This review spoils some of the details of the mild-to-moderate horror game Slay The Princess, a game best-played with as little information as possible for your first time, and features non-descriptive discussions of violence and bodily harm.

I played through Slay The Princess for the first time recently (a week and a half ago, as of this going up). I didn’t really know much going into the game other than it was pretty literal, that there was a decent amount of gore and violence, and that I should take the content warnings seriously. In retrospect, I was maybe a little oversold on the gore and violence and maybe should have taken the content warnings a bit more seriously that I did, given how specific some of them were. I’m not a fan of torture or unnecessary violence and while there wasn’t a lot of that in the game, there certainly was more of it than I expected given that there wasn’t an explicit call out for it. Still, despite that, I mostly enjoyed the game. It was an interesting narrative experience to spend an evening on, though maybe I should have played it by myself the first time around rather than streaming it for a pair of my friends, but I was left feeling a little neutral and sort of fine once I got to the end. This seemed like a bit of a disappointment to my two friends who were watching me play it through, but I might also be reading too much into their reaction to my general lack of a strong reaction and mild confusion about what the game was trying to accomplish. I still don’t know what it was trying to do or say beyond what feel like its core themes as I write this, five days later, and I’m still struggling to reconcile the strong (and generally positive) reaction a lot of people have had to my relatively muted one.

I can see the themes of intermingled love and hate in the game and often find myself wondering what the game might have been like if I’d made other choices, but I’m also aware that the game is making a statement about how our perceptions and action not only influence our response to things but the world around us as our thoughts turn into actions and those actions turn into change. Generally speaking, to completely spoil things for the sake of writing/talking about them, the titular princess changes to reflect the actions your character takes or doesn’t take and the world slowly changes to reflect that as well, though each of these things will reset a few times as you work through the game. If you hesitate or resist the instructions to Slay The Princess, if you try to talk things out, if you change your mind, if you if try to find some other way out of the situation all-together… It all changes how the world responds to your character, how the narrator responds to your character, how your character seems to respond to themself, and how the titular princess behaves during each of your encounters.

Normally, I’d find this interesting and a fun little mechanic to explore, but there’s an emotional undertone that exists beyond the level of my choices that left me feeling frustrated every time it showed up. Hesitation to do as instructed and Slay The Princess winds up implying a certain amount of fear as the outcomes shift in response to how much you hesistated. Some of this is answered by the game revealing that the narrator’s role is more prescriptive than descriptive, thumbing the scales on the narrative in order to achieve the ends the narrator desires, but there wasn’t enough of a throughline to really grasp that until the first time I came into direct conflict with it and even then I felt frustrated by how little agency it left me over my character’s emotional state at what seemed like rather arbitrary moments. I often had choices about my character’s actions and the broad strokes of their thinking, often to the degree of overpowering the narrator’s ability to command my character’s body, so it was frustrating to see that this control never extended to my character’s emotional state. Sure, a lot of the choices I could make directly implied an emotional state (this even grew more complex as I went deeper into the game and encountered more disembodied voices for my character to act or react in response to), but the ones I picked because I wanted a neutral response or action were almost never actually neutral. It was frustrating to feel my agency taken away in those little moments in a way the rest of the game is incredibly careful to never actually do.

Because that’s one of the other central themes, here. No matter what situation you’re in, you’re almost always given the choice to bail out. Sometimes you’re not, but most of the time that only happens when you’ve already passed a dozen off-ramps and there’s usually at least another off-ramp or two further a long after that moment (with a few exceptions, those being the very ends of each branching path you follow). You, the player, controlling your character, are the one making each choice as it comes up. Yes, the world shifts to suggest actions and sometimes the narrator heavily thumbs the scale, but you are still given the option to deny the narrator or even attempt to take your toys and go home. And, you know, suffer the consequences of your actions. Which is really the most interesting aspect of the game, my emotional content frustrations aside. I love that the game directly and heavily plays with the results of your choices, allowing you to string them along for quite a while, even, until it eventually wipes the slate clean without REALLY wiping the slate clean. The closest you come to actually doing that is finishing an entire run of the game and I’m not entirely convinced that there’s no lingering effects of your past playthroughs should you start a “new” game. At the very least, I will never play the game for the first time ever again and the game was written in such a way that it makes it clear when you, the player, have played it before and maybe know some of what is going on.

I think it’s an interesting and fun game, if you can handle the violence and gore, but I’m also certain that there’s a lot more going on than I, personally, can connect with. A lot of the themes that the game really prioritizes, the dual nature of love and hate, the sense of self and of the other in regards to the self, the importance of perspective, are things I’m already familiar with. I know how easy it is for love and hate to coexist, to hold hands and wrap a relationship up so tightly that you don’t know where one ends, the other begins, or if they’re even separate things. I know what it is to live entirely within the context of another person, to have nothing but the parts of yourself that the other person finds value in reflected since they don’t want you to be anything but what they wish to see in you. I know how it feels to be at war with yourself, to be killing a part of yourself over and over again because some outside voice is telling you to. I have lived with intrusive thoughts, nagging voices, and strong inclinations that constantly voice their thoughts and feeligns on what is going on so much so that I almost never get a moment to break in as I watchi this war play out within myself. I’ve been both the self-murdered and the victim of self-murder as I’ve fought to contain or kill parts of myself that I didn’t like, that I’d let take over me in unhealthy ways, and that I believed should be destroyed because of what someone else told me. I have spent my entire lifetime fighting for a perspective that situates me in a healthy context with other people and myself because it is so easy to lose that important but narrow view in pursuit of what is “best” for others and maybe even the world as a whole. I spent my entire childhood embroiled in a cycle of violence, pain, hatred, love, and failure to escape, so this game really holds nothing new for me other than the chance for my choices to actually matter this time around.

I might get more out of it if I played it a second time. The opportunity for some cathatsis, maybe, or the externalization of a struggle I’ve been embroiled in for my entire life. If I do, though, it will be with the certain knowledge that I am playing the game for a purpose, aiming for a target, and trying to see if there’s the end I seek, which I’m not sure will pan out for me, given that my own issues and history tend to align with The Princess to be slain rather than the character you control. I’m not sure I can put so much of my own mental burden on this game. It’s not built for that. It’s built for a lot of other really interesting things and there’s definitely some interesting conversations to be had around how empathy plays a role in this game, but I just don’t think it was built for me. Which is fine! Not everything needs to be for me! And, like I said, I still enjoyed my experience! I might not have gotten the sort of emotional vibe out of it that other people have, but I’m still thinking about it days later and will likely continue to do so for quite some time. I just don’t think I’m ever going to really connect with it as deeply as other people seem to have. Nor will I reject it, which is honestly just as important. Because that’s kind of the unwritten part of the game: you can just bail on it. After all, you’re slaying the princess to prevent the world from ending and while the world might end if you don’t slay her, you can always choose to end it yourself by quitting the game. As recursive as that thought might seem, I have a difficult time avoiding it given how much of the game winds up in conversation with itself as your character, the narrator, and the princess all slowly figure out what is going on, time and again, until the last barrier breaks down and you’re faced with your final choices of (this playthrough of) the game.