Como + Mortis' Slay The Princess Ramble(s)

[skinstealer]

welcome to the first of many ramble threads to come. today us and como discuss the newly released horror visual novel, Slay The Princess. we've done one playthrough of it and plan on 100%ing it eventually, but for now, here's our (very disorganized and rambly) thoughts!

CWs for the game can be found on the official website here.



[image description: roughly sketched concept art for the game "slay the princess". a bird man with a knife is approaching a princess, and the princess is shooting some kind of red laser goop out of her eyes at him. there's an arrow pointing to the princess labeled "nightmare".]
 

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COMORANT: So
Stab the Prinzessin

MORTIS: we played slay the princess! and wanted to do a review about it

COMORANT: I feel like she stabbed us more we stabbed her

MORTIS: she definitely did and pretty much all of it was our fault to some extent

COMORANT: Like not even killed just stabbed in general
Okay I blame the voices

MORTIS: we will get to the voices, that's a big thing i want to talk about here
do we want to do spoiler free impressions first or just dive right in

COMORANT: Lets spoil shit at the end
So
Yeah this is absolutely a straightforward concept taken to a very surreal and existential extreme that toys with the nature of a lot of visual novels
The soundtrack is perfect for the story it wants to tell
the artwork is lovely, the sketchy look switches things up enough constantly to keep things fresh and intereesting despite what is effectively a game with three fucking rooms

MORTIS: the amount of voiced lines in this game is fucking insane, and they get a ton of mileage out of just having two (very good) voice actors

COMORANT: I was about to say, this whole game is really something that takes a small scope and pushes it as hard as humanly possible
gets right into the meat of things pretty quickly too

MORTIS: yeah, it didn't feel like it was wasting our time at all, even with our first run through being the simplest possible route (on purpose and our choice, more on that later)
we were still given TONS of interesting stuff to chew on
it was definitely an experience that made us go "whoa!" a lot. which i appreciate

COMORANT: Mmhmm. I think honestly it's a very good entry point to someone who might be interested in visual novels as well
Lots of accessibility settings, a simpler premise expanded to very interesting extremes, a strong touch of exploration of its own format, and the mix of horror and dark comedy that are inherit to its premise are used very well.
which like, it is a visual novel, like a actual one albeit designed to encourage a lot of exploration for those who are not familiar with them

MORTIS: i think that people who like a lot of meaty dialogue trees will get along well with this game, especially if they're cool with very VERY heavy gore and horror themes. there's a lot of stuff in this that is really brutal but i feel like there's a niche for like. really scary and brutal VNs, it's kind of a cornerstone of the genre
but honestly i feel like, while i haven't played too many of them myself and am mainly just familiar secondhand, this one is definitely trying to avoid being sort of...guro-esque? does that make sense
aside from the last scene we got that one was just kind of fucked up. we'll get to that

COMORANT: I think a big daunting thing for those who haven't played them is the nature of feeling like having this amount of complexity in branching path like
makes you intimidated by the possibility of making bad calls
and I think the game right away going "You will not see everything in one go, there are no wrong answers" and the nature of its story let you experiment at first comfortably until you are fed enough to want to be very careful and deliberate

MORTIS: oh yeah this game completely circumvents that by the nature of how it works and encourages you to do whatever the fuck because no matter what it's going to give you something interesting, scary, and potentially thought provoking
the character of the princess is a fascinating one and we're having a lot of thoughts on her. but no matter which angle you approach a run from, you're going to see some new stuff- especially made better by the fact that the game will just outright prevent you from retreading something that would be the exact same, which is AWESOME
that is honestly one of our biggest gripes with games with branching dialogue trees, having to retread to get to tiny slivers of new content. something that we noticed with our playthrough is they do give you the option to skip stuff youve already done, i think? or at the very least fast forward through it- but honestly we were so immersed in the voice acting and atmosphere that we never really felt a need to do it

COMORANT: You can just rapidly go through a lot of the repeated dialouge
there were a ton of options including to just skip to the dialogue cchoices
Shall we dip into mild spoilers before we go into the heavy stuff  or do we have anything we want to cover before talking story specifics

MORTIS: uhhh warning for suicide, gore and self harm for sure. those are the three biggest content warnings i have for the game as well as some very selective stuff that would mainly apply to plural people with rough internal experiences, which i will put in a spoiler here (it's story relevant and we WILL be talking about it in depth)

Show ContentSpoiler:

big content warning: suicide to deliberately kill someone in the same body

ok yeah im good

Show ContentSPOILERS AHEAD:

COMORANT: So yeah the game wouldn't be entertaining if it was just you choosing to kill the princess or not kill the princess and that was it. It's a very groundhog day situation with a solid amount of meta narrative tinge that explores a existentialism around two characters in a cycle of violence and influencing each other back and forth.

MORTIS: it is possible to be relatively very nice to the princess and you will still die horribly, or she'll die horribly. you can also be a HORRIBLE person to her and you will probably die even worse
the way the game is structured is pretty straightforward but also not at all. should i go into that or do you want to

COMORANT: Format is simple, start with a basic "You should kill this princess or the world will end" prompt, choose to take the knife or not with you when you enter the cabin, and enter the room where she is held prisoner
you are to either kill her or release her in the majority of routes to progress
and the nature of your motives, her motives, etc are what massively deviate
but in the big twist of things, killing her influences the next cycle until a proper reset happens

MORTIS: even just the act of taking the knife or leaving it influences whether the princess is hostile to you or scared of you on your initial interaction
in the first "chapter" of a run, you will always end up either dying or killing the princess. actually i think it's always the former. you just fucking die in some horrible way
the second chapter, you re-enter the cabin, and it's changed. it reshapes its interior based on whatever choices you made in the first chapter....and the princess remembers you
you get a third chapter under very specific circumstances- this only happened to us twice out of our five runs in the playthrough we did
but we're missing a pretty big part of this. the voices, as mentioned earlier
when you start the game, you get a narrator talking to you- he's labelled as the narrator, easy enough, he's voiced. your decisions are not voiced, but are chosen from a list in the corner of the screen. however- you get another voice talking early on, "voice of a hero"
this guy wants to do good. he wants to save the princess! it's pretty easy to think this guy's just the character you're playing as at first, tbh

COMORANT: It's very easy to think of him as so yeah, being the voice who is kind of just "normal person logic"
which is to say he doesn't want to hurt the princess which is kind of the average person's thought when being told to kill someone, and he generally advocates for any solution other than kill the princess unless there's enough on plate to make him go "okay we need to kill her actually" that route

MORTIS: he's just the normal ass knight or whatever you're supposed to be. a hero, like his subtitles say

COMORANT: Very good natured, kind of the voice of reason compared to the Narrator's adamance on killing the princess, or the other voices feeling like "what kind of person would take this route in the first place?"
and generally the persona of each voice lines up with each possible princess route

MORTIS: which...the other voices.
once you complete a first chapter, you get to start the loop anew- but along with the princess remembering you, you get a new voice- one that's heavily implied to be You from your last playthrough
so if you're a dick to the princess, you're gonna get a dickish voice in your head. if you act sweet to her, you'll get one that's absolutely enamored with her
como looked up how many potential voices you can pick up and it's. it's a lot. it's a lot of potential ones

COMORANT: I absolutely have some favorite voices

MORTIS: i think voice of the broken was the hardest for us. i think it just, hit hard to have like
a voice that absolutely worships her as this god-like being, but in a way that screams self deprecation and self mutilation. it reminds us a lot of system members who feel held captive by abusers, especially actively in the thrall of it-
that was one of our last run's voices. it was extremely brutal and distressing but in a way where we respected it a lot.

COMORANT: Was it the Skeptic that outright went "You're taking the knife with you."?

MORTIS: i think so, yeah. it was one of the last run ones as well

COMORANT: voices seem to have some outright capacity to sway physical actions but he stood out for just outright making the knife choice

MORTIS: yeah that one was like "oh shit this guy can actually front", which is only really ever seen with the narrator- who's implied to be from beyond You and not actually part of You, Collectively

COMORANT: a major part of this game's themes and structure is the fact that you're the one with the most choice, and even then you feel trapped

MORTIS: there are a lot of choice options where you can literally just say shit with the vibes of like, "i don't want to do this, why do i have to be the one to do this, this fucking sucks, i want a different story"  and all you get is a narrator telling you to just slay the fucking princess already and whoever else is tagging along for the ride giving their two cents and trying to appeal to you in one way or the other
which, honestly, mood

COMORANT: a major theme is the sensation of feeling trapped, but another massive one is the idea of people and experiences forming and swaying each other's sense of person and reality
You obviously have the most physical sway in the narrative, but each playthrough feeds you information that is going to sway how you approach next run

MORTIS: it's very plural-coded, at least to me- though of course this thing could affect anyone. it just really hits us in the chest with all that, especially with the idea of past selves and having everything from your appearance to the abstract space you inhabit, and of course, obligatory mirror symbolism
when you reach the end of a run, whether that's at the end of chapter II or III- you and the princess are whisked out of this world, taken to somewhere called "the long quiet". it's there that you get to talk to the princess you got out of that run- or, something that looks like her. the long quiet princess is actually an amalgam of all of the princesses you get from that run, and while she speaks very cryptically and somberly, she expresses that she wants you to bring her new "perspectives"- new runs, basically. to complete the playthrough, we had to do 5, and that impacted the endgame.
this kind of shit makes us really feel like the princess has something going on too, which is...sort of confirmed by the end of it? i dunno

COMORANT: Kind of?
Albeit once again it's very clear her shifts are more exterior contrasting with yours being more internal

MORTIS: yeah. she's a very different person in every run and it's VERY obvious, to the point where her physical body can change along with the environment- and pretty drastically

COMORANT: Any favorite run?

MORTIS: what was it called, the witch? or thorns? that one
that one for sure

COMORANT: That was a three stage route yeah
same

MORTIS: and NOT because i'm a furry it was just really fucking good

COMORANT:  GOD
I WASN'T THINKING IT

MORTIS: it was just really good. that one was very interesting, and had a lot of symbolism about, like...learning to trust someone, and how refusal of that trust towards others leads inevitably to harm and suffering- both of yourself and another person
also the imagery in the thorns chapter goes hard as hell

COMORANT: Honestly it was good enough that I would've been more than satisifed with that as a stopping point

MORTIS: yeah we kind of fucked up by having the fury as our stopping point. or whatever the third chapter got called for that
literally como was like "ok we're gonna be good on this last run. we're gonna be non-violent" and then immediately it all goes to shit and we get one of the most visceral runs in the game that also involves horrible macro and crushing bullshit

COMORANT: I think the Fury route fit as a nice escalation into the endgame but god going from the heartbreaking nature of the transition from The Witch into The Thorn was like
oof

MORTIS: i think the fury route definitely impacted me in weird ways, though. we went from the thorns route being something that made our chest squeeze and go "oh i really want this to work out for these people" to "oh god this sucks. oh god this Sucks" and honestly, that's not a bad thing- it really emphasized how a different background and life events can change a person, which again, resonates very heavily with plural stuff considering it feels like sometimes system members can splinter off in radically different ways

COMORANT: See I didn't realize walking back into the basement after considering leaving just has your character and the princess instantly try to kill each other

MORTIS: WE SHOULD HAVE JUST LEFT

COMORANT: WE SHOULD'VE JUST LEFT

MORTIS: accidentally making the most pissed off god of vengeance
i think i literally said to just leave (after getting you into this situation in the first place)

COMORANT: Okay to be fair it was self defense
she did threaten us before it got fucky
and then we killed her after she threatened to explode everything

MORTIS: and then she killed us in like. the worst ways possible

COMORANT: YEAH

MORTIS: genuinely i think we have to turn up the content warning level for this game up after seeing the fury route. there is some SERIOUSLY graphic stuff in this

COMORANT: Yeah
it's the combo of like
graphic + oh god the vibes are hateful fuck fuck fuck fuck aaaa

MORTIS: yeah. especially whiplash-y after a route where you escape and there's a sense of hope and beauty to it
but that's just what you get when you play this. personally i recommend doing it like how us and como did, with a friend at your side to help you keep track of what decisions you've made
but that said, you'd be fine just having a solo experience too. it just helps to have an emotional support buddy who can also keep track of how things are going for you. a copilot

COMORANT: To be fair, I think playing a visual novel alone is a rite of passage of the genre
usually for reasons
reasons
I'm just saying you don't want a friend there when Neco Arc's honkers are on screen

MORTIS: this is not one of those visual novels for most people

COMORANT: It's not

MORTIS: i did comment during the fury route that there would probably be very scary people into this one

COMORANT: Yeah no that's intense

MORTIS: all in all, like...this is one of those games that i have a hard time recommending, but not because it's bad, because it's Definitely Not
i feel like i can recommend it as a plural game. i definitely do- but it's also one where you can't go into it expecting a happy, calm narrative. it has a lot of really upsetting stuff mixed in with the dark comedy aspects and you will see characters mutilate themselves- in first person no less- and kill each other and go through mental hell. it is a really brutal game, but maybe you like that kind of thing and are interested in seeing it done in novel and fresh ways. if that's the case, i think you'd like it.

the other thing that i'm not suuuure how much i want to talk about even in the spoiler section is that there is a lot of philosophical stuff, especially towards the end and in the long quiet sections. it was super interesting and i believe well done, but at the same time i really want to let that stuff cook in my brain for a bit.

COMORANT: Honestly I have my thoughts but uh
hardcore spoilers?

MORTIS: yeah. i kind of dont even want to spoil it
it feels like that, if nothing else, needs to be experienced firsthand or at the very least through a very good playthrough

COMORANT: Yeah no
I will say a massive theme as well is trust
it's an information game where the kindest routes are built on trust
And a lot of the strife comes from the difficulties of navigating a dangerous situation when you are surrounded by people who are purposefully limiting your information on such heavy choices
the only one you real really trust consistent from playthrough to playthrough is the voices really kind of just being a pool of suggestions like a meeting room of shoulder angels

MORTIS: not just shoulder angels but massively traumatized ones who still have very raw and volatile emotions. after all, they're "you's" that died
i could gush about how plural coded this game is lmao

COMORANT: I have to honestly say I adore the performance around the Hero voice
There's a few moments with him that got to me
I think both actors do a good job with the game's concept

MORTIS: he's great. all of the voice performances are great but the hero voice really hits the perfect "i am here to be the hero until it gets FUCKED and then i am OUT" that you really need for the guy who is there with you in every run

COMORANT: He's sort of a anchor

MORTIS: he really is
the narrator is a lot of fun, too. we've heard this game get compared to stanley parable a few times and...yeah, we can see it. honestly makes us want to go back to that game, we haven't played it in years and haven't seen the new update stuff.

COMORANT: I think as a whole the game really managed to get a lot of feelings out of me and it'll stick with me for a good while to fully process

MORTIS: yeah. we might return to this thread honestly when we've had some time to let it percolate

i think along with the thorns route, the first two routes we did really stuck with us- or more specifically xavier, who was fronting at the time. i don't want to get into ~messy details of our personal life~ but there was a very big aspect in both the spectre route and....i dont remember what the second run we did's route was called, but the one where the narrator took control of the front for the first time- where suicide in order to kill someone else in the same body took place.

it was a really visceral thing to happen not only once but Twice and it really got to him- but at the same time it was really meaningful for us, because like- that was an aspect of our experiences when we were younger and never see talked about. most people would probably just take it from a shock angle, which you could argue for this case as well- but it hit

COMORANT: Yeah honestly I might be down to do a follow up here

MORTIS: it'll definitely also need a revisit when we do other routes. there is a LOT to uncover in this game and chew on

COMORANT: Yeah. We might poke at this some more so stay tuned for that? And maybe even do one where we talk about the game's grander endings.

MORTIS: honestly yeah. we should probably save that for when we've 100%'d it
god knows what kind of contexts we're missing

COMORANT: Yeah.

MORTIS: so...yeah. that's our initial impressions of slay the princess. super scattered, but it's...really good. it can definitely veer into shock territory though, so please watch out if your brain doesn't agree with seeing really scary shit without any fucking warning lmao
BUT
there is a CW list on the slay the princess website, which i will have linked earlier in the post with any luck

COMORANT: Absolutely recommend it if this catches your attention at all and you can take rougher content.