Given my love for clever writing, and games where you’re given an opportunity to go against the grain, it should be no surprise that I’m a big fan of The Stanley Parable. While, on the surface, it felt like a pretty simple game with a narrator who would just summarize what your character was doing, the fun in it was best realized by being determined to do anything else instead, subverting expectations and finding your own path, no matter where that would lead. When starting up Slay the Princess it quickly becomes apparent that it was designed with a very similar concept, just rather than being a more action-oriented affair it is more narratively driven… and quite a bit darker to boot.

Starting out, the narrator gives you pretty simple and clear instructions. Your task is to kill a Princess who has been chained up in the basement of a small cabin. While in a normal game you could just accept this sort of assignment as your new quest, and then diligently carry it out, in this case right off the bat you’re instead given quite a number of options. These range from simply choosing to move forward, to asking some clarifying questions, to even being somewhat aggressive about challenging the direction you’ve been given. Once you get to the cabin, things escalate further, with you having the option to take a dagger that’s on the table or to go to see her unarmed. Every choice you make absolutely has a consequence and will alter the demeanor of the Princess as well as the nature of your conversation. As you may have guessed, aside from your relationship with the Narrator being a bit complicated, you’ll very quickly realize that perhaps they may have been right about the Princess as well… and so a pretty uncertain journey begins.

The thing is, you failing or somehow succeeding in your task is only the beginning… as you’ll once again find yourself starting back on the same path, being tasked once again with doing the same thing. However, while most of the details and dialogue are the same, there are some differences. You may have new options, the tone of the Narrator and the Princess will likely have evolved, and you’ll now begin to have new voices of certain types of heroes trying to tell you what to do as well. Where everything goes and how it ends is for you to discover, and if you’re like me and are fascinated by smart and effective storytelling, it’s absolutely a game you should check out. Not only is the writing both brilliant and funny, but the hand-drawn animation is also quite perfect and sometimes even downright graphic to a degree. The fun is in the discovery, taking a chance and pushing in one direction or another to see how things go, or even perhaps trying to toe the line and go down the middle, it’s really up to your whims and where you think you’d like the story to go. While on paper the concept may seem quite simple, in execution it’s an absolutely fantastic journey to be consistently surprised by.