Sometimes I slayed her, other times she slayed me. There was even a time when she’d taken the form of animals, circling around me in the darkness as if I were her prey. Sometimes the princess would just appear as a very tall version of herself towering over me, while at others she would be a vicious, blade-bearing terror. Even if I wasn’t mesmerized by the existentialism and stellar prose of Black Tabby Games’ writing, the reveal of what kind of horrific monstrosity the princess would appear as on each loop was motivation enough to keep running down the stairs into the dungeon again and again. I pick different dialogue options that determine which version of the princess I’ll find in the dungeon, and by the end, I’d brought her so many variants that she had transcended the understanding the narrator had spouted off at the beginning of each cycle. She asks that I continue to go through the loop to bring her new perspectives, and so I do it. She grows beyond what the narrator has told her she is, but acknowledges that certain parts of her are inherent, and others are determined by what happens to her in a loop. She acknowledges that each version of her is her, but by experiencing all these realities, she is able to gain a greater understanding of who she is and who she can be. Each possibility is a different version of who she could be based on the slightest alterations to how I reach her in the dungeon. The princess is essentially absorbing each variation of her we meet in these time loops to find new understanding. In this in-between space, Slay the Princess gets existential. This loop repeats itself, with the princess appearing in different, terrifying forms each time, until the princess and I find ourselves in a strange pocket dimension between the loops, able to talk without the narrator there to tell us what to do. There’s a mirror on the wall that disappears when I try to look into it, the stairwell isn’t quite as I remember it, and the princess has evolved into a monstrous version of herself. But nevertheless, I head back into the cabin and find it’s not quite as I remember it. Every question I ask about the apparent loop I’m in sparks more confusion between me, the narrator, and the literal voices in my head. I wake up back outside the cabin, with the narrator once again telling me I must slay the princess and save the world. As we both bled out on the floor of the dungeon, we were caught in the loop of our creator’s design. Then I made the mistake of removing the blade, and she stabbed me with her own weapon. Instead, I walked right up to her, used the blade I’d picked up on the way in, and stabbed her without hesitation. I had already tried to talk to her in the original demo, so I thought I’d shake up my strategy this time and not entertain having a conversation at all. There’s a knife sitting on a table, but little else hints at my grim task until I descend the stairs and find the princess chained up. How is she going to destroy the world? Does she even want to? Does her apparent capability to destroy the world mean she must die?Īll of these questions spin through my head as I enter the cabin. You’re told all this by a narrator who refuses to elaborate on some of the most basic information. It’s up to you to slay her and save everyone. You’re thrust into a situation with no context, walking through a forest toward a cabin where a princess who allegedly will destroy the world is being kept at bay by a single chain around her wrist. Slay the Princess appears pretty single-minded in the beginning.
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