Slay The Princess

Slay the Princess was provided by Serenity Forge for review. Thank you!

This review was created using an LCD Steam Deck. OLED testing will be carried out at a later date.

Slay The Princess is a hallmark of how visual novels should be made. While they are not my favorite genre to play, they have grown on me over the past few years. Steins Gate, The Hungry Lamb, Scarlet Hollow, and 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim are great visual novels that have recently caught my attention. Black Tabby Games, developer of Slay the Princess, are masters of their craft, and this team might have the best visual novels on the market today.

While Slay the Princess was released in 2023, they released an update titled Pristine Cut last month. Calling it an update is not doing it justice, as it adds more of everything. There are new endings, more events, new characters, and thousands more voiced lines of dialogue. This was the perfect opportunity to try it again on my Steam Deck.

Slay The Princess gives you one goal. You're on a path in the woods, and a cabin is at the end of that path. And in the basement of that cabin is a Princess. You must kill her. If not, the world ends. The tale is narrated by a witty voice who took things personally whenever I questioned his authority. Why do I have to kill her? Why does it have to be me? Do I get rewarded for my exceptional assassination skills? And more importantly, why is a ‘Voice Of The Hero?’ narrating my inner turmoil? There are many characters and story branches, but with the incredible voice acting, they are all brought to life, and each path feels fulfilling.

The visual design deserves praise. Every scene and interior is lovingly hand-drawn by award-winning novelist Abby Howard. The world feels like it's living and breathing, while the excellent music adds to the atmosphere. This dark, disturbing game holds nothing back, but even in the height of horror, I was drawn into the world Black Tabby Games have created.

The Princess herself might be one of my favorite video game characters overall. Every choice you make has consequences, some of which might not be applicable immediately. There are many options to explore and discover more about the world, and things get increasingly weird. She is dangerous, bloodthirsty, and fragile. Can I kill her? What is the Narrator doing? After some branching paths, things begin to make sense. The world is strange for a good reason, and learning more about it left me enthralled, desperate to uncover more with every branching path. Things become clear a few hours in, leaving you on your journey of death and rebirth.

I very rarely cry from a video game. I am the kind of player who enjoys things such as my Rimworld prison colonies of death or massacring peasants in Kingdom Come Deliverance. A few games have made me cry, and Slay The Princess has joined the list. It’s a chilling and intelligent take on what death means, and each chapter made me want to keep the story moving along through my teary eyes.

These emotions play into the music, which is a rare thing to commend for a visual novel. Slay The Princess has some of the most memorable and beautiful music designs. The soundtracks match every theme and scene wonderfully, and when combined with the narrative, it heightens the emotional impact. The critically acclaimed Skyrim Mod, Enderal, still has the best music for me, but this is right up there.

That does not mean it is always an emotional heartbreaker! Many scenes had me laughing from disbelief. The Narrator's antics, combined with all the players' personalities voicing their opinions on why every action you’re taking is wrong, lead to hilarious fights.

Some games are best to experience blind, and this is one you won't regret diving into.

Slay the Princess - Steam Deck Performance

According to Valve, Slay the Princess is classified as Verified, with ProtonDB giving it a Native rating. In my experience, this is very accurate.

For transparency's sake, I played Slay The Princess in two phases. The first was for a few hours earlier this year for a Steam event, and the rest for this review after the stable Steam OS 3.6.19 update in October. This ‘stable update’ has caused several problems on my Steam Deck. While I cannot fault the game on the Steam Deck, the performance at low wattage TDP is considerably worse than it used to be because of the OS update. These performance regressions are on the LCD Steam Deck model and do not happen to everyone. Hopefully, Valve can fix the issue.

Fortunately, it runs out of the box on the Steam Deck, with solid controls and performance across the board. While visual novels are usually fairly lightweight, Slay The Princess has some pretty impressive animations and high-fidelity artwork, requiring more power than most. The Steam Deck is more than up to the task, and it chews through even the most demanding scenes on stock settings (Unlocked TDP, 60hz Refresh Rate, 60FPS lock). There are no graphical settings to tweak, and we are limited on how much we can change. Apart from minor drops in the more intensive animated scenes, it is as good as possible.

Despite the enormous amount of text, it is easy to read on the Steam Deck, and Black Tabby Games knows how to make their novels enjoyable whether you are reading the dialogue or listening to it. There are plenty of accessibility options available, too.

The only potential issue I have found is that the controller sometimes makes it hard to see what button you are pressing. Sometimes, I found I was accidentally going into the settings menu when I intended to click Autoplay. However, this is a minor quibble and has not derided my opinion of the game so far. It also might take a while to load on the Steam Deck, as I experienced longer loading times since the most recent Stable update. Again, this is a minor issue that is probably unrelated to the game.

Slay The Princess is a little more power-hungry than other visual novels I have played on the Deck, but it is still fairly efficient regarding battery life. Its overall power drain is hard to pin down as it fluctuates between 9 and 11 watts without any adjustments. That still translated into over 4 hours of battery life with the LCD Steam Deck, an impressive average.

Battery Saver Settings

Visual novels are a genre I like to play on the go or during long Steam Deck sessions without plugging it into a charger every few hours. Despite our few in-game options, Slay The Princess scales fairly well on lower TDPs, although not as well as it used to. I’m considering the current tests the norm unless Valve fixes them.

It maintains fairly stable at these settings with a 40hz refresh rate, 4-watt TDP, and framerate locked to 40FPS. A couple of intensive moments might cause a few frame dips, but these are minor and only last a few seconds. The most I experienced was transitioning into the cabin, but this happened on my RTX 3060 laptop, so it is not something to worry about. This averaged a power draw of 8 watts. The LCD Steam Deck model gives a respectable battery life of up to 5 hours.

Previously, I could play on a 3W TDP with no frame drops and an average power draw of 6 watts (for nearly 7 hours of battery life!). Still, for the best balance between performance and battery life, a 4W TDP is the best compromise because the power savings aren't significant.

Accessibility

Slay The Princess is available in English, French, Italian, German, Spanish- - Spain, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese - Brazil, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Spanish - Latin America, and Traditional Chinese.

You can change the font size, toggle a few font styles, and change the line spacing. There is also text-to-speech support with a few options, including high-contrast text. If you find flickering images uncomfortable, you can turn them off. Overall, there are has impressive customization options.

Conclusion

Had this game debuted in 2024, this would likely win my Game Of The Year award. Even when not on sale, its base price of $17.99 is a steal for the quality of what’s on offer. There have been a few minor bugs, but these were so infrequent that they were barely worth mentioning. Chilling, brilliant, and disturbing, Slay The Princess is in its best condition yet with the arrival of the Pristine Cut.

Our review is based on the PC version of this game.

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