Horror visual novel slash dating sim Slay the Princess launched just over a week ago. In that time, the indie title from team-of-two Black Tabby Games has climbed into the top 100 charts on Steam and garnered over 2,000 Overwhelmingly positive Steam reviews, placing it just shy of the 50th best-rated Steam game of the year.
Given how swamped with new games Steam is on any given day, this is doubly impressive for an indie of Slay‘s size and scale.
Slay the Princess asks you to kill a charming, doe-eyed princess who pleads for her life, or risk the end of the world in horrific visual novel format. “She will do everything in her power to stop you,” the Steam page says, “She’ll charm, and she’ll lie, and she’ll promise you the world, and if you let her, she’ll kill you a dozen times over. You can’t let that happen. Don’t forget, the fate of the world rests on your shoulders.”
Based on the trailer for Slay the Princess, the unassuming-looking princess is less Cinderella and more terrifying eldritch being at heart – the perfect setup for a spooky story filled with difficult choices and chilling storytelling. And clearly, the dark and haunting vibes are really doing it for players, if the reviews on Steam are anything to go by.
After wading through the hundreds of “I can fix her” positive reviews (honestly fair) on the Slay the Princess Steam page, there are plenty of other glowing takes, with some players calling it the “Stanley Parable of the Dark Souls of visual novels,” while another user said: “This isn’t a game. This is an experience. A shockingly terrible, beautifully crafted, horrific, uncertain experience.”
One standout player review reads: “I have been stabbed, beaten, strangled, eaten, drowned, stabbed again, possessed, tormented, sliced, diced, sliced and diced through the multiverse and still ended with a more heartwarming ending than I expected. 10/10 Will play again.”
The horror title from the married duo behind Scarlet Hollow is fully voice-acted to really up the creepy vibes and make your difficult choice of whether to do your job and slay the princess or fall for her charms (and probably die horrifically) even more confronting – and everyone’s frothing it. It’s worth noting that while Slay the Princess sits comfortably in 70th best-selling game on Steam this week, that’s based on revenue, and given it’s selling for just over $20AUD, clearly there’s a whole heap of gamers getting stuck into this moral cesspit right now.
I support women’s rights and women’s wrongs – so you’ll probably catch me dying repeatedly as I continually free the princess. I’m a sucker, after all.
Lead Image Credit: Black Tabby Games
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