Our review of Slay the Princess: The Pristine Cut, developed by Black Tabby Games. Available October 24, 2024 for PS5 (reviewed), PS4, Xbox X/S, Xbox One, Switch, macOS, Windows, and Linux. Sadly not yet available in paperback.
WHAT IS IT?
A (Toronto-made!) dark gothic choose-your-own adventure, and not for the faint of heart.
IS IT GOOD?
It’s an entertaining enough meander through various scenarios, though some of the choices, not to mention the art style, can be off-putting.
WHO SHOULD PLAY IT?
Stanley. You remember Stanley.
HEADLINE
Slay the Princess is a choose-your-own-adventure. As in, a straight old-fashioned storybook with hand-drawn illustrations and accompanying dialogue, of the kind you used to borrow from the school library.
Technically, in gaming terms it’s a visual novel, one of those text-based games that prioritizes storytelling over gameplay, and which can make for a compelling experience provided you enter into it with the right mindset. The best of the genre, like the Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney games, add dynamism to what’s otherwise a fairly static format, while the very best of them invite endless hours of replayability, seeking out every possible alternate path.
Slay the Princess, by Toronto-based Black Tabby Games (husband-and-wife team Abby Howard and Tony Howard-Arias) is not quite the very best of the genre. However, it’s still a very good visual novel, inviting – no, demanding – that players continue to circle back within its story, uncovering its many secrets and its dozens if not hundreds of endings.
HEADLINE
Slay the Princess reminds me of The Stanley Parable.
While it doesn’t quite let you push against its seams in the way Stanley constantly breaks the fourth wall, its basic structure is familiar: there’s an unseen narrator; he encourages you to do things; you obey or refuse him and accept the consequences.
It starts, just like Stanley’s day, simply enough: the Narrator tells you that you’re here to slay – that’s slay, not save – the princess, and directs you towards the cabin where she’s being held. Follow the narration rigidly, and your first run-through can be completed in mere minutes.
Stanley veterans will know, of course, that this is only the beginning. Whether or not you obeyed every direction your first go-round, you’ll have picked up new information which affects how you tackle things next time.
The Narrator may tell you again that you’re here to slay the princess, but now you might choose to refuse. Or, you can agree to go along, but test out a different strategy. Or, you can simply (and this is always funny in these kinds of games) turn around and walk away. The branching paths of Slay the Princess must have been a headache to plot out. I’d love to see the yarn board inevitably posted up in the Howards’ basement somewhere.
HEADLINE
Slay the Princess is intermittently fun. By which I mean, it can be tiresome to replay the same scenario over and over again, but it can also be exhilarating when some change – sometimes subtle, usually over-the-top – shakes things up.
The various “companions” who join you based on your previous journeys also add a lot: while things start out simply with a single Narrator and Hero in (possibly subconscious) dialogue, you’ll soon pick up others who interject, derail conversations, or even argue amongst themselves while you listen.
But Slay has its weaknesses, and they become more pronounced the longer you play.
The voice-acting can be grating and amateurish. The Autosave function, at least on PS5, doesn’t work, which means you have to manually save a lot for fear of losing progress. (And yes, my pre-release Slay crashed more than once.)
The art style, which can best be described as “DeviantArt Before AI Took Over”, is simultaneously simplistic, exploitative, and off-putting. (The screens included here give a decent hint of what to expect, though it gets a lot uglier/grosser the deeper you explore.)
Aspects of the game also aren’t explained well: Is there an “endgame” which will pay off after all those repeat visits? (Short answer: sort of.) What do all these buttons do along the top of the screen? (Answer: still unclear.) Why can I skip dialogue sometimes, but not other times? (Answer: still maddeningly unclear.)
On the plus side, Slay the Princess isn’t particularly long; even with the added paths on this “Pristine” re-release, you can see most of what the game has to offer in a few hours. In other games, that might be a weakness, but here it’s an undeniable strength: just enough time to explore the story’s many nooks and crannies, not so much that you become overwhelmed, bored, or grossed out (which is honestly a risk).
Slay the Princess is for a very specific, Halloween-friendly audience, and while it may not be for everyone, this eerie, Gothic, (largely) black-and-white adventure can prove a real page-turner.
***
Final score: 8/10 Edward Packards.
Visit the official website for Slay the Princess: The Pristine Cut here.
