Good, good shit. I really love this game, I think only once a year do I get to say a piece of art is the exact thing I've been writing in the written/performance format for years but done five times as skillfully. Last year, the thing that did that to me was Phantom of the Paradise. I mean really, it disabled my ability to act. I stopped caring about making art entirely, and I just wanted to watch and study Phantom of the Paradise. I was forced, from it's sheer resonance with my person, to become a historian and not an architect, if that makes sense to you.

This piece was instead inspired. It's so very simple in every one of it's aspects, and yet playing it instantly made me addicted to it's narrative rhymes. I replayed it up to nine times to get every little achievement I could in it. What was at first a quest to find more adornments to dress my already positive opinion with instead became, fittingly for the game's content, an internalized discourse. Nothing as simple as "what it means?". But rather: "What do I do now that these tools are fresh in my mind?".

To cut back on that talk about narrative format and metaphorical interpretation, which I am by no means equipped to make an interesting thoughtpiece on, I instead want to implore you to play this simply for it's variety alone. Visual novels tend to have this effect- when the gameplay structure is so simple you end up having more options to vary the narrative content with. I played this game nine times over. I cried at the fourth and eighth time, but that isn't to say my experience wasn't mentally enriching those other times. Slay The Princess exceeds in variation. Just when you thought the story could only go so many ways, you accidentally discover a new branch and you can't help but gleam with joy at the opportunity. And the best part is you know it won't suddenly 'end well' this time, either. In less clever games, they would describe this game's endings as a series of fail states with no true 'good ending'. But as a player, you learn quickly there's no way to actually do 'right'. You are simply experimenting, essentially playing with a faux-sentient being in a tragical romance sandbox. This relationship will always end with tragedy, and you have to 'write' interesting ways for it to fail. The narrative instantly absolves you of any guilt, but if you're inclined to replay it over and over you're likely to care at some level anyway.

I love writing, and I hope you can love it too. At the very least, it's nice to see some playful writing like this even if you're not so invested in the concept.