Truly interactive storytelling
Finished: 2026/03/25
Slay the Princess is a great demonstration of how games can be used for creating an interactive story. Many games try to give players the illusion of choice, prompting them with decisions that may seem impactful but do not actually matter. Slay the Princess is different: every decision, even the seemingly mundane, can drastically change the path you take, giving players the impression that every action will impact the narrative.
Evidently, this is an illusion: the game has a planned story with predetermined paths, and many choices do not matter, but it succeeds in making you an active part of the narrative. The sheer number of possibilities is dazzling and really builds up to this feeling.
One point I was slightly disappointed by is that not all vessels require a true resolution to finish their storyline. The game is at its best when you have to understand the vessel to figure out how to deal with it and, in some sense, build a relationship with it, making the outcome feel earned. For example, the endings I got for “The Princess and the Dragon” and “The Thorn” felt amazing due to the buildup, while my ending for “The Grey” felt unearned.
I would prefer if the game had more failure states to provide the friction necessary to guide players toward better resolutions. However, this clearly goes against the developers' intent, as it would introduce ‘wrong’ choices, something the game explicitly states do not exist.
Slay the Princess is a beautiful game that does something many games pretend to do: create a truly interactive story.