay the Princess for trying to change the outcome into something more desirable, whatever that might look like for the player. Whatever choices the player makes, they are left to ponder whether the outcome would have been different if they had changed one dialogue option, or acted differently to the narrator and princess's wants. The only way to find out is for the entire loop to be repeated over, with the choice becoming that of how big a change should be made.
The Morphing "Princess"
The princess will act how the player expects her to act. She will change and morph forms to fit her role at any point in the story. If the player takes steps to save her, the princess will remain being an innocent captive. If the player acts as if she is dangerous, then she will take initiative to hurt the player. A common trope in media is the damsel in distress. A woman, unable to help herself, needing a man to rescue her. The gender roles of the patriarchy, that of a captive princess and a heroic male protagonist, which can be seen as a societal norm, are subverted each time the roles become reversed revealing that the princess is the capable one, and the heroic man is beneath her. Sarah Stang discusses how women in media are used in the place of monsters. She explains how female monsters challenge male protagonists who fight them, drawing attention specifically to those using metal weapons much like the player character of Slay the Princess.
Stang explains how, "One of the ways that female monster manifest that feminine power is by using their voices and bodies as weapons (21)." The princess can take the weapons the player uses against her and morph herself to match and deflect attacks tenfold. The player's only weapon is a small knife, yet the princess can turn herself into an endless amalgamation of blades, or a beast with sharp claws and teeth. Throughout the game, each time the player meets the princess, her voice is heard and described before her physical appearance is revealed. These descriptions, such as cold, dangerous, or hypnotizing, can change depending on the princess's form, and can lead the player to anticipate how she will act.
Another way the game works to make the princess appear more powerful than the player is through the use of angles. The only time the player is angled to look down at the princess is when the princess is taking on the role of damsel. Every other moment, the player is forced to look up at her, which indicates her power over the player character.
Horror in Violence & Monsters
There are countless moments the player experiences while playing Slay the Princess that end in violent death when taking into consideration the goal of the game, and its looping nature. Even when it's least expected, such as when the player rescues the princess. In general, most people don't actively want to act violently towards others, even in fictive stories, unless there is a reason, such as the other being a monster. Carley Kocurek discusses how video games often use violence to dehumanize and re-frame a target or victim into something non-human; "Monstrousness heightens the dehumanisation of in-game enemies and justifies their execution (86)." When the princess is in her most human form, the player might feel uncomfortable hurting her, but when she does something unexpected, such as dismembering her own arm, she becomes something non-human, and the player is more likely to retort with violence. Kocurek suggests that, "killing monsters may be more acceptable than killing people, but those monsters can stand in for marginalised or pathologised people (86)." After the player kills the princess, they have the option to discuss the previous doings with the game's narrator. When doing so, the narrator will make points to put the player in the mindset of the princess being non-human and thus deserving to die.
Experience With the Game (Autoethnographic)
During my first playthrough of Slay the Princess, I had forgotten I was playing a horror game. I had gotten comfortable with the grayscale art style, and had been drawn into the story. I was playing the role of the hero, on track to free the princess from her chains in the basement. But I didn't have a key. I asked the princess for ideas on how we could free her. She responds by tearing through her arm with her teeth, turning her mouth and arm red. Not only were my expectations disrupted, so were the visual aspect.
Along with the content warnings that appear at the start of each game, it is stated that Slay the Princess is a love story. This is a fact that changes how I experience the game. I don't want to hurt the princess if she is someone I am supposed to love. But no matter how many times the scene resets, she almost always perishes. I have experienced multiple scenes where the princess and I, the protagonist, die agonizingly slow deaths together. Perhaps it is that shared pain that will inevitably bring us together. The game has managed to hook me in as a player by allowing me to explore numerous endings, and to reshape the princess into several different beings. The setup of the game makes me want to learn as much as I can about the princess, and who she would be without my intervention.
Link to Gameplay Video
https://youtu.be/3UxvuNb9LOA?si=ZIqPw6fc-Q-e9r1X
Citations
All images are sourced from my own playthroughs and in-game gallery.
"SLAY THE PRINCESS Gameplay Walkthrough (All Endings) FULL GAME - No Commentary." YouTube, Estinto, 25/10/2023, https://youtu.be/3UxvuNb9LOA?si=ZIqPw6fc-Q-e9r1X
"How is this game READING MY MIND like this!? - Therapist Plays Slay the Princess - 1." YouTube, Euro Brady, 04/11/2024, https://youtu.be/xbe7nrhlLdU?si=3tpo9OMKGc59kWnH
Hampton, Dillon. The Horror of Slay the Princess. HalfTone, 12/10/2024, https://halftonemag.com/uncategorized/the-horror-of-slay-the-princess/
Kocurek, Carly. "Who hearkens to the monster’s scream? Death, violence and the veil of the monstrous in video games." Visual Studies, vol.30 no.1, 2015, pp. 79-89, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1472586X.2015.996402
Nae, A. (2021). Immersion, Narrative, and Gender Crisis in Survival Horror Video Games (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi-org.ezproxy.library.uvic.ca/10.4324/9781003019022
Pass, JC. Slay the Princess: Morality, Identity, and Cosmic Extentialism. SimplyPutPsych, 26/11/2024, https://simplyputpsych.co.uk/gaming-psych/slay-the-princess-morality-identity-and-cosmic-existentialism
Stang, Sarah. "Shrieking, Biting, and Licking: The Monstrous-Feminine in Video Games." Press Start, vol.4, no.2, 2018, pp. 18-34
Travers, Sean. "Perpetrator Trauma in Video Games: Dan Salvato’s Doki Doki Literature Club and Toby Fox’s Undertale." Trauma in American Popular Culture and Cult Texts, Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, 2022, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13287-2_6
Zager, Brian. “Once More and for Eternity? Facing the Horror of Cosmic Recurrence in Southbound.” Horror Studies, vol.11, 2020, pp. 63–82, https://doi.org/10.1386/host_00011_1
AI Disclosure
No generative AI was used in the production of this page.