Finally, a saturday.

God bless the days where there arent any classes tomorrow.

I finally dusted the house, I think thats helped with the dust (who would have thought). Did basically all of the chores except for ironing, so that was almost 2 hours (1 hour and 50 minutes) well spent, but now I finally get to sit down and talk with you guys. I would have, on the days when I had classes, but more stuff happened than I was expecting.

Even so though, that’s NOT what i’m here to talk to you about. We wont be mentioning anything related to this week in this post, i’m leaving that spiel for tomorrow. For now, id like to talk to you about the new parasitic obsession lodged into my brain and eating away at my pre-frontal cortex. This lovely game is a psychological horror game, which honestly I didnt even remember it was until I showed it to someone who found it scary, which is totally fair because the video I showed them (you’ll see it sometime this post too) did have some wicked stuff that someone could be scared of, but idk I might be desensitized to it because I just found it really cool :p.

This game is also a love story, one where the creators at black tabby games encourage you to reflect on each action and end as neither right or wrong. Now of course, my telling of the themes are going to stem from the fact that its a love story and invariably its all going to reflect me somewhat and maybe not give the FULL picture (I feel very strongly about some endings), but even if your sure you’d enjoy my ramblings anyways I HIGHLY encourage you to play the game yourself before digging into this post. Up to you, but even so its honestly worth your time to experience the journey for yourself.

So, with that out of the way, lets talk about Slay the Princess.

“You’re on a path in the woods, and at the end of that path, is a cabin. And in the basement of that cabin is a princess. You’re here to slay her, if you don’t it will be the end of the world.”

The second you start a new game, its the first thing you hear, by the narrator no less. The game REALLY sells the fact that you have to kill her.

About the narrator though, this mysterious figure, who by the way refuses to tell us exactly how she would end the world or why no matter how much you question him, also has no real explanation for why we’re even on a path in the woods. The best he can come up with is that your the only person suited for the job and “chosen” or whatever but that answers LITERALLY NOTHING, if anything it gives you MORE questions.

Closer to the cabin another voice appears, the voice of the Hero. He doubts the idea of slaying the princess, acting as a sort of middle ground in most conversations past this point given he’s probably the closest voice in your head to an actual human being with sound ethics throughout the game, an all around sweet guy.

Regardless though, the narrator asks you to ignore him, and you DO still need to go to the cabin (except for one route). Once you do, you have the option of taking the blade on the table before going to see the princess, which the narrator will always advise you to do.

So you make your way down into the basement and meet the princess, and she’s an odd lady. She supposedly doesnt remember her own name, and depending on what you ask shes oddly happy with the idea of cutting her own arm off to escape, though I guess anyone would be given enough time.

Mostly, she wants the hell out.

Its at this point where the game really opens up to you, since you have a plethora of different things to do. You wanna try escaping together? Go for it. Kill her without a second thought? Sure, just be sure NOT to have a second thought, because any amount of hesitation usually means she’ll fight back enough to kill you with her, which muddies the waters EVEN more, how the hell does a regular shackled princess match up against someone with a knife in hand and no shackle on the other?

Its important to note though that regardless of what you do here, you HAVE to die to progress, and not necessarily by her own hands either. If you kill her, the narrator just traps you in limbo in the hopes that youll be okay with it AND STILL gives no answer as to why its necessary, and even though you could theoretically go for the “good ending” and stay in limbo forever, NOBODY is doing that.

So, even if your alive at that point, you kill yourself. Everything goes dark, and you die.

…but your not dead. Your back, and you hear the same narrator say the same lines.

“You’re on a path in the woods, and at the end of that path, is a cabin. And in the basement of that cabin is a princess. You’re here to slay her, if you don’t it will be the end of the world.”

You can question him, but he doesnt remember a thing, but at least the voice of the hero and the new voice do.

Depending on how you died, and why you died, your death is usually accompanied by a new voice that joins the voice of the hero in the collage of thoughts that make up your mind (the narrator doesnt really count). That’s not everything that changes though.

The cabin changed too, seemingly depending on how things played out with the princess. If you tried to save her as you would save any defenseless princess, the cabin becomes more royal, as though you were saving a real princess. Importantly, the entrance to the cabin also has a mirror now that the narrator doesnt seem to see. and any time you interact with it, it just, disappears.

Another example would be if you killed her on sight, the cabin becomes sort of Victorian, of course with the same mirror that the narrator just doesnt seem to acknowledge. The change in scenery doesnt quite make sense until you go to see her, but youll soon find out that shes actually a ghost now.

She remembers you after what you did of course, in every single route, but she herself never really understands why shes changing either, and most times doesnt even bother to mention it. This is sort of just happening the more you two interact, not only just after a death either, whether you decided to take the knife or not decides whether or not she talks to you in a softer tone and with a more agreeable personality or if she coldly calls out to you on the way in, with changes being further reflected the more you talk to her.

Every story, every version of the princess you meet, there is struggle. There is hurt and pain and blood and more often than not, one of you dies. Until finally, something pulls her out, and the narrator vanishes.

It can be on the 2nd chapter (your death leads to chapter 2 and then it continues a chapter onwards after each death) or in chapter 4, but that same entity keeps showing up to end things.

Then, your left with the mirror. This time, the mirror doesnt disappear upon trying to interact with it, so you do have the chance to see yourself. Well, some of it.

After seeing yourself, every voice disappears.

Again, your story with the princess can come to an end in several ways. Sometimes, you just let her leave, which the narrator HATES since its the end of the world and all but either way, the woods dissipate and make way for that swirling and empty abyss, and the princess is taken away by some entity made up of just a bunch of hands.

Other times your still in the cabin, but any time youve spent too long with a princess, or if you two seem to be at an impasse, the hands show up to take her away anyhow. Usually, theyll tend to show up when the story between you and her for that route has come to an end narratively, and whatever needed to be said between the two of you had been said.

You later find out by finding the mess of hands that it calls itself the shifting mound, a being which uses the princess to speak to you in the place she calls “the long quiet”, the swirling abyss that your stuck in. She needs more princesses to grow her understanding of the world, describing itself as “flickering lights in an empty city”, something that isnt whole. It sees itself as the princess, but more than any one singular princess.

For her to be whole however, she needs new perspectives, new princesses. Not as many as there are to find though, she says the rest will find their own way back to her.

To do this, she can reset things, but only if you believe her to be able to. You must believe that the princess can make you forget, so that you can forget :p.

So you do, and everything resets.

And thats that. You get new perspectives, meet new princesses given your actions, hear new voices, and uncover cool routes :).

Each story deals with love differently, or at least a component that makes up love, and explores the ways that it can go well, but mostly how it can go poorly.

In one route you two fight each other forever, beating each other to death and pulling yourselves back up to fight again. Nobody wins, even if you two enjoy the fight, since neither is able to make a compromise, and your stuck fighting forever.

In another, the princess, or your understanding of her, breaks apart. Assuming youd been trying to save her from the start, she loves you but can also fall into a sort of infatatuation, and once you start to question her on what shed like to do, her sense of self slips. She repeats the same line over and over,

meanwhile physically losing detail, until finally the shifting mound takes her away. Not really her fault though, she quite plainly tells you she wants to leave and this happens if you question her AFTER she already said she wants to leave and figure the rest out later, so it could be more of a way to examine your own perception of the princess at this stage.

Still though, easily one of my favorites has to be the thorn princess. If you decide to go into the basement without the blade, but when the blade is dropped down by the narrator you decide to betray the princess rather than free her, she becomes distrustful. In the second chapter, the cabin is made up of roots, and the princess?

Well yea she fucking hates you.

There isnt a single path that gives you a good ending here, fighting her only gets you killed too, and when trying to leave either shell stab you in the back or lock the door on you, your basically fucked.

Unless of course, assuming you brought the blade from up top, you give her the knife. You betrayed her trust, so out of all the options given its the only one where you truly put all your faith in her, with no room for distrust. Dont get it twisted, SHE WILL kill you when you do this, but it isnt without regret. You hurt her, so you had it coming, but its not like shes happy with the outcome.

In fact, she regrets it, and you die anyways.

Then comes chapter 3, the thorn, with even the path in the woods reflecting the changes happening with the princess. The path is prickly, and the cabin is FULL of bright red roses. The blade is nowhere to be found, and the path down is what seems to be a painful plethora of thorny branches. Its easy to go down since most of the shrubbery is pointed that way, but its apparent that itll be a pain getting back up.

All this, and you finally make your way to the princess, and well…

yea, she isnt doing that great. It might be an odd sight, but you find out that shes stuck, and that even with the blade she isnt in a position to cut off the vines without getting hurt herself, and you can see shes already tried getting out based off of all the cuts.

Again, it becomes a matter of trust. As she puts it, she would love to trust you and give the blade but, too much has happened for her to feel she can give it to you without regret. You both hurt each other, but you’ve also both reached a point where you can reflect on that, even if doing so is painful.

The thorn has easily been my favorite route since the game came out, though the free update did add an ending thats an unbelieavably close second, if not a bigger favorite. That one though, I cant comment on as much on since ive only played it recently and its still brewing in my brain, so you’ll have to play it or watch it yourself. Here’s the “cabin” for the route:

Nows as good a time as any to talk about the mirror too.

Its blocking the way forward.

You need to try to interact with it to move forward, so what does it mean?

If i had to guess, its reflection. Not literal reflection but instead you reflecting on yourself and the relationship.

At first, in each second chapter, things obviously havent worked out, so at that point, reflection is a beneficial step forward in progressing positively in any manner. Still though, since things usually arent as bad as by the third chapter, given you still dont know enough about yourself and your circumstances, or the princess and who she’ll be by the end of each chapter to get to a genuine understanding between you and her, the mirror never blocks the path forward.

By chapter 3 though, the mirror is always blocking the path forward. Its no longer just useful, its now necessary if you really want to get anywhere in terms of a relationship of any kind. Thankfully by the end of each route, you usually reach some sort of finality, and finally collect yourself, only to be broken again. To forget, hence the mirror shattering.

The ignorance literally breaks you, funny to say. Or at least, it kills any chance at meaningful reflection and understanding.

Both routes mentioned earlier are quite beautiful, and I enjoyed all the routes a lot honestly, still coming back to them every once and a while. The imagery that they use to convey each struggle fits quite well, and each route is its own deep dive into the pains that you tend to go through in a relationship in quite interesting ways, all culminating in the finale.

By the time you finally collect enough perspectives, you get to look in to the mirror one last time, but instead of a reflection, your greeted with a familiar voice, the narrator.

Its at this point where you can finally get all your answers. You arent in a swirling abyss, you ARE the swirling abyss, the long quiet. You are a god, and so is the shifting mound, the princess. The narrator tore you two apart, as you both used to be one and the same, and created the construct to trap you two and force you to kill her, as well as sneaking his voice in your head to guide you.

Why? Well the narrator hates death, its troubled him in his lifetime, and the shifting mound, being the ebb and flow, the personification of change given life, includes death as a part of her. So the narrator needs you to kill her, despite the ramifications for literal ebb and flow to be removed from humanity.

The narrator insists that when he split you two, you were left with a part of her and she was left with a part of you. He insists that humanity will be fine without her, that you have enough of her in you to keep humanity going. But at this point his time is up. The creator died a long time ago, and whats been talking to you is nothing more than an echo, a tool left in this construct to finish its job of getting you to kill the princess. But you’ve learned more about yourself, and both of you awakening from the forced ignorance is too much for it to bear. So in a breath of silence, you’ve said goodbye to your narrator. That “higher power”.

Glass breaks, and he’s gone.

And in comes the princess

Its time for you to choose. You may leave with her without a second thought, finally being together again. If not, she’ll push her convictions onto you, you both gaze into every interaction you’d once had, and discuss their implications given your two’s newly found status and what it means, all the while she tries to sway you to her side, to finally leave.

She knows you, each interaction having shaped the contours of your heart, displaying each other through every interaction. From her perspective, there is no life without that which she makes up and allows to be, to change into. That ebb and flow, the journey, is a vital pillar of life.

Given all this though, shes no longer human, or at least not human-like anymore, since she never really was strictly human. She speaks to you from a position of divine authority, and its quite hard to reason with her if you dont want to match her ascension to godhood.

At this point, every voice is gone too, so your left to fend for yourself here. You do happen to, in the course of your reunion though, eventually hear something. Someone…

turns out, its the voice of the hero, somehow. You’d thought all the voices were gone when you’d looked into the mirror, and while that wasnt wrong, it seems that wasnt true either. And now, he has an idea.

He can take you to her, back to where it all started, to the heart of it all. You can talk with her there, not as gods, but as people. No labels, no divine power, just an honest discussion of what to do rather than what we are to the world.

And so you do.

You can choose to take the knife or not, its on the table as it always has been, just this last time. Either way, you go in, and talk for the last time.

If its without the knife, you leave, as just people. Its a heartfelt reunion, and you see each other for who you are, no labels, no preconceived notions of either one’s being. Your static yet ever changing, ready to venture into the unknown, and to support the other through the new experiences you’ll get to share.

If you do take the blade though…

Its only a matter of time until this ends, right? Thats what it feels like at least. The princess is fighting, not physically, but through your discussion shes fighting, for not just her life, but the both of yours. She doesnt want this to end, you and her to end. She suggests compromise after compromise, but none of them seem to stick.

Finally, you bury the blade in her chest. She finally admits it, it doesnt seem she wanted any of what she’d suggested herself.

There’s acknowledgment,

and then theres nothing at all.

Shes gone. Forever.

Your voices come back. Not just the hero, ALL of the voices. Your whole again, and not in the same way as before. Your ready to see the vast beauty of the universe, and will have your whole lifetime as a god to shape it to YOUR will.

Its just that, its more likely than not now that that will be done in eternal loneliness, as a lonely god.

This game has many routes, many MANY routes I havent mentioned, but out of all of them, in my honest opinion, and even though the game manages to convey these as choices without right or wrong, this is easily the worst end to me. To tell you the truth, I havent even done it yet, every other ending ive managed with and played through, but ive only ever seen bits and pieces of this end through videos online since I dont have the heart to do it myself.

That bargaining that so perfectly illustrates the feeling of putting together the pieces as they slip from your hand, breaking apart, only for it to end. Its awful, especially since all it took was your empathy in not bringing the knife to avoid it. Its a possibility in many relationships, but to say that I despise it would be underselling things drastically, and its reflected in a really beautiful sorrow here.

Besides, the voice of the hero illustrates it well after the fact. You gained new voices, technically YOUR voices back, but he claims youve still lost a part of yourself. That it feels like a part of you is gone. And it is.

It is, isnt it?

:(.

I wouldnt wish that on anyone. Assuming it can work, that the relationship is genuinely meant to be, and with great success at that (like in this case), our protagonist’s disposition in this route is quite rotten, and it makes this the most heart wrenching ending in the game for me.

You can imagine based off of my description which I think is the best then, its definitely leaving the cabin into the unknown. You might have still hurt, and you arent above it all sure, but your both still there, and still loving. You both grieve, but your still present, and ready to move forward. Ready to continue to love.

That’s the best ending :).

You could reset things too but who cares >:/.

So yea, thats slay the princess. A story about love. A beautiful conversation spanning fear, longing, passion, fury, trust, distrust, and many more components the culmination of which, can only be described as an full experience. A lovely experience <3.

The story is amazing, I loved the writing, the wittiness, the grittiness, all of it. The art is stunning, and im still feasting my eyes on it all the time its genuinely insane, and the characters are so utterly complicated in their many facets. The music is GORGEOUS, you’ll understand when you play it but it compliments the game so perfectly I could not imagine the game with a different soundtrack, regardless of how its made.

Back to the characters for a second too, they’re all so special in their own right, and I love the connections and parallels you can make to them too. There is of course the fear and uncertainty that pervades us in our lifetime, demonstrated through the narrator and his actions. But mostly, its our two protagonists, ub passivity and understanding of our character, the long quiet, and the need to change, whether for ourselves or due to the perceptions of others thrust onto us, for or against us, in the princess.

There’s so much to dig into, so even with all that I’ve said there’s still like half the game to play spoiler free. Its genuinely a gem of a game and I love it for that.

I hope you enjoyed this look into the world of slay the princess. To conclude, I still have that video to show you. Its an amv of the game, one that genuinely fucked me up when and after watching it. The song captures the brokenness of it all perfectly, and everything unfolding at the scale that it is genuinely hurts to see, but is told so masterfully. The art in combination with the music is stunning, and finds its way in to the deepest crevices of my mind every time, I genuinely cannot stop thinking about it. Here it is:

https://youtu.be/QXh5rG1hQCo?si=BxuRUSnAReuQ5UC5

I love kitchen fork too, its yanked straight into my playlist now.

Thanks for reading, I’d show you more love for that but there’s only so much that I can do through a screen, again making it through all this is a lot and I really appreciate it.

So, thank you <3.

Ill see you tomorrow for a much more bog standard post about random stuff :v.