Slay the Princess (Visual Novel)

"Do you believe that? Do you believe I'm some kind of... monster?"

Whatever horrors you may find in these dark spaces, have heart and see them through.
There are no premature endings. There are no wrong decisions.
There are only fresh perspectives and new beginnings.
This is a love story.

Slay the Princess is a Ren'Py-based Psychological Horror Visual Novel/Dating Sim/Adventure Game developed by Black Tabby Games, the creators of Scarlet Hollow.

The premise is simple, as the Narrator (voiced by Jonathan Sims) explains: You're a hero on a quest, walking through the woods. At the end of the path lies a cabin. In the basement of that cabin lies a Princess (voiced by Nichole Goodnight). Your job is to slay the princess, otherwise the world will end. The Narrator makes sure to emphatically warn you that the Princess is a quite cunning creature and should not be trusted; she will do anything to find a weakness she can exploit in order to dissuade you from your task. She will lie, cheat, offer bargains and bribes, and mix lies with the truth if it means getting an angle on you.

Of course, not everything is as it seems. The choices you make will wildly change the premise. And throughout, you will realize that while the Narrator may not have your best interests at heart, you can't fully trust the titular Princess herself.

Because if you do decide to slay her, or try to keep her locked away, she WILL make you regret it.

Oh, and whatever you do, don't fall in love with her.

A demo was released on Steam on August 1st, 2022, and a longer one released in March 2023. The game was released in full on October 23rd, 2023. A free expansion called "The Pristine Cut" was announced on December 16th, 2023, which adds three new routes, reworks three existing routes, and adds an entirely new ending.

The Pristine Cut was released on October 24th, 2024 for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch with a physical release published by Serenity Forge.

WARNING: Because of the reveal-heavy nature of this story, some tropes will tell you about what happens simply by their existence on this page. Proceed with caution.

You're on a path in the woods. And at the end of that path is a trope list.

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Tropes A to L

100% Completion: "The Pristine Cut" adds a "Memories" gallery that keeps track of your different routes and encounters. In order to complete the gallery, you must experience all of the possible choices in Chapter I, Chapter II, Chapter III, and the finale, encounter every vessel, and experience every ending.
Alien Geometries: While not dwelled upon, the Cabin's layout makes very little sense. The windows don't match up internally and externally, the stairs to the basement don't seem to have anywhere to fit based on the outside, and the basement always has a window to the surface even when it should be deep underground. This becomes even stranger in later chapters, where the cabin's exterior remains identical even when internally it's a sprawling temple, grandiose manor or burnt out ruin (among other things).
Allegedly Optimistic Ending: Invoked, as it's clearly not intended as a proper good ending aside from In-Universe. If you slay the Princess without a second thought, you get an eternity in the cabin, the world outside having seemingly vanished along with the princess, and accepting this fate results in the "Good Ending" where the Narrator gives you a poorly-drawn card congratulating you for saving the world. Unfortunately, only the Narrator would probably consider it to be a good ending, due to his phobia of death.
Amazonian Beauty: If you attack the Princess, it results in a Mutual Kill where you land a few hits but she still gets the upper hand. You get the Voice of the Stubborn, who wants nothing more than a rematch with the Princess. When you reach her, she's now a demonic-looking Blood Knight who shares your excitement in wanting to fight again. She's also much taller and more muscular than she was before, and the ending card has her with her fist in her palm with a Slasher Smile as she looks forward to your rematch. Attempt to outmaneuver her, and you get the Eye of the Needle as your Chapter III Princess, who is effectively an amplified version of the Adversary who is even bigger, stronger, and obsessed with fighting you.
Ambiguously Human: The Princess herself is not all she appears to be, for better or for worse. For such a slender young woman, she certainly takes a lot of punishment if you're trying to slay her. And she's a lot stronger than a woman who has been locked in an isolated cabin for who knows how long should be. This includes the fact that in several routes, she can lose one of her hands, and she's still a massive physical threat capable of rupturing your organs with just a few hits. In other routes, she is very clearly an Eldritch Abomination, with the basement itself as some kind of Eldritch Location. In the full release of the game, it's eventually revealed that each Princess you meet is a small part of The Shifting Mound, the entity who resides in the Long Quiet. Getting to the real ending requires going through five routes, i.e encountering five versions of the Princess that The Shifting Mound eventually absorbs.
Ambiguous Situation:
- While less so than the demo, with at least the broad strokes of what's going on being made clear, there's a huge amount of open questions regarding how the construct actually works. Our main sources of information are an Unreliable Narrator who's demonstrably prone to both deception and ignorance, and an Eldritch Abomination who by her own admission is not good at expressing truth with words. Combined with the number of unanswered plot points (what exactly are the mirror and the Pristine Blade? How did the Creator set this up? What happens after the various endings?), there's still plenty of open questions regarding exactly what's going on. This is actually an Invoked Trope: Word of God is that they do have a description of how the Construct works and definite answers to all these questions... but they'll never release them, because they prefer that each player come up with their own explanations.
- The whole premise runs on this. How and why was the Princess locked away? Why does her death prevent The End of the World as We Know It? Why does the Narrator have so much power over you? If the Narrator can change things around based on what you do, why is he having you slay the Princess? Should you trust the Princess, the Narrator, or neither of them? Talking with them doesn't provide any real answers, due to the Princess being unable or unwilling to give the answers, and the Narrator stubbornly telling you to remain focused on the task at hand.
An Arm and a Leg: If you free the Princess, you either cut her arm off or she chews through it to be free from her shackles. Either way, the Princess doesn't react at all. When the player asks about alternatives to amputation:
Princess: flatly That's fine, I can lose an arm.
And I Must Scream: The Princess is the personification of change, trapped in a single unchanging loop. She's in agony, and the one constant among all her forms — even the otherwise passive Damsel and hopeless Prisoner — is that she's desperate to escape. In the Nightmare route, you get a glimpse of her situation from her perspective, and it's one of the most horrifying and tragic moments of the whole game.
A lonely soul in a room by itself weeping. It lives for eighty years and then it's gone. And then it's there again.
Animation Bump:
- While most of the game uses heavily Limited Animation, the reworked ending added in the End of Everything update features fully animated cuts of each of the vessels you brought to the Shifting Mound emerging from her Body of Bodies.
- The Beast route also has its own unique animated cuts, with one of the Beast pouncing as the player narrowly dodges her and another of her swallowing the player whole.
Anti-Frustration Features:
- The game features different levels of scrolling for various elements on the screen to give the illusion of 3-D movement — things closer to you will move more as you move your mouse around the screen, while things that are farther away will move less. However, if you find this distracting or it causes motion sickness, you can turn it off. The game also tells you this when you boot it up, so anyone who would have trouble with those effects can turn it off before it causes them any trouble.
- The "End of Everything" update changes the arguments you make against the Shifting Mound and her vessels. Namely, clarifying what specifically you are arguing, such as asserting your independence, appealing to your shared humanity, or rejecting her authority.
- "The Pristine Cut" update adds a gallery after you beat the game that keeps track of the choices you made, as well as give hints to access alternate outcomes and endings.
- If you decide to slay the deconstructing Damsel, you immediately unlock the artwork for every level of deconstruction instead of having to do it over and over again.
Apocalypse How: In the full game, should you accept the offer from the Princess, something like this occurs. She as the Shifting Mound, and you as the Long Quiet ascend to godhood and explore the multiverse together. Downplayed in that the Shifting Mound, a personification of transformation, death and rebirth, doesn't explicitly end the world so much as she enables it to one day end. Or even possibly just end what it was to become something new.
Apocalypse Maiden: The Narrator certainly insists that the Princess is this, and implies that she'll end the world regardless of whether or not she intends to or even knows how, but refuses to elaborate as to how or provide any proof that she can. The Spectre route brings up the possibility that she may instead be a Barrier Maiden, as you can note that the world outside the cabin seemed to vanish after you killed her. The truth ends up being a little more complicated. After going through five routes, (and meeting five different Princesses) the Narrator reveals that the real Princess (the entity absorbing the others at the end of each route) is "the Shifting Mound", the personification of, among other things, transformation, death and rebirth. She was imprisoned in the construct by His Creator to keep all that she represents locked out of the rest of existence.
Apologetic Attacker: Leaving the knife behind and attempting to free the princess in Chapter I will cause the Narrator to drop the knife into the basement anyway and force you to try and kill her with it. Holding back for long enough allows the princess to recognize you're being controlled, take the knife out of your hand, and kill you to relieve you of your brainwashing. She sobs and apologizes over and over as she stabs you, especially since her lack of experience with knives causes your death to be more drawn-out and painful than necessary.
Arc Words
- In all routes: "Everything goes dark, and you die."
- In 'The Nightmare' Route: "Heart. Lungs. Liver. Nerves."
- After a vessel is claimed by the Shifting Mound, and the latter tells you more about her: "Do not mourn her." Also, "She asks that I tell you to remember her. You won't."
- Many of the things the Narrator says before you enter the basement he will go out of his way to say in almost every chapter. In particular, describing the blade as "Your implement", claiming that "You'll need it if you want to do this right", and noting that "It would be difficult to slay the princess and save the world without a weapon."
- When entering the basement in many routes, the narrator describes the entrance to the basement and ends saying "If the Princess lives here, slaying her would probably be doing her a favor", even in routes like 'The Damsel' or 'The Tower', in which the basement is not as bad as in other routes. Him admitting the "basement" in 'Happily Ever After' is actually very fancy and livable is one of the earliest signs something's deeply wrong with this situation.
Art Shift: In The Damsel route the princess starts out drawn similar to her original style, just more radiant and conventionally beautiful. However, if after rescuing her you ask her about what she wants to do with herself and keep pressing the matter as she insists over and over that all she wants is to make you happy, her art will continually become more and more simplistic until she resembles a crude mockery of herself, emphasizing how she's become shaped into an extremely basic character with no traits beyond the bare minimum necessary for the player's wish fulfillment.
Attack on the Heart: Every successful murder of the Princess is one.
Author Avatar: Literally the in-universe case for the Narrator. In the ending, he explains that he's a construct based on the Creator, a man who created the story the protagonist and the Princess lives in.
Autobots, Rock Out!: Both the Adversary's and the Fury's themes are pretty much badass with electric guitars if you meet them, and even moreso if you fight the latter. There's also the Apotheosis' theme that combines electric guitars with percussion and symphony and One-Woman Wail if you meet her, and becomes more awesome if you fight her.
Back from the Dead: In all routes except the very brief "Good Ending", Chapter I ends with the Hero's death, only for Chapter II to begin with them in the forest again, no worse for wear and wondering how they're still alive. And if the Princess also dies in Chapter I, she comes back for Chapter II as well, eager to reference how you'd killed her the previous time. She does remain dead in the Spectre route, but she still is able to fulfill her usual role, as a ghost.
The Bad Guy Wins: Whoever you consider to be the Bad Guy. There are endings where the Narrator successfully traps you in the Cabin and sets the multiverse into eternal stasis, and where the Princess escapes and does indeed bring about the destruction of all reality.
Beast Man: In some of the routes where you attack the Princess, she suddenly sprouts claws and fangs to engage you. She becomes even more beastlike and feral in some other routes.
Be Careful What You Wish For:
- If the princess does turn out to be an actively malicious or dangerous force, the Narrator can get spitefully smug. Most directly on the Wraith route, if you ask him to help as an Undead Abomination of a princess breaks your legs and tries to possess your body, he spitefully refuses on the ground that he thought you wanted to free the princess.
- This is the central theme of Happily Ever After, with multiple characters having their dreams come true: The Smitten gets to spend eternity with the Princess, the Damsel devotes herself fully to making her beloved happy, the Opportunist gets a life of status and luxury and the Narrator gets his world without death or change. All of them regret it. The Smitten devolves into a monstrous creature who exists as nothing more than a shadow on the wall, the Damsel is eternally miserable due to having given up the chance to achieve her dream, the Opportunist is going mad with boredom with nothing to strive for, and the Narrator sees how existentially empty life in his new world would truly be.
Benevolent Abomination: It's eventually revealed that every version of the Princess is just one part of the Shifting Mound, the entity of change that was split into pieces by someone trying to bring an end to death itself. Despite her bizarre true form and the fact that she can indeed end the universe, she is genuinely in love with the protagonist and believes that the change she embodies is a good thing, or at least a necessary one; She is birth and growth as much as she is death and ruin, and believes that a finite existence is needed to give existence meaning.
Biological Mashup: Judging from how she refers to herself in the plural, the Princess in the "The Stranger" route is a fusion of all the Princesses from the additional cabins the Narrator spawned.
Big Bad: The titular Princess, according to the Narrator, will destroy the world if she is allowed to escape the cabin. In truth, the Narrator himself is equally antagonistic as a fragment of both's creator; he created the Princess in the first place, making him as much responsible for endangering the world, and trapped you and the Princess inside his world, so that you could slay her (the embodiment of change and death), uncaring that this would doom the world and yourself to an eternal stasis. The ending gives you the choice to side with either of them or reject both and come up with another solution.
The Big Damn Kiss: It is possible to pull this off with the Thorn version of the Princess once she is freed, provided the player chose to flirt with the Witch in the previous chapter, and therefore have the Voice of the Smitten with them. The Narrator is absolutely indignant about it and makes no secret of it, but realizes that even he has to follow narrative convention when it comes to these things and so breaks out the Purple Prose, even if at first he does so with clenched teeth and lays on the sarcasm as thick as possible. The Voices pick up on this and gang up to call him out on it, telling him not to ruin the moment and give its due description, and he begrudgingly acquiesces.
Bigger on the Inside: On certain routes the interior of cabin doesn't conform to its outside dimensions. Its entrance room turns into a tall cathedral during The Tower and The Fury, while its basement where the Princess is becomes a dark endless void during The Nightmare and The Stranger. The cabin for The Wraith becomes a corridor, both longer and narrower than the building outside.
Bird People: The Player Character appears to be an avian-human hybrid, based on what can be seen of him. In every route, you get to see your scaly arm and taloned hand as you try to attack the Princess, and your upper arm also looks like it's sprouting feathers around the shoulder area. In some routes, the Princess refers to you with avian terminology, and the Voice of the Smitten worries about having "a feather out of place" if you try to check the mirror.
Blamed for Being Railroaded: Depending on the order you do each chapter in, how far you take them and which branches (if any) you go through, and whether or not you destroy several routes, you can eventually get to a point where you're prevented from taking certain actions even if you'd like to, making you have to do something else that upsets the Narrator and/or the Princess. For example, if you've already encountered the Spectre, then you won't be able to get the quick kill in Chapter 1 again, and the Chapter 2 Narrator will blame you for not following his instructions perfectly. Justified as the Shifting Mound limits your choices and stops you from revisiting old paths because she wants to see new perspectives, and since you temporarily forget her whenever she sends you back you can't explain your actions to anyone.
Blatant Lies:
- Some from the Steam page's Features list:
  No, the Princess isn't a cosmic horror. She's just an ordinary human Princess, and you can definitely slay her as long as you put your mind to it.
  No time loops. Don't be ridiculous. Time is a strictly linear concept and it certainly doesn't "loop", whatever that's supposed to mean.
- ...As well as almost all of the dialogue from "The Razor"- for example:
  "Would I just lie to your face and tell you that a thing I remembered happening didn't happen just so I could stab you again? I mean just so I could stab you for the first time."
Blue-and-Orange Morality: Both the main antagonists. The Narrator is disgusted by the very concept of change and death, to the point his "reward" for you slaying the Princess is to trap you for all eternity in a small unchanging cabin. He seems honestly shocked that you might not be grateful for this. The Princess goes to other extreme, seeking only change without consideration for whether they're changes for better or worse. Unlike the Narrator, though, you can convince her to accept a more human moral code and become an unambiguously benevolent force.
Body Motifs:
- Hands. Regardless of which route you take, hands play a part in lots of the more striking images of the game. The player is typically seen just by his hands. The princess can cut off one of her hands to try and break free from her bonds. When interacting with a mirror, the player does so by reaching their hand out to touch the mirror. The Shifting Mound typically shows up as hundreds and hundreds of arms, with hands grasping whichever princess the Mound has control of as an Empty Shell. Whenever the Hero and the Princess show genuine affection for one another, the two of them are more than likely holding hands. Finally, one of the endings has both the Shifting Mound and the Long Quiet embracing their hands together as they enter into eternity.
- Heart. You can kill her via an Attack on the Heart, and in her most vulnerable moments (i.e. the Wounded Wild, Unraveled Apotheosis, Fury), her heart is exposed. She can kill you via the same Attack on the Heart as well (i.e. the proto-Damsel, the Razor) and sometimes, when there's no escape for you either after slaying her (Chapter I, the Nightmare, the Damsel, the Prisoner), or before (when the Beast devours you or the Spectre possesses you), you can plunge the blade into your own heart to escape and move on to the next chapter.
Body of Bodies: The Shifting Mound. When you first meet her, you see multiple arms grabbing onto whatever vessel of the princess you took on that route. Her true form, met at the end of the story, is a beautiful yet grotesque amalgamation of female human forms, including hair that is made up of princesses, and hundreds more grasping upwards towards the shifting mound. From what you can see, the Shifting Mound also has five heads and six arms.
Bookends:
- The story begins with you outside in the safety of the wilderness and stepping into a cabin, your future scary and unknown. Choose to leave with the princess, and the story ends with you and her in the safety of the cabin and stepping into the wilderness, your future scary and unknown... but with reason to hope.
- In the endgame, if you argue with the Shifting Mound over whether to end the world, she will summon the five vessels of the Princess you collected in reverse order, meaning the first vessel you completed will be the last one you argue with.
- The heart of the Shifting Mound will have the personality of the very first Princess you met in Chapter I, including the Stranger if you never went into the cabin. You are also given the same options: slay the Princess (creating a world without death or change), save the Princess (leave the cabin together as mortals), or die (which, in the purest of Book Ends, takes you back to Chapter I to restart the cycle all over again).
- If you manage to complete the game by destroying the Shifting Mound with no help from the voices, the ending concludes with a line you may have heard from the very start of the game, if you chose to wait with her in the void.
  What textures will you weave for yourself to occupy forever?
Borrowed Catchphrase: In the Damsel Route's leadup to "Happily Ever After", after the Smitten rips out your heart to show to the Princess, the Narrator gets to the climax of her reaching out to touch your heart, until the Voice of the Hero says, in his usual Deadpan Snark:
Voice of the Hero: Everything goes dark, and we die?
The Narrator: [Smash to Black] Yes.
- And in The Den, if you lead the Princess out of the crowded tunnel, the Narrator uses his Author Powers to cause a cave-in that will trap and asphyxiate you both in the tunnel before the scene goes to black...
  Voice of the Hero: [in a smug tone] Let me guess. Everything goes dark... and we die?
  [scene fades back in to the Den, holding up the collapsing ceiling and pushing the dirt out of your way]
  The Narrator: [in a shocked reaction] No. Not yet.
- And in the Adversary route, when she delivers a Mercy Kill after you get up twice despite your head getting crushed, we get this:
  Voice of the Hero: Everything goes dark and we die?
  Voice of the Stubborn: [grumbling noises]
  The Narrator: Yes. Something like that.
  Voice of the Stubborn: [more grumbling noises]
  The Narrator: Well? Don't you have something to say?
  Voice of the Stubborn: Yeah. I quit.
Brought Down to Normal: In the And? What happens next? ending, you and the Princess leave the cabin and the Construct, but forgo ascension to godhood.
But Thou Must!:
- The Narrator attempts this in Chapter I should you try to leave the forest instead of going to the cabin. He'll make the path you take lead to the cabin anyway. If you head yet another direction, he'll do the same thing again, and so on, until he starts spawning infinite cabins. But he can't force you to enter, and if you keep being defiant he'll eventually just say that you die after walking for long enough, sending you to Chapter II as usual after your death. Once you get there, you'll see the Narrator has given up on being subtle and erected walls to prevent you from going anywhere besides the cabin.
- If you've played through at least one route, meaning you've met the Shifting Mound, it is impossible to accept the "Good Ending" which occurs after a straightforward murder of the princess in Chapter I. Attempting to do so will nudge the Mound into reminding you that you have a job to perform for her, and from there you must kill yourself to proceed to the Spectre route. You can also try to get the "Good Ending" in the Prisoner route, but the Voice of the Skeptic will call bullshit and force your death to advance to Chapter III.
- There are several moments where you are forced into making a decision, or where your decision making doesn't actually matter:
  - During "The Tower" route, the Princess is a towering goddess with a Compelling Voice. When you approach her, she'll tell you to drop your pristine blade (if you brought it) and prostrate yourself before her. While you have options to resist, these are fruitless, as you'll be forced to do what she wants no matter what you pick. Several other defiant dialogue options in this route are also greyed out to further illustrate the strength of her commands.
  - If you keep trying to run from the Nightmare, eventually the route collapses into a 'Moment of Clarity', after many off-screen attempts at continuing to resist her, and you have no choice but to take her hand and let her be free.
  - In "The Razor" route, your last choice that matters is at the beginning of chapter II, which is taking the blade or not taking it (leading to The Shifting Mound reclaiming The Razor's full body or The Razor's heart, respectively), after that point, every choice leads to The Razor killing you many times until you reach chapter IV, when she completely transforms her body into blades.
  - In the finale, if you bring the Pristine Blade with you to meet the heart of the Shifting Mound, you must use it. Leaving the cabin with the Princess is not an option. You can either use it on her, slaying the Princess and ending death and change, or let her use it on you, restarting the cycle from square one.
- The game does not allow you to take a route that would lead to a Chapter II or III that you've already seen, as the options are either greyed out or simply not present in the list of choices. If you destroy five routes, then you must play the remaining five Chapter IIs if you want to avoid oblivion. The restrictions in Chapter I become increasingly blatant until you're finally left with only one possible outcome on your final loop. You can make it so you're not even able to go to the cabin despite the Narrator's insistence!
Can't Kill You, Still Need You: The Princess cannot leave the cabin on her own. She needs you to let her out. In routes where diplomacy fell apart and she hates your guts, she finds unique ways to get around this, like eating you alive, possessing your body, or having you take her decapitated-but-still-living head with you.
Central Theme:
- The game keeps coming back around to the idea that no personality trait is purely good or bad. Your "worst" Voices will save the day at certain points, and your "best" will ruin everything at others. Even the most nightmarish Princess can have her Hidden Depths discussed by the Shifting Mound, while the most seemingly "good" Princess, the Damsel, is basically a hollow shell outside of wanting to get out. In the endgame, if your first vessel was the Stranger, they'll outright praise your contrarianism, much to the surprise of the Voice of the Contrarian, who describes himself as "the worst part of us".
  Voice of the Hero: I think that's the point. There is no worst part of us.
- The new Chapter III routes introduced in the Pristine Cut share an overarching theme about control (or rather, the lack of the Player's control) through an out-of-body experience of some sort: in the Cage route, the Princess becomes a head in a cage separate from her body, who traps and decapitates you, forcing you to become an observer of the events of the game as your headless bodies continue fighting; in the Happily Ever After route, the Voice of the Smitten gains independence and becomes a Voice in the Princess' head, goading her to create the perfect romantic fantasy for both of you in spite of her obvious and increasing discomfort; and in the Princess and the Dragon route, you become a Voice in the Princess' head and witness the game from her perspective, being forced to see your own body as you try to slay the Princess.
Chekhov M.I.A.: In "Happily Ever After", despite being the Voice that is added when you encounter The Damsel, The Voice of the Smitten is nowhere to be found at first, something that the Voice of the Skeptic brings up should he get added. Turns out, The Smitten somehow forced himself out of your body and has become a shadow on the wall of the Gilded Cage he created for you and the Princess, thus becoming the Arc Villain for the chapter.
Clap Your Hands If You Believe: The Princess' appearance and personality are determined by how the protagonist sees her. Even the very first decision of whether to take the knife changes the way she'll call out to you before she can see you.
Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: Anything the princess says will be in color, while everyone else's speech is in black-and-white. If she's happy with you, the princess will speak with a fuschia-outlined thin text. If she's mad at you, her text will be bold-italiced red.
- In "The Princess and the Dragon", when you are inside of the princess' mind, the other voices inside your body can all speak. If you can't tell them apart from the voices, the Voice of the Hero's subtitles are colored blue, the Voice of the Cold's are grey, and the Voice of the Opportunist's is orange.
Confirmation Bias: A key part of the narrative. The Princess being affected by your perception of her means that if you believe she is something and act on it, she will become that thing. If you believe her to be an innocent Damsel in Distress, she will be an innocent damsel in distress; if you think she is a threat to the world, she will curb stomp you and become a god; if you see her as untrustworthy, she will become untrustworthy, etc.
The Conscience: The Voice of the Hero in every route. He's the one who clashes with the Narrator and questions why you're killing the Princess instead of saving her, and advises you to at least hear her out before making a decision.
The Constant:
- Though other Voices come and go (or have even been Adapted Out from earlier iterations of the game) the Voice of the Hero has been with you since the first demo, is with you on every route, and will be at your side even at the very end of it all.
- The only thing that never changes in each of the loops is the pristine blade in the cabin. It's always in the same place, and it's always in the same shape. It remains pristine even in the route where you kill the Princess without dying, still gleaming long after her body has turned to bones and dust.
- In the March 2023 demo, a mirror gets added to the room where the pristine blade is. If it's pointed out, the Narrator is adamant that there's no mirror. And if you try to clean the mirror, it vanishes.
- There is a broken chain on the wall behind the Princess in every version of the basement. The Voice of the Skeptic even points it out in "The Prisoner" route, though this time it's intact and can even snag you if you get too close.
Cosmic Horror Reveal: The full game contains one of these. After the first encounter with the Princess, the Shifting Mound will grab the Princess out of nowhere, pulling her into the Long Quiet and taking you with her. It's only once you meet the Shifting Mound that she claims that she needs more vessels for you to bring to her.
Cradling Your Kill: The Princess does this to you in the route where you help her and don't take the pristine blade. She sobs as she stabs you over and over again, and holds your hand as you die.
Create Your Own Villain: Shown in several endings where you decide to kill the Princess after befriending her, or decide to leave her in the basement. She embraces her monstrous nature and exacts bloody revenge on you. She even tells you this, claiming that she's perfectly capable of being harmless and friendly... until you left her behind. She can become even worse, depending on the outcomes of your choices.
The Princess: I can be innocent and harmless... if I want to be. Teasing me with fresh air and a chance to finally live freely doesn't inspire me to play nice.
Creator Thumbprint: Abby Howard, co-creator for Slay The Princess, drew a short comic called "The Birdwatcher", in which a human woman goes on a date with a great dark corvid mass with shining eyes that extends a scaly, clawed hand to her.
Curb-Stomp Battle:
- In Chapter I, if you take the knife and never drop it but stall as long as possible before trying to slay the princess, she will knock you down in one blow, kick you a whole bunch, then crush your windpipe. (This puts you on The Tower route.)
- The Razor route has you challenge the princess over and over again, trying a different strategy from a different voice each time, and always getting skewered within seconds.
Cute Monster Girl: Several of the Princess' more monstrous forms are still drawn with her beautiful face intact, or at least try to make her a Little Bit Beastly. However, in some other routes, she's a full-on Eldritch Abomination.
Damsel in Distress: Played with. The Damsel, and the Chapter I events preceding it, play it relatively straight, but with a Deconstruction in, fittingly, the Deconstructed Damsel ending of The Damsel, where you insist that there has to be something more to her, turning her into a strangely horrifying badly-drawn caricature. The Princess' nature is that she is whatever you believe her to be, so the more you believe her to be a shallow, two-dimensional damsel, the more she embodies one, on and on ad nauseam.
Deadpan Snarker: The Narrator is prone to making snarky remarks, particularly directed at the Voice of the Hero. The Voices of the Skeptic and Cold also engage in this, the latter being considerably more "deadpan".
Decomposite Character: In an update from the original demo to the 2023 demo, some characters have been split between new voices and endings.
- In the original demo, "The Fury" ending depicts the Princess as an Amazonian Beauty demonic entity with a clear dominating attitude. She is paired with the Voice of the Broken, who believes fighting her is pointless and you should just submit to her. In the 2023 demo the Fury's design has been given to the Adversary, who is more of a Blood Knight, while her dominant personality and being paired with the Voice of the Broken has been given to the Tower. In full game The Fury is now a separate form of the Princess, that you can unlock either by slaying the Tower or disappointing the Adversary.
- You could unlock "The Beast" ending by doing anything perceived as a betrayal by the Princess. In the 2023 demo depending on your exact approach to said betrayal, you can get two endings and two forms of the Princess. The Witch shares the Little Bit Beastly aspect of the original Beast, while the name has been given to a much more animalistic and monstrous form of the Princess.
- "The Damsel" ending made the Voice of the Hero fall in love with the Princess, with the Voice of the Doubting taking his role in second-guessing the situation. In the 2023 version of "The Damsel" the Voice of the Hero is the skeptical one, but is paired with the Voice of the Smitten, who is head over heels for the Princess. The Voice of the Doubting, now the Voice of the Skeptic, can be found in "The Prisoner" ending.
Deconstruction: Much like BioShock 1, Spec Ops: The Line and Undertale, this game spends a lot of time playing with the tropes of player agency, choices in gameplay and the perils of taking information given to you at face value from "allies" who may not have your best interests at heart.
- For one thing, the Narrator is the definition of Unreliable Narrator. The extremely simple initial narrative he lays out for you (in which you must kill the Princess to save the world, with the promise of rewards later) falls apart under any level of scrutiny, the "reward" is you get to stay in the cabin you meet the Princess in, alone, forever, and should you refuse to do what he says long enough (i.e. trying to Save the Princess instead of Slay her), he'll try to force you to do what he wants.
- Similarly, several of the more horrific directions the story can take are often bad Karma for the player's actions. The Princess being a "creature of perception" means that she changes in response to how you treat her, so if you treat her like a monster to be afraid of, she'll turn into a monster to be afraid of, e.g. the Beast/Den, the Nightmare/Wraith/Moment of Clarity etc.
Deliberately Monochrome: The entire game is done in a black-and-white pencil drawing art style. There are occasional splashes of other colors, mostly red to indicate blood.
Defeat Means Respect: On the more combat focussed routes, namely The Razor, and The Adversary, The Princess will compliment you on putting up a good fight, describing it as fun, even while dying from a Mutual Kill.
Deliberate Game Crash: When you meet the Shifting Mound, you are given the option to either continue the game or "wait forever". If you choose to "wait forever", she will wax philosophical about what you will do when you wait and how you will eventually return, then crash the game. When you reboot, the game will restart at the very moment you left, and she will remark on how long you have been away, even if thousands of real-world years have passed.
"What textures will you weave for yourself to occupy forever? Will you put the images of 'You' and 'I' into a box for safekeeping? [...] You'll always come back to the box, because you'll always want to know what it means to be you. I will be here waiting by your side until you are ready to return to mine."
Developer's Foresight:
- The Stranger is meant to be met on a route where you just don't go to the cabin at all. However, the Stranger also acts as a failsafe of sorts; there are numerous unconventional things a player can do that put you on the Stranger route to prevent the game from crashing.
  - If you load into a save where the game is in an invalid or defunct state, such as with choices leading up to a route that's been Adapted Out from a previous version, the game puts you on the route to The Stranger.
  - It's possible for the Stranger to be the first version of the Princess you meet. If you venture into the Shifting Mound's heart in the endgame, which takes the form and personality of the first Princess you met, it will be the Stranger in a more stable form. Unlike the other endings on this route which have the Princess looking normal, all of her scenes as the Stranger will have different art to accommodate, and she'll be referred to with collective pronouns.
- If you ask the Damsel what she wants or what makes her happy, her art style will devolve each time, until it is little more than a pencil sketch of an exaggerated Animesque caricature. If you choose a different option, she'll return to normal, but if you opt to slay her instead, you will get a version of her death scene with that deteriorated Damsel. If you let the Shifting Mound claim the deteriorated Damsel, she will still be deteriorated when the Shifting Mound recalls the vessel in her final debate of ideologies with you.
- If you choose to "Wait forever" with the Final Boss, the game will close itself. Start it back up and you'll receive a comment based on how much time you've spent "waiting" as a result. The game has a different comment for different thresholds of time, even accounting for very unlikely circumstances of leaving the game untouched for years, decades, or even millennia.
- The default mouse cursor is a pointing right hand. If you have the pristine blade, the cursor will have its own blade. If you choose to hold the blade in a Reverse Grip, the cursor will change to reflect that. If you lose your right hand, the cursor will become a pointing left hand. In "The Princess and the Dragon" route, the cursor also changes to a human hand in a shackle, since you're Sharing a Body with the Princess when that route starts.
Does This Remind You of Anything?: During the Chapter 3: The Apotheosis, the Voice of the Hero and the Voice of the Paranoid can use Tough Love to talk the Voice of the Broken out of supporting the Princess since (from their perspective), she's merely using them. It's eerily similar to a group of friends or family holding an intervention for a loved one to talk them out of an abusive relationship.
Downer Ending: Despite the game's opening blurb, there is one ending that can constitute as an unambiguous "bad ending." The "Just as you once were nothing" ending happens when the Player refuses to enter the cabin in Chapter II/III enough times that providing vessels to the Shifting Mound becomes impossible. She will never become complete, you will never escape the confines of the Construct, and both of you will remain in a meaningless existence in the Long Quiet until you give up existing, taking the Shifting Mound and possibly all of creation with you.
Earn Your Bad Ending: The two arguably bleakest endings are also the hardest to find without a guide. Unsurprisingly, the game's achievement page on Steam (here) indicates that they're also the two endings with the lowest completion rates.
- A new and unending dawn, and everyone hates you: Identical to the ordinary version of this ending, except you lose not only the Princess but the voices are all mad with you (beside the Hero and Contrarian). You can get this ending by taunting the Voices about impending demise upon encounter the mirror in the Long Quiet (at least twice), who will start bickering with you.
- Just as you once were nothing: In each version of Chapter 2, refuse to enter the cabin, causing the Shifting Mound to grow frustrated and upset with your refusal to provide her with more vessels. This must be done six times in a row to reach the ending; if you get a vessel after the first time you abort a route, the Shifting Mound will force you to complete the game the normal way. While this isn't difficult, it's tedious to play through Chapter I and then click through the same choices to turn away from the cabin each time. On the fifth, the Shifting Mound says that the two of you are near the end. Once more sees you both permanently trapped inside the construct with no hope for escape. The Shifting Mound tells you you made the wrong choices but says she loves you. From there, you can prolong your existence indefinitely, but the only way to roll credits is to give up, causing you and the Shifting Mound to cease to exist.
Early-Installment Weirdness: The "Original Cut" of the game is in many ways drastically different from the Slay the Princess we know today. The "Director's Cut" demo is by comparison much closer to the final game.
- Certain plot elements namely the Shifting Mound and the Long Quiet weren't implemented yet. The demo always ends at Chapter II when you meet the Princess again, though the game kept track of your deaths for an achievement (which isn't present in the final game).
- The "Original Cut" only had six forms of the Princess: the Damsel, the Beast, the Fury, the Nightmare, the Stranger, and the Spectre; they looked like slightly different versions of the Chapter I Princess instead of the more original designs in the final game.
  - The Fury wanted to coerce you into letting her leave instead of wanting to fight forever, and she later became the Adversary with "The Fury" being a different form of the Princess.
  - The Beast would resent you for betraying her like the Witch.
  - Instead of being a Doppelmerger, the Stranger was a horribly deformed but innocent Princess who spoke in a sing-song lilt. The "Director's Cut" also had a different version of the Stranger, who looked more like an earthworm attached to the Princess' body.
  - The Spectre was more resentful of the fact that you killed her.
  - The Nightmare and the Damsel are the least changed from demo to the final game, though the Damsel in the demo didn't play up the Damsel in Distress personality.
- While Chapter I had the same amount of endings, they led to more of the same Princess: for example, she would become the Damsel if you save her regardless of if you took the blade into the basement. Nichole Goodnight's voice acting for the "harsh" Princess for when you took the pristine blade was also more anxious than the stoic and "in control" performance in the final game.
- The demo had the Voices of the Obsessed (who was the Ahab to the Princess' Moby Dick), the Meek (a Cowardly Lion), and the Doubting, who became the Hunted, the Paranoid, and the Skeptic in the final game. Interestingly, in the Damsel route, it was the Voice of the Hero who was in love with the Princess. That characteristic was given to a separate voice, the Voice of the Smitten.
  - The Director's Cut had nearly all of the Voices present in the final game, with the exception of the Voice of the Cheated, who was instead the Voice of the Flinching, a Dirty Coward. This was changed because the Flinching was too similar to the Paranoid.
- If you refused to go to the cabin in Chapter II, you'd be sent to the Stranger and the game would lampshade you having to do Chapter II again. In the final game, refusing to go to the cabin in Chapter II simply ends the route.
- There were more achievements in Chapter I (including one for getting into a Staring Contest with the Princess), and they had more overt references to other media, like one achievement straight up having Gohan and playing Waxing Lyrical to Linkin Park.
Eaten Alive: Play your cards wrong, and The Beast can catch you, grab you, and swallow you into her stomach. The Narrator promptly describes you being digested as well.
Eldritch Abomination: Both the protagonist and the Princess are eventually revealed to be one each. The Princess as "The Shifting Mound", the personification of death and change, while the protagonist is "The Long Quiet", an undying god of stasis created to be the princess' counter-balance.
Eldritch Location:
- The forest itself, if you disobey the Narrator outright and try to leave. He'll just generate an infinite number of paths and an infinite number of cabins until you do that he says.
- The cabin and the basement where you find the Princess keep changing in the second chapter. In some of them, it's an ordinary cabin in the woods. In others, it's a swampy jungle or a castle tower. In others still, it's a full-on other dimension where the Princess is its dark master.
- The Long Quiet, where the Entity absorbing each Princess resides. To make things even more confusing, the Long Quiet is revealed to be you.
Empathic Environment: Chapter II of every route has the cabin's entire architecture change depending on what you and the princess did to each other in Chapter I. And if the route contains a Chapter III, the forest and path to the cabin are affected as well. The Narrator remarks that it's a sign of the Princess' influence spreading.
Evil Is Bigger: The more antagonistic forms of the Princess tend to be larger than the hero. The Adversary and the Beast both dwarf the hero, and the Tower is tall enough that the hero doesn't even come up to her waist. In Chapter III of the Tower route, the Tower becomes even bigger, to the point that she's bigger than the entire landscape with the entire surrounding area swirling around her. Notably, after this Princess is taken by the Shifting Mound, the hands that grasp her can only partly cover her face, head and neck, as opposed to covering every other princess completely.
Evil Is Deathly Cold: No matter her present circumstances, when the princess finally leaves the cabin she'll remark that it's cold right before she's grabbed by the Shifting Mound. Subverted, in that the Mound isn't evil so much as reassembling her avatars and mind.
Fairy Tale Motifs: The overarching premise is one big subversion of the usual fairy tale fare. While the goal you're meant to reach does take the form of a princess — as is the case in many such stories — it is so you may ostensibly slay her. Not save her.
- Before anything else happens, you find yourself on a path in the woods, which only gets stranger and stranger as the game progresses.
- The Adversary and Eye of the Needle routes have the princess acquire draconic traits that bring to mind the classic "knight slaying a dragon to save the princess" story, only here the dragon to be slain is the princess.
- Similarly, the routes where you betray the Princess result in either a slavering Beast that must be outfought, outmaneuvered or outwitted (a challenge often doled out in fairy tales by big bad wolves) or a Witch who is, in a sense, guarding the path to another princess.
- The romance between the very "human'' looking Princess and the Player character brings to mind the story of Beauty and the Beast.
- The Damsel route is this trope played straight or deconstructed, depending on whether or not you ask the Damsel what would make her happy too many times.
- The Thorn, as the name would suggest, is found entangled in an extensive briar patch. She can even be given True Love's Kiss if you choose the right options when you speak with the Witch in the previous chapter.
Fear the Reaper: A Discussed Trope with The Princess, who while technically a God of Chaos is mostly focused on as the embodiment of death (as all change requires the end of what came before). The Narrator certainly sees her this way, a malicious force that will eventually kill everyone in the universe, while she argues that she’s necessary to bring meaning and purpose to the world. You can side with either, or try to Take a Third Option.
Fighting from the Inside: You can do this when you refuse the slay the princess, but the narrator tries to force you to anyway. You'll have multiple choices to "Slay the princess" in the menu, and only one to resist or otherwise try to defy the Narrator. In the Prisoner route, the Princess recognizes that you're resisting attacking her, and slits your throat. In the Damsel setting, she stabs you repeatedly, but tearfully says she's sorry to you over and over again.
Finishing Each Other's Sentences: Towards the end of one segment of The Fury in The Pristine Cut, when the Fury starts vaporizing you and reducing you to atoms after you keep dying and respawning, the Narrator tries to say his Catchphrase before fading out mid-sentence and the narration finishes it for him.
The Narrator: But it doesn't last. You are disintegrated. Everything goes dark—
But there is no you to die.
First Girl Wins: If you go to the heart of the Shifting Mound, the Princess inside will be based on whatever choice you made in your first run of the game. If you took the knife, she'll be somewhat cynical, if you didn't, she'll be kindly. If you refused to go the cabin at all and met The Stranger, she'll be there, but in a happier and more stable state, and she'll lightly encourage you to accept godhood.
Five-Second Foreshadowing: Assuming you're familiar with what happens to the forest outside the cabin once you slay the Princess, the trees being visible through the cabin windows after you pick up the Prisoner's severed head may confirm for you that she's still alive, right before you go outside and find out properly. This also happens if you either slay her or leave her head behind after giving the blade to her, when the Voice of the Skeptic notices something off about the outside world through the windows before...
Voice of the Skeptic: [gets an "Oh, Crap!" reaction] The door! Check the door!
Five Stages of Grief: The Shifting Mound goes through all five if you insist on turning back away from the cabin at the start of Chapter II, which ends the route without proving her a vessel, closing all opportunities for her to be made whole and for the both of you to ever be freed from the construct. The achievements you get each time you end a route this way are a direct reference to this trope.
Foregone Victory: Unless you refuse to go to the Cabin (which is another ending), anything you do brings you closer to the objective as every Princess is eventually reclaimed by Shifting Mound even if she doesn't leave the Cabin and choices mostly affect the dialogue before the Last-Second Ending Choice.
Foreshadowing:
- In the Spectre route, after the Princess possesses your body, the Narrator states that [your] body wasn't made to hold you and the Princess. He says "made", as if you were created and not born, which is the case: both you and the Princess are Artificial Gods made to represent stasis and change respectively. When the Narrator says that you weren't made to hold both of you, he means that the explicit purpose of the Player's creation is to keep those concepts separate, which is also why he is trying to push you into slaying the Princess.
- Also in the Spectre route, the Narrator warns you about "fates that come close to death", with the Cold curiously noting that the people generally talk about a Fate Worse than Death. The Narrator's conviction that any fate, even an And I Must Scream situation, is better than oblivion is a central part of his worldview and his plan to erase death and change from the cosmos
- If you compare your options in Chapter 1 between paths where you pick up the Pristine Blade and where you leave it behind, you only get to tell the Princess you're here to save her if you don't bring the knife with you. The same is true in the Shifting Mound's heart: the option to "save" the Princess and just leave with her will not be offered if you armed yourself.
The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You: A couple of In-Universe Examples.
- Should the player chose to have the Hero submit to the Tower version of the Princess, she looks into him and notices that there is another presence inside him, describing it as a faint "echo". It is evident that she is talking about the Narrator, who first reacts with incredulity, because, the way he understands the rules, the Princess isn't supposed to able to see him, much less interact with him. When it becomes increasingly clear that, yes, the Princess is not only talking about him but is even about to use her Compelling Voice on him, the Narrator screams in horror, as the Princess assumes control over him.
- Should the player successfully wound the Princess in the Apotheosis chapter, she will lash back at the Hero by concentrating all of her power in her hand, causing it to begin to glow white-hot with energy. The Narrator will at first describe how insanely hot the inferno in her hand is, and then realize, much to his horror, that he can actually feel the heat from it. He then begins to fade away while letting out a panicked Rapid-Fire "No!".
Friendly Enemy: Even versions of the princess who become hostile to and/or kill you, will still have some form of attachment to the point that they'll ask the Shifting Mound to let you remember them.
Gag Echo: When walking up the stairs with the Witch, you can either let her walk behind you or insist she walks ahead of you. If you let her walk behind you, she claws you in the back, and Voice of the Opportunist laments that if only she had gone first he could've told you to stab her in the back and you would've said something like, "Wow, that's an amazing idea that I never saw coming, thanks for looking out for us!" If you insist she walks ahead of you, Voice of the Opportunist tells you to attack her, and one of your possible responses is "Wow, that's an amazing idea that I totally never saw coming, thanks for looking out for us!"
Voice of the Opportunist: Wow! You said exactly the thing I imagined you would say as soon as you heard my brilliant plan. This whole day is a dream come true, really.
Gaslighting: There's no mirror in the cabin! Go ahead, put your hand on the wall where this mirror supposedly is. See? There wasn't a mirror there after all, despite you reaching out try and touch it. You're just seeing things. If you get into loops beyond the second, this is subverted. The Narrator genuinely cannot see the mirror, and at first thinks you're just fibbing him in order to stall for time. He reacts with surprise and confusion if you and the Voices repeatedly point it out. Probably because this mirror is tied into your nature as The Long Quiet and showing you what the actual Construct is.
Genre Mashup: The Steam page tags it as both a psychological horror game and a dating sim. How you choose to deal with the Princess makes all the difference.
A God Am I: The Tower considers herself greater than any other creature. She's not entirely wrong, considering her Compelling Voice makes you do whatever she tells you to do. Should you suggest that she's going to end the world, the Tower takes this as a great idea, since everyone deserves to be beneath her and/or be destroyed by her. She can even reach into your subconscious and see the Narrator, taking him over too and even identifying him as the Echo.
Grand Theft Me:
- If you decide to save the Princess, the Narrator takes control of your body to try and force you to kill her. You can make an attempt at Fighting from the Inside, though. The Princess will recognize what you're doing, and try to give you a Mercy Kill.
- In The Wraith chapter, the Princess does this to you. Her ghost 'tears the membranes' of your soul and hijacks your body in an attempt to leave the cabin.
- In the full game, the Shifting Mound does this to every single princess you encounter. The Princess is grabbed by multiple arms, pulled into another dimension, and used as a vessel for the Shifting Mound to communicate with you. Should you ask how any princess is doing, the Shifting Mound will say that the Princess is nothing but an empty shell now for the Mound's reawakening.
Gratuitous Princess: The person you're tasked with killing being a princess is mostly just for the narrative irony of a hero's quest being to slay a princess rather than save one. What exactly she's the princess of isn't elaborated on, nor is anything else about her past, and she seems to have been chained up alone in a remote cabin for as long as she or anybody else can remember. This is later subverted by the revelation that she is a deity of change, with the ability to draw power and shape from the perceptions of others. She takes the form of a princess because it's something you can fathom and relate to, and because you have lingering feelings for her due to both of you having previously been a single being.
"Groundhog Day" Loop:
- Regardless of what you do in Chapter 1, Chapter 2 loops back to the beginning and puts you back in the woods. You and the Princess still remember your previous encounter and she's evolved in reaction, but the Narrator either doesn't remember or pretends not to. Ends up horribly averted, as the Narrator explains that both the protagonist and Princess keep inadvertently jumping into alternate worlds at the end of each route, devastating the previous world in the process. If the Narrator is to be believed, anyway. At the final encounter with the narrator, he implies that all the worlds you go through/destroy are pocket worlds created by him (and to an extent reshaped by the Princess) to funnel you towards their objectives.
  The Narrator: The construct you're in exists in every world at once. Any time you failed, any time you thought yourself dead, it would restart and shunt both you and her to a new world.
- There's a nightmarish version of this in the Razor route, where the player is repeatedly stabbed and reset while fighting her.
  The Princess (Razor): Come on, show me something new!
  The Player: Oh, that's easy. I'm going to try flirting with her.
  It doesn't work, and she kills you again. And again, and again, and again. Your memory blurs as your consciousness leaps from life to life to life, holding only snippets of the conflict that transpires.
  Voice of the Smitten: Compliment her on those gleaming blades! There's nothing better than a capable woman.
  Narrator: She skewers you.
  The Princess: You're cute!
- The Moment of Clarity route implies that this happens off-screen, with you not only having every collectible Voice at once, but those Voices are thoroughly exhausted and traumatized. The loop ends when the Player finally relents and lets the Princess leave the cabin.
Guide Dang It!: Several innocuous decision points throughout the routes can lead to different secondary Voices accompanying you in Chapter III. While it may not seem like much, interactions between specific Voice combinations can lead to very different outcomes or open up different options on the same route. It gets a bit complex if you're aiming for certain achievements, though the Gallery fortunately gives you hints on what to do.
Handicapped Badass: Even when missing a hand, the Princess can still defeat you if you try to kill her after freeing her.
Hand Wave: You can ask what the Princess ate and drank while she was locked in the basement upon meeting her, since she logically has to have eaten to survive. However, the Narrator and the Princess will both mention that such a thing really isn't important to answer, and move on without explaining it. This could have something to do with the fact that she's a fragment of a shattered goddess.
Hitman with a Heart: You become one if you choose the Damsel ending, where you don't pick up the pristine blade and side with the princess no matter what. The princess becomes a Princess Classic Damsel in Distress, and you gain the Voice of the Smitten, who is helplessly in love with her.
Horrifying the Horror: In the "Adversary" route, you can outright come Back from the Dead off of sheer determination and confront the now-demonic Princess again, who goes from Blood Knight to outright traumatized at seeing your mangled wreck of a corpse get back up to fight her once more. She even expresses that your pulped brains are still on the walls around you two, and that "corpses aren't supposed to look like that!"
Hostile Show Takeover: Several variations.
- In the Tower version of Chapter II, it is possible for the Princess to notice the Narrator's existence, much to the Narrator's confusion and dawning horror. She then proceeds to use her god-like power to take control over the Narrator as he screams in terror, and then makes him repeat whatever she says.
- The Wild version of Chapter III, starts with the (unseen) Princess doing her own version of the Opening Narration, much to the confoundment of the Narrator, who complains that she shouldn't be able to do that. When the Princess continues her narration, commenting on the state of the world and the Hero and the nature of the Narrator, he gets increasingly frustrated and tries repeatedly to wrest back control over the story, even ordering her to shut up, but to no avail. He is first able to reassert his control again if the player allows the Hero to separate from the Wild.
- The Wraith: When she possesses the player's body she overrides the narrator, saying that she refuses to be described into submission, before narrating the sequence of actions herself.
- One chapter also showcases a variant where the takeover is performed by your ally. After dying the first time to the Razor, the Voice of the Cheated declares that he has no intention of going through the usual "You're on a path in the woods..." narration, and instead declares that you're gonna start in the cabin. Cue the cabin's interior with the Narrator describing the scene as normal, as if you just pressed the "Skip" button and proceeded through the game normally.
- Another chapter showcases a variant where the takeover is performed by your ally right in the middle of it. In the Tower-Fury route, if you keep on fighting the Princess and not giving up, she explodes you and scatters your remains all over the place, leaving you helpless to do anything. This pushes the Voice of the Stubborn (who had been a bonus voice after the Tower route with the Voice of the Broken) to a Rage Breaking Point where he decides he's had enough and hijacks the Broken's position from that point forward, making the chapter act as if you got there through the Adversary instead of the Tower; commanding you to die and then return to life in a new body at the exact same place (despite the Narrator's protestation for you not to do so at first); and demanding that the Narrator get to the confrontation part with each new body and new Voice.
Humans Through Alien Eyes: Considering that the only characters besides the Princess (the Player and Narrator), along with the creator of the Universe are Crow-like entities, it could be possible that The Princess is sort of like a reverse monster-girl.
I Am Who?: The protagonist is eventually revealed to be "The Long Quiet", a nascent undying god that personifies Stability that was created to act as a counter-balance to the real Princess, the avatar of Death and Change.
I Die Free: The only way to escape the "Good Ending" the Narrator crafts for you is to kill yourself. The story ends with you plunging the Pristine Blade into your heart.
Insistent Terminology:
- The dagger in the cabin is always referred to as "the pristine blade" by the Narrator.
- He also insists that the task is "slaying" the Princess, and not "killing" or "murdering" her.
Instantly Proven Wrong: It's possible to come to a point in Chapter I where you have a choice between slaying the Princess now (what the Narrator wants), letting her free (what she wants), or keeping her alive but locked up, at least for the time being. Choosing the third option will have the Voice of the Hero state that that feels like a pretty good compromise, only for the Princess' expression to immediately shift to one of annoyance, and the Narrator to lecture you about why that's a terrible idea. (On the other hand, if you believe the old witticism that a good compromise is one that leaves everyone unsatisfied...)
Interplay of Sex and Violence: The Razor and the Adversary routes really play this up. The Razor route is one of the few routes where you can explicitly flirt with the Princess, and to top it off, she reciprocates... before skewering you. Her final fight is also blisteringly intimate, as the Player makes a point of kicking every voice out of his head (including the Hero and the Narrator) before dueling her. Meanwhile the Adversary declares your Mutual Kill in the previous chapter to be "the best three minutes of [her] life." and describes your potential battling in a way that comes off as... exceedingly passionate and evocative of other acts. The Stubborn is not far behind her in terms of eagerness to start and continue fighting.
I Reject Your Reality: In the full game's Damsel route, Chapter II will have the Hero and the Smitten insist that they're a Knight in Shining Armor here to save their beloved Damsel in Distress princess, and everything is going to go perfectly. The thing is, they're right. The shackle that binds the princess to the wall is too big to hold her, and the locked door inexplicably unlocks when the Hero says it does, with even the Narrator confused as to how this is happening.
Ironic Echo: If you first approach the Princess unarmed but ultimately decide to slay her anyway, you can try to justify yourself by telling her that with the potential fate of the world on the line, trusting her simply isn't worth the risk. Should the Princess manage to escape the basement on her own and lock you inside after this, she'll taunt you by saying that you of all people should understand that opening the door wouldn't be "worth the risk".
Ironic Hell: After the reveal of the true nature of the Princess and the Player, the whole game is revealed to be a form of this. The Princess is The Shifting Mound, a being that represents change, forced to play a role and with little capacity to meaningfully make choices while the Player is the Long Quiet, a being that represents stability and stagnation, forced to constantly choose and deal with rapidly changing circumstances.
I'm Cold... So Cold...: You know the Shifting Mound is about to collect a vessel when whatever version of the Princess you're talking to suddenly begins to feel cold. So cold.
Infernal Paradise: The Narrator's goal is to trap the entire multiverse in a single, unchanging moment of "eternal forgetting and remembering" — you get to see it if you slay the princess, where your reward is to remain in the mostly empty cabin for all eternity. He seems unable to comprehend why anyone wouldn't want this due to his extreme Mortality Phobia.
Instantly Proven Wrong: In the Apotheosis route, if you go through with the Voice of the Contrarian's idea of throwing the Pristine Blade at the Princess' eye, the Voice of the Broken chimes in that it does nothing, as there's no possible way to harm his goddess… and he doesn't even get through the sentence before The Narrator says that, no, it certainly did something.
Inner Thoughts, Outsider Puzzlement: In The Princess and the Dragon, the player is a voice in the Princess' head and they watch as their own body comes to slay them. When the body stands quietly for a while, the player realizes that all the internal arguing they've done with the Narrator and Voices happened in real time. The Princess remarks that she always wondered what was going on whenever she saw the player doing that.
Interface Screw: Tell the Shifting Mound that you would rather wait than forget and be sent to a different route, and she will close the game. Restart it and it'll take you right where you left off.
Jerkass Has a Point:
- In Apotheosis, The Narrator can angrily point out that for all the Voice of the Broken's faith and devotion to the Apotheosis, she doesn't even know he exists, and wouldn't care if she did. It's clearly just an attempt to get you to slay the Princess...but it's also completely true, and is what's needed to get the Broken to do a Heel–Face Turn and join the rest of you in taking down the malicious goddess.
- In the finale you can tell the Voice of the Hero that you hate the Narrator and are glad he's dead, while also committing yourself to fulfilling his life's work and slaying the Princess. The Hero is slightly thrown by this, musing "I guess you can love the ideas but hate the man".
Jigsaw Puzzle Plot: A variation. Pretty much every route have the potential to offer the player a little piece of insight into the characters, the nature of the world, and the backstory, if they pay attention, but getting the full picture will probably take multiple playthroughs, due to the mutual exclusivity of some routes. For instance, the purpose of the other shackle, i.e. the mysteriously empty one that appears next to the Princess on every route, is first fully disclosed on the Prisoner route (because it has grown to a size where it is hard to ignore), and only if the player chooses to interact with it.
Jump Scare: The majority of the horror is more cerebral, but there are a few:
- The Beast jumps out of the shadows with a ferocious roar multiple times.
- While talking with the Spectre, sometimes she will abruptly switch to a Nightmare Face.
Karmic Death: If you kill the Damsel, you get killed by the Voice of the Smitten in return. You were warned not to do this by the way... by him specifically.
Kneel Before Zod: The Princess does this in "The Tower" ending. With a Compelling Voice, she commands you to kneel. Should you refuse, she yells at you to kneel even louder, at which point you have to obey her and kneel.
Leitmotif: Each variant of the Princess has a theme that shares their name in the OST list. The Shifting Mound's own leitmotif has five different variations, each one more complex than the last to show her slowly growing with each vessel you deliver to her.
Laser-Guided Karma: Can happen to you and The Princess across different routes, depending on your actions. For example, if you try to abandon her after allying with her in The Prisoner route, the doors immediately lock behind you, trapping you in the same room.
The Princess: I told you that you'd regret saying that. But I didn't think you'd regret it so fast. And with so little effort on my part.
Lemony Narrator: The Narrator is very talkative and is the one who directs you on your quest. He displays varying levels of irritation and enthusiasm depending on how much you obey him. When you start openly defying him, the consequences of your actions have him narrate your death in a manner that suggests the Narrator thinks you have it coming.
Life-or-Limb Decision: Some routes have the princess escape her shackles by cutting off her hand or asking you to do it. Downplayed in that she does not show any pain or indication that she'll miss her appendage.
Line Boil: Almost every line in the artwork wobbles with varying degrees of subtlety, giving a measure of motion to the eerie environments and Princess. By contrast, the lines of the Long Quiet and the mysterious mirror that "heralds" it are completely still.
Loophole Abuse: The Princess cannot leave the cabin without your help or if you die. When the Princess becomes less trustful of you, she tries to find ways to get around this. The Beast, for example, eats you alive and walks out of the cabin with you in her digestive tract.
Losing Your Head: During the Prisoner, if you let the Princess behead herself but take her head with you when you leave, she'll reveal herself to be alive and having done this as a ploy to escape the cabin. If you don't do this, when you meet her again she's come back as a head in a cage, carried by her body. If you get decapitated by her chains, your head and hers are left on the floor to do nothing but talk to each other and watch your bodies continue the fight on their own.
Lovecraft Lite: The Cosmic Horror Reveal turns the story into this. The Princess is the nascent form of the Shifting Mound, an alien goddess of change, and thus death - and her (and the Mound's) potential affections for you are entirely genuine, and as it turns out, you are her can; you're the Long Quiet, deity of stability and order. Thus it becomes a love story where the main characters happen to be Eldritch Abominations.

Tropes M to Z

Made of Iron: The Princess in every route that has you attack her when she's not completely defenseless. The narration describes her as barely flinching when you stab her the first time, then tanking several hits from you that also barely slow her down. Oh, and even with all those wounds and with one arm missing, she still beats the crap out of you and manages to kill you in many of the routes. It's only by sheer dumb luck that you manage to stab her in the heart if you get into a fight with her.
Major Injury Underreaction:
- In several of the routes, the Princess will lose her right hand. She'll either get it cut off by you, or she'll chew through her own flesh to escape. Regardless of how she loses her hand, the Princess never reacts to what should be agonizing pain. And if you get into an ending in which you manage to stab the Princess or get into combat with her, she never reacts to the wounds. It's another sign that the Princess may not be all that she appears to be.
- In the full game's Prisoner route, the Princess can cut her own head off with the pristine blade. And even then, she still doesn't react, and will thank the player for taking their head out of the cabin.
- Even the player and the Voices within can sometimes get in on this. If you get your heart yanked out of your chest by the Spectre or get unwound by the Fury, the Voice of the Hero's immediate reaction is indignation that she'd take your organs out like that. The Voice of the Cold's main power is brushing off mortal wounds like they don't even hurt.
The Maker: An entity who created the Player, Narrator, Princess, and the "world" they inhabit, who was mortal yet had quite a bit of power. Little is known about them, however they are implied to be a Crow-like entity similar to the Player and Narrator.
Male Gaze: Given an odd if cheeky justification. The Princess' figure and look are molded by how the player interacts with her. In routes where she is little more than a wish-fulfilling fantasy, like the Damsel, her cleavage is larger and more accentuated by the camera. The more standoffish she becomes the less sexualized the angles, to the point she isn't human-looking to begin with.
The Many Deaths of You: In general, there are many ways to die, and nearly every route involves your death at once point or another. In particular, the Razor and the Nightmare routes have you die so many times off-screen that you manage to collect every Voice, who are all collectively sick of dying.
Mercy Kill: The Princess does this to you when you resist the Narrator's attempts to take over your body and force the story to go his way. She recognizes you're not in control of yourself, and apologizes before promising to "make it quick".
Minimalist Cast: There is only the Player, the Voices (who may or may not be the same entity as the Player), the Princess, and the Narrator.
Mood Whiplash: Toward the end of the Tower route, if you successfully resist her mind control and proceed to slay her, she retaliates in a Villainous Breakdown by crushing you with a Megaton Punch. It's sad and bittersweet as the two of you die together (with the Narrator delivering a heartfelt eulogy for you and a "thank you"). Then comes the Fury route, which starts out with the Voice of the Broken reduced to sobbing hysterically over the Tower's death, much to the chagrin of the Narrator and the other Voices. Hilarity Ensues.
Moral Myopia: The princess displays some of this trait during certain routes, to justify the cruelty of her actions. For example, in the Wraith route, she will tell you that "it is rude to murder", leaving out the part where she gleefully killed you at least twice.
Morton's Fork: Save for the true endings, every route ends with an objectively bad outcome for the Player and Princess.
- For the Player, leaving the princess behind or fighting her usually leads to your death, even if you 'win' the fight. Other scenarios such as befriending her, or releasing her cause the world to end. Even killing her and not dying still causes the world to end.
- For the Princess, she occasionally dies in her battles with the Players, and gets essentially reduced to nothingness in every other outcome.
Multi-Armed and Dangerous: The Shifting Mound. Not only does it grab various princess avatars with multiple arms, but it covers each vessel with multiple arms and hands. There are so many arms behind the Shifting Mound that it looks like a jaunt of flame.
Multiple Endings:
- First, there's the "Good Ending" which occurs should you grab the knife, immediately slay the Princess, and leave. You accept your reward, which turns out to be an eternity spent in nothing, and the Narrator gives you a badly-made "Congratulations" card celebrating your victory. This ending is possible only on your first route; if you've already met the Shifting Mound, she'll cut things off at the card and remind you to get back to putting her together.
- Another unique ending is Just as you were once nothing: If you have turned in one or zero vessels, play through Chapter I as usual but don't go to the cabin in Chapter II. You can also do this with the Stranger if they would've been the second vessel you'd send, and some Chapter IIIs will also allow you to walk away from the cabin. Each time this happens, the Shifting Mound is denied a potential vessel, and as more and more timelines are cut off she becomes increasingly desperate for you to change course until she finally says that if you lose one more part of her it's over for both of you. Turn away from the cabin again, and both you and she no longer have a way out of the Long Quiet, now doomed to remain there until your consciousnesses stop existing.
- The final encounter with the Shifting Mound splits off into four endings. The final three have additional variations depending on whether the Princess you met first was the harsh Princess (knife on you), the soft Princess (no knife on you), or The Stranger (ignored the cabin altogether).
  - There are no endings: Accept The Shifting Mound's offer to become gods together by telling her you're ready to move on and awaken. You'll both crack through the confines of the construct and step into the beyond together, ending the old universe and starting cycle of life and death anew, but the two of you appear to be happy together.
  - A new and unending dawn: Refuse The Shifting Mound, and try to slay the princess. The Voice of the Hero takes you to her heart, inside the cabin, where you meet the first Chapter One princess you encountered - brisk if you brought the knife, sweet if you didn't, multi-headed and many-armed if you met the Stranger. Take the pristine blade and choose to slay her one last time. How sad this is can depend on which variant of the princess you met first and how much you talk things out before ending things, She'll tell you that she loves you before she's Killed Off for Real. You'll awaken to your godhood and the new world made by it with just you and all of the Voices, who are all happy it's finally over (except Smitten). Now you have to figure out what to do with yourselves. A variation of this ending, called A new and unending dawn, and everybody hates you occurs if you mocked the Voices' concern when you approached the mirror at the end of two routes. Instead of looking forward to a new eternity, the Voices remember your callousness and promise to torment you for it.
  - And? What happens next?: Don't pick up the pristine blade when the Voice of the Hero takes you to the Shifting Mound's heart. Sit with the Princess and talk to her instead. Your only option after talking will be to leave the cabin together, but forgoing your ascension to godhood. In this route, the princess is drawn with slightly more realistic proportions and speaks with a much more natural tone, suggesting that this is what she's really like. You both intend to face whatever is out there together. You can even give the Princess an Anguished Declaration of Love before you go, which she reciprocates. It's slightly different if the first Princess you met was the Stranger; she still leaves the cabin with you, but says they don't have a choice about being gods and resembles a less extravagantly complex Shifting Mound.
  - You're on a path in the woods: Pick up the pristine blade when the Voice of the Hero takes you to the Shifting Mound's heart. Accept the Princess' plan to avoid choosing between killing her and leaving with her as gods, resetting both of your memories and starting the loop all over again.
- The Pristine Cut adds an additional ending, Your New World: Kill the Princess (or otherwise go against her, such as Deconstructing the Damsel) in every route you take, then when confronting the Shifting Mound, choose every argument that justifies you killing her. The Shifting Mound will become angry and physically fight you, but you, as the fully-empowered Long Quiet, can defeat and kill her in her godly form, creating a world that always moves but never decays, one in which you can shape into your liking. If you choose to show her mercy instead and go to her heart, you will be locked into the "And? What happens next?" ending, as the Pristine Blade is completely absent this time, and you are thus left to do without it.
Mutual Kill: In several endings, you succeed in killing the Princess but at the cost of your own life. In the Adversary ending, the Voice of the Stubborn is eager for a rematch. So much so that he wills you and her back to life multiple times to allow the two of you to kill each other over and over.
My God, What Have I Done?:
- In the Witch route, you can optionally give the blade to the Princess as a gesture of trust. She gleefully kills you with it in revenge for betraying her in Chapter 1, only for her joy to turn to remorse as she realizes you were being genuine this time.
  The Witch: Why? Why did you let me do this?!
- If you do slay the Princess, the Hero grimly notes that he feels like he's done something terrible, and dismisses the Narrator's attempts to reassure him.
- Near the end of the Happily Ever After route, The Narrator openly voices the concern that he's made a terrible mistake. See the route through to its conclusion without slaying the Princess, and he completely gives up on his plans, expressing deep regret for it all.
Mysterious Disembodied Voice: The Player Character and the eponymous princess are the only characters definitively seen in the flesh. All of the other characters, including the Narrator, manifest as phantom voices inside the player's head. When the Spectre possesses the player and ponders the voices' true nature, the Voice of the Hero disagrees with her theories but doesn't elaborate further. Even when the Narrator and player character finally meet face-to-face at the end of the game, the Narrator communicates through an image in a mirror, leaving it ambiguous as to whether he is showing his real form or communicating through the player's own reflection.
Nameless Narrative: The Narrator and the Voices aren't referred to with any name, only receiving epithets through the subtitles, the Princess is referred to as such by the Voices and Narrator with her subtitles having no name for her, and the Player is neither given a title in his text nor referred to by one. Justified in the case of the voices who aren't really people to begin with, and later the Princess and player character, who are Artificial Gods (titled the Shifting Mound and the Long Quiet respectively) who never had "real" names to begin with.
No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: The Princess gives several of these to you in the routes where you don't immediately kill her. Whether you give as good as you got depends on several factors, but it always ends with your death.
Non-Standard Game Over: No route can be retread on the same save. You can close off your options by picking any route in Chapter I, then turning away from the cabin. ^note There won't be a vessel for the Shifting Mound to claim that way. If you destroy enough routes like this, it will become impossible to finish Her.
Non-Standard Kiss: The Player and the Princess can share a kiss in one route. This led to some confusion amongst fans, since his birdlike body is mentioned to have a beak. A route in the Pristine Cut shows a large and toothy beak, not flat to his face at all, but it's only visible ''some' of the time; otherwise, the Player doesn't even seem to have a mouth. Abby Howard humorously declared that "you cowards lack imagination" and shared a doodle of how they could kiss, in which the Player holds the Princess' face within his beak and they both lick at each other.
Never Going Back to Prison: The Princess will do anything to leave the cabin. She can forgive you for trying to kill her, but any attempt to leave her behind will incur her wrath. Leaving her in the basement transforms her into the Nightmare, who will engulf you in visions of her torment to convince you to let her leave, with her repeatedly yelling "let me out!". Killing the Nightmare or leaving the Spectre behind transforms the Princess into the Wraith, who will forcibly hijack your body to leave, showing absolutely no remorse for doing so.
Not Quite Dead: If you kill the Princess without dying yourself, you check her pulse and discover that her heart is still beating. She uses the opportunity to stab you in the neck, and smirks at you as you both bleed out.
Omega Ending: After going through enough routes, you gain the ability to unlock some of the 'true' endings via interacting with the Shifting Mound. All of them provide a reasonable 'end' to the game, with four of them breaking the loop, and the fifth one's ending itself being continuing the loop, but from the very start, even wiping the Princess' memories this time.
Ominous Latin Chanting: The Tower's theme is based around some voices doing the chanting in the background. This is even more so for the Apotheosis' theme at the beginning of the route, as if the voices are singing about some kind of doom and gloom under her rule.
Ominous Visual Glitch: During the finale, the Shifting Mound glitches and distorts when presenting the more traditionally horrifying Vessels (the Nightmare, Moment of Clarity, Spectre, Wraith, both Greys and the Deconstructed Damsel). Before then, the Nightmare does this regularly, even from chapter one where she's still nominally a normal princess. In the Moment of Clarity route, the entire construct basically looks like a malfunctioning video game.
One-Woman Wail: Each time you reach the Long Quiet, the "The Shifting Mound" music begins to play, with a part of it being a solemn wail.
O.O.C. Is Serious Business: In "The Nightmare" route, you get to the cabin only to find the door is already open and the Princess has transformed into an Eldritch Abomination with no discernible human features aside from a seriously messed-up face. The normally unflappable Narrator panics and asks "What did you do?! She's supposed to be an ordinary Princess!". It's also one route where The Narrator uses "kill" instead of "slay", which the Hero comments on.
Painting the Medium:
- The subtitles for what the Princess is saying change depending on her attitude towards you. If she likes you, her subtitles are white with soft red outlines in a thin font. If she's hostile to you, her subtitles are red with a dark red outline in a bold font.
- The Princess' subtitles normally appear in the top left of the screen, while the Narrator and the Voices have their subtitles centered at the bottom, where subtitles usually go. If the Princess is possessing your body, like in the Spectre and Wraith routes, her subtitles will be in the center of the screen instead. In the Wild route, where you both start out as one being, they're at the bottom with the Narrator and the Voices, and she gets her own accompanying speaker tag as well.
- At the culmination of The Stranger route your options on what to do with her are in fact one decision, but formatted and phrased as if they were separate. Hovering over either of them highlights all three at once, turning it into one paradoxical act. It is simultaneously slaying the Princess, freeing her and leaving her behind.
- During The Tower route, you can end up being forced to kill yourself as the Princess commands you. If you look at your other options they are greyed out, and if you read them you will realize they aren't options at all, but a series of statements that form a monologue. The Princess is talking to you through what normally would be your action options, driving home further how she is completely in control of you.
- In "The Moment of Clarity" route, you appear with every unlockable voice, who remember dying and restarting many more times than you, and when you find the Princess, the only clickable options are the ones to let her free, while every other choice is greyed out, telling you, among other things that there are no other choices and that you've already tried everything else.
Pay Evil unto Evil: What the Princess does to you if you befriend her and then try to kill her, or befriend her and then try to leave the cabin.
Perpetual Smiler: The Damsel in Chapter II of the full game is nearly always depicted with a big warm smile on her face. This is true even if you choose to slay her at some point, where she'll still be smiling even as she dies with tears streaming down her face.
Player Nudge: The Cage's route is set up in such a way that a first-time player will most likely accidentally lock themselves out of the happiest ending.^note This is likely why the second best ending, in which you cut yourself free from the chains and slay her, has the Voices all comment that it feels unsatisfying, to suggest that there's a better outcome you haven't found yet.
Power Floats:
- In The Tower route. The Princess, now a towering goddess, floats above the ground instead of resting on it. Along with her Compelling Voice and the fact she is also apparently glowing, it's a sign that trying to defy someone this openly powerful will not end well.
- In The Nightmare route, where the Princess becomes nightmarish and ghostlike. To the point where she can even potentially cause organ failure via mere proximity.
The Power of Love: So powerful in fact, that the Voice of the Smitten ignores the Narrator's words and wills an ending where he and his beloved princess leave the cabin! Until she's taken by the Entity.
Power of Trust: The Narrator and Princess will insist that's what the current situation is, when trying to persuade you to trust them over the other while concealing key information from you. The narrator claims the princess becomes more powerful and destructive, the more you know about her. This theme is particularly resonant in the Thorn and Wild routes. In the Wild route, she merges her consciousness with yours. If you question it twice or ask to separate, it falls apart leaving her wounded. If you instead fully trust her, she'll work with you and the other voices to break through the ceiling of the narrator's worldlet.
The Princess: At the end of the day whatever the two of us have going on down here, it's about trust, blind trust.
Pre-Asskicking One-Liner: Piss the Princess off and even the shackles won't stop her from kicking your ass.
The Princess: You bastard! If I have to kill you to leave this place, I'll do it.
Pretty Princess Powerhouse: The Princess is very slim and delicate-looking. But as you go through different routes, it's clear that she is freakishly strong, and will use that strength to literally rip you to pieces if she gets the drop on you. To the point where there's only one ending where you survive an encounter fighting against her, because you fatally stab her before she can react or free herself. Even losing one of her hands barely slows her down.
Predator-Prey Friendship: Zig-zagged. The player character is shown to be some kind of bird person and the Princess has something of a feline motif, considering the Beast, the Den, and to a lesser extent, the Witch. It varies what the PC ultimately thinks of the Princess, but she's shown to love him no matter what.
Poor Communication Kills: Many of the more violent routes are a result of you, the Princess, or the Narrator not properly communicating their intentions. For example, in the Prisoner route, if she gets a hold of your knife, she decapitates herself. She silently expects you to carry her head outside, to avoid the Narrator's suspicion, but it's possible to miss this, in which case, this act will actually kill her, and send you on the path to the Cage.
Princess Classic: If you side with the Princess completely, but without picking up the pristine blade, Chapter 2 will give you the Damsel, where the princess is a sweet, innocent evolution of the Princess who the Voice of the Smitten is completely in love with.
Reality Warping Is Not a Toy: A consequence of the princess being influenced by the Player's view of her.
- Running at the princess without talking to her enables you to slay her easily. However, the more you let her act confident, the more she will brutalize you after being attacked.
- Both the player and the princess warp reality based on their perceptions (player) and their experiences (princess). This turns out to be the reason the narrator is so keen to keep you in the dark, any extra details you get could complicate your perception and make the task harder.
- Even an already-successful assassination can be foiled by this trope. If you write her off as dead and leave, she's dead. If you suspect that something's off or check for a pulse, she springs to life and kills you.
- In the Adversary route, if you somehow manage to slay her after she baits you into attacking, the Voice of the Stubborn is eager for a rematch, so much so that he wills her back to life, so that you can keep fighting and killing each other multiple more times over.
- In The Wraith, the Narrator tries to stall her escape and possession of you by making the hallway longer. Realizing that she can warp reality too, she takes over the narration, and warps to the door.
Relationship Values: The game secretly tracks two factors: whether you saved a given Princess or kept her in the cabin, and whether you satisfied her desires or denied them. While the values are not openly displayed in-game and neither open nor close any endings, they subtly change your dialogue with the incomplete Shifting Mound between loops. Freeing and satisfying the Princess makes the Shifting Mound kind and considerate of your suffering, while slaying and denying the Princess makes the Shifting Mound self-centered and callous.
Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies: If you continually avoid entering the cabin, the screen goes black as the Narrator comments that the world has ended and killed every living person, including you, because you didn't slay the princess.
Romance Arc: Ultimately, Slay the Princess is a love story between two Eldritch Abominations.
Rule of Cool: In Chapter I, freeing the Princess from her shackle means cutting off her arm. On a playthrough with the developers, Matt brings up the complaint he'd heard that it would make more sense to sever her hand at the wrist than to start above the shackle, where her arm is thicker. They chose the spot they went with because of how it looks.
Sanity Slippage: With each loop you restart, you gradually lose more of your sanity. You also gain an additional voice in your head, depending on the previous ending you get.
Save the Princess: The title is a play on this, with the goal being to slay and not save her. At least, that's what the Narrator wants you to do.
Schmuck Bait: In the Prisoner route, there's an extra neck shackle beside the princess. Her dark smile, when she suggests that it will probably fit and the other voices warning you against approaching it; makes it clear that something bad will happen if you approach it. Sure enough, if you do it suddenly fastens around you and repels your blade through some mysterious magnetism. Ironically though this is the only way for both you and the princess to escape in one piece, uninjured in this chapter as time accelerates and the entire prison corrodes around you. In The Razor Route, the princess pretends she needs rescuing while making multiple references to stabbing you to death.
Second-Person Narration: The Narrator describes everything as if it's happening to you. This is despite the fact that you're clearly not human, as your arm appears attached to some kind of bird creature, as evidenced by what little you can see of yourself.
Seen It All: The Voice of the Cold sounds extremely bored, expressing no reaction whatsoever when the Princess shows up as a ghost.
Shout-Out: Both the achievements and the gallery (specifically the hints to obtain some of the images) have quite the amount of references:
- The Adversary's route has a lot of references. For the achievements, we have "Strike me down...", which is a reference to Return of the Jedi (which is the Trope Namer for Strike Me Down with All of Your Hatred!); and "That which cannot die cannot die", whose image is a rendition of the infamous "Epic Handshake" meme from Predator. For the images, we got "Heeeeeere's Princess!", depicting the Princess after breaking down the basement's door; and "Hey, Princess... I didn't hear no bell."
  - Also, in the Adversary route, if you run away from her but somehow waste time, she will kill you before you get a chance to act; the Voices call you out on this, but the Narrator brushes off with "dead is dead", a bit closer to "what's dead is dead" from Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.
- There's also a couple of references to Talking Heads: one achievement named exactly the same, and the sentence "Burning down the house", which is one of the band's most well-known songs, the name of an achievement, and the hint for several images of the Burned Grey route.
- Speaking of the Grey, the Drowned Grey also gets a musical reference: in the gallery, the pictures of her route are labeled with "What the water gave me", which is a song made by Florence + the Machine, acting as a double-reference to Frida Kahlo's painting of the same name; in addition, the achievement has a lyric from the song, namely, "And All This Longing..."
- The scene where the Tower notices the Narrator trying to talk the Player out of submitting to her or yielding to Psychic-Assisted Suicide, stops the Player in the middle of the action, and tells the Narrator there's nothing he can do to stop her before controlling everything, including him and the Player's life, is a nod to the Non-Standard Game Over scene in Ghost Trick where Yomiel catches Sissel in the middle of saving Cabanela and stops time to tell Sissel that there's nothing he can do to stop him before "[controlling] everything! Including the life of the police inspector in white!" and shooting him.
  - In the same Tower route, she calls the Narrator "A shrivelling little worm, stretched beyond its limits, trying to control things that it can't understand", which is a nod to Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade in which Walter Donovan is on the verge of getting the Holy Grail, and his captor Marcus responds with, "You are meddling with powers you cannot possibly comprehend."
- The board game that you and the Princess play in "Happily Ever After" has the elements of a complicated fictional board game called "The Cones of Dunshire" from Parks and Recreation.
- The achievement "Ahab" is a reference to Moby-Dick. Fittingly, it's gained for slaying the Princess out of spite at the cost of your own life, specifically by getting devoured by the Beast and then trying to slay her while being digested.
  - The memory you get for Playing Possum in the Beast route is called "What great big eyes you have".
- The hint for the image of the Razor being punched in the face is a reference to the meme "Call an ambulance... but not for me!"
- The hint for the image of the Razor's One-Winged Angel form is "This isn't even my final form", a quote commonly misattributed to Frieza from Dragon Ball Z.
- Two separate achievements are called "The Exorcist" and "The Exorcist III". Both involve dealing with spirits possessing you.
- "The Scorpion" and "The Frog" achievements (both dealing with the Witch and betrayal) reference the fable "The Scorpion and the Frog".
- The pictures resulting from examining the spare chain in the Prisoner's chapter are all labeled "I'm not locked in here with you. We're both locked in here together."
- The achievement "Terminal Velocity" involves falling down forever in the Nightmare route.
- One of the Thorn's songs that involves romance is appropriately named "Kiss from a Thorn". Also, the two memories you get for this are both called "Kiss the girl".
- The achievement for defeating the Fury by letting Voice of the Stubborn respawn you into new bodies is called "Quantum Beak".
- The scene where the Princess prepares to stab you in the final cabin to reset the cycle provides this description: "The end is never the end is never the end."
Sickening "Crunch!": How the narrator describes your bones and organs rupturing when you engage the Princess. Complete with appropriately revolting sound cues.
Sickeningly Sweethearts:
- In the Damsel route, taking the advice of the Voice of the Smitten and freeing the Princess has the two of you joyfully leaving the cabin together as the Narrator loudly voices his disgust.
- The "Thorn" version of Chapter 3 marks the only place in the game where you can kiss the Princess. If the Voice of the Smitten is present and you use the blade to set the Princess free, you'll be given the opportunity to kiss her.^note The Narrator is forced to describe it in melodramatic detail as the Voices egg him on, though he's clearly furious about it.
Silk Hiding Steel: The Princess is this depending on what action and which route you take. She's a massive physical threat, and even the pristine blade might not save you if the Princess decides to fight you. The Narrator can potentially describe the Princess crushing your organs if you get into a fight with her.
Sinister Silhouettes: In "The Beast" ending. Once you get down to the basement, the Princess stalks you from the shadows. All you ever see of her are glowing eyes, a clawed hand, and sharp fangs.
Soundtrack Cover Character Jam: The Slay the Princess Live cover depicts the Player Character as a conductor leading a band consisting of the Adversary on violins, the Spectre on cello, the Witch on French horn, and the Damsel on triangle.
Splash of Color: Due to the nature of the game's world, in the rare cases where a bit of color is present—either in an element of the environment or in a change to the Princess' design or appearance—it really stands out.
Stock Audio Clip: In the Pristine Cut, Smitten's reaction to the Tower-Fury's Nightmare Fetishist appearance is a reused voice clip from the Razor route.
Stylistic Suck:
- If you kill the princess and then leave at the start of a new playthrough, you get the "good ending", featuring a shoddily drawn dead princess and scribbled writing congratulating you.
- After freeing the Damsel, she has little desire than to make you happy. If you repeatedly press her on what she wants to do with her newfound freedom, she will deteriorate into a simpler and simpler drawing, with the music distorting to match the weirdness of the event.
Subverted Catchphrase: At the start of each route, when describing the basement, the Narrator talks about how awful it is while concluding with a flippant "if the Princess lives here, slaying her is probably doing her a favor." In ''Happily Ever After", he stops halfway through and reluctantly admits that the Damsel's new castle is so nice that he can't even pretend that it's a point in the slaying column.
Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: On the route to The Damsel ending in Chapter I, the Princess is a bit taken aback with a dose of reality hitting her square in the face. The Princess here is a Princess Classic/Damsel in Distress who has never so much as held a weapon before. She tries to give you a quick Mercy Kill while you're Fighting from the Inside against the Narrator, but the fact that she's so inexperienced with a weapon means that your death isn't quick and painless when she stabs you in the chest; it's messy, painful, and slow. She's shocked that you don't die right away, and has to stab you multiple times, all while repeatedly saying that she's sorry, before it eventually does you in.
Survival Mantra: In The Nightmare, the Voice of the Paranoid recites "Heart. Lungs. Liver. Nerves." to stop the protagonist's body from shutting down out of fear. You can hear him still going in the background even after the usual arguments between you, the Narrator, and the Princess start.
Tareme Eyes: In the loop immediately after you get killed for helping the Princess without grabbing the pristine blade from the table, the next version of her you encounter is arguably the most benign and human, with large wide eyes and a Princess Classic demeanour. Appropriately, the chapter is called "The Damsel".
Take a Third Option: Instead of saving or slaying the Princess, you are also able to simple leave the Princess locked in her prison after meeting her. However, this causes her to change into the Nightmare after she escapes and scares you to death.
Takes One to Kill One: The real reason the Narrator needs the Player to slay The Princess. Her true nature as The Shifting Mound, a god-like entity embodying every aspect of reality associated with change, means that the only way to successfully get rid of her for good is to manipulate her equally powerful half, The Long Quiet, to do the deed for him.
Talking Is a Free Action:
- Subverted. Some options are labeled "(Explore)", which indicates an option where you can safely get some exposition or ask questions that won't progress the plot. However, this only barely applies to options that have you talking with the Narrator or the other Voices. The Princess does not have to let you talk and may make a move even if you choose an "Explore" option. Even dialogue options you chose earlier in a conversation will impact future choices and options. For example, when you encounter the Beast, the Voice of the Hunted advises you to move immediately, because you're out in the open and vulnerable; if you choose to talk to her, she will eat you alive immediately, and if you keep talking to her even after that you'll eventually be dissolved. Another example is that the Princess will refuse to hold a proper conversation with you if you bring the knife into the basement until you heed her order to drop it.
- The subversion is also played for laughs in The Princess and the Dragon route. You've become a Voice in the Princess' head, and when your former body comes to visit, it will spend some time standing completely still. You presume that's because the Voices that you can't hear are currently arguing among themselves, and you never realized it happened in real time. The Princess also deduces that's the reason you've been staring blankly at her from time to time.
- Played straight and for laughs, though, if you start in the Fury route through the Tower. If you don't give up fighting the Fury after she unwinds you, she tears you into shreds and scatters you across the wall while also keeping you alive and in a coma to torture you for eternity. But when the Voice of the Stubborn tells you that you have Resurrective Immortality and you can will yourself to die in order to come back in a new body, you can still have enough time to converse with him even though your remains are splattered everywhere and you are put into a stasis-coma from which you may never awaken! It's still pretty awkward and hilarious.
Technician/Performer Team-Up: The Voices of the Hunted and Stubborn pull off one of these in two chapters: the Eye of the Needle and the Den. The Hunted, with his superior survival instincts, agility and strategic nature, is the Technician, while the Stubborn, being incredibly strong and driven only by his potentially death-defying desire for a good fight, is the Performer. Individually, they struggle against their respective versions of the Princess, as the Hunted's lack of initiative leads to the player usually only being able to escape from the Beast, while the Stubborn's lack of self-preservation means the player can at best score repeated Mutual Kills with the Adversary. But in this chapter, where they are made to work together, their combined skillsets allows them to overcome their respective weaknesses and successfully kill the Eye of the Needle and the Den, who are both even stronger than the above.
Thought-Aversion Failure: In "The Adversary", if the protagonist and the Adversary have a Mutual Kill in a fight to the death that both revive from, the Narrator panics. He desperately tries to keep the player from following the line of thought that follows the Princess coming back from a lethal injury. Cue nearly every option being 'The Princess Can't Die', with the few variations being ineffectual attempts to avoid the idea, such as '(Lie) The Princess Can Die'.
- It's brought up in The Apotheosis when the Voice of the Paranoid figures out that the Princess can change in response to your own thoughts, so he starts repeatedly trying to will her to be small before cursing when he thinks he accidentally made her bigger instead. Cue a giant goddess bursting out of the hill. But given that this happens even if you have a different Voice with you, it's unlikely he had an effect either way.
Title Drop: At many different points in the game, one of the options simply reads "[Slay the Princess]". Whether you're successful is determined by surrounding circumstances.
Tomato in the Mirror: It doesn't take long for the player to realize that the Princess is a Humanoid Abomination at best and Eldritch Abomination at worst. That's not the twist — the real twist is that the player character himself is a being of the same cosmic scale.
Too Dumb to Live: The Damsel route has a blatant example. The Voice of the Smitten specifically warns you that he will kill you in return if you kill the sweet and innocent Damsel (who wants to do nothing but make you happy, by the way). If you be a dick and kill her anyway, you really had it coming when the Smitten makes good on that warning and kills you in return.
Toxic Friend Influence: As confirmed by Word of God, each Chapter Two princess brings out the worst in their associated voices - The Broken's drive to compromise becomes treacherously subservient when faced with the totally uncompromising Tower, the Smitten's desire for a loving relationship becomes selfish and obsessive when his affections are directed towards the passive mirror of the Damsel, the Paranoid's intelligent awareness of danger renders him pitifully cowardly when facing the horrifying Nightmare, and so on. Generally, voices are far more likely to take on villainous, or at least unhelpful, roles in their Chapter Twos, while generally being more helpful and benevolent in Chapter Three.invoked
Transformation Horror: At the end of a couple different chapters, the Princess is aware that she's changing and seems horrified. The Specter who'll become the Wraith says she hadn't wanted to hurt anyone but thanks to you is becoming something so much worse. The Tower, forced to hurt you with her hands when her Compelling Voice fails and about to become the Fury, feels herself "twisting into something new. Something dull. Something defiled. What have you done to me?"
Uncanny Valley: The Princess is beautiful, but slightly uncanny even when acting completely innocent and benign.
Unknown Rival: The Narrator sees the Shifting Mound as his Arch-Enemy who he's laser-focused on slaying at any cost, having killed himself, created an artificial god and torn apart the structure of the universe to destroy her. On her part, though, the Shifting Mound is only vaguely aware that the Narrator even exists, and even when she finds out the details, she offhandedly dismisses him as a minor annoyance when she bothers to bring him up at all. This might be because she’s a goddess of death (among other things) and the Narrator has an extreme case of Mortality Phobia.
Unreliable Narrator: The Narrator, natch. It's very clear he's not being completely honest with you about your mission, or the Princess' true nature.
Unspoken Plan Guarantee: If the Voice of the Hunted joins you for the Eye of the Needle's chapter, then he'll lay out his plan to slay her: enter the basement, provoke her into chasing you, then lure her out to the surface where you have room to dodge her attacks. Following this plan goes exactly as intended, and even leads to one of the rare instances where the player can definitively win a fight against the Princess instead of just settling for a Mutual Kill.
Video Game Caring Potential: At the end of each route, the player character has the option to reassure the voices in their head when they start panicking at the sight of the mirror which "ends" them.
Video Game Cruelty Potential:
- At the end of each route when your various voices become distressed at the sight of the mirror, you can coldly tell them that it's their end, but you yourself will be fine. (Which is true from a certain point of view.) In one ending, your voices will call you out for this. If you've told them that it's their end on at least two occasions, one variant of a final ending will have most of the Voices prepare to torment you as payback, even replacing the achievement that you would have gotten for the ending with a mock version.
- At several points in the game you have the opportunity to betray the Princess after earning her trust.
Video Game Cruelty Punishment: While not totally consistent, some of your more brutal cases of suffering a Cruel and Unusual Death tend to be Laser-Guided Karma because of how poorly you chose to try to slay the princess. Usually immediate actions are met with fairly immediate responses, but doing things like waiting until she fully trusts you before sticking the Pristine Blade in her back tends to result in very bad circumstances.
Voice of the Legion: The Princess' voice is creepy in The Nightmare route. Justified with The Stranger and the Shifting Mound as they both have multiple heads.
Well-Intentioned Extremist: Possibly the Narrator. He is hellbent on making sure you fulfill your mission and kill the Princess, as he genuinely believes that she will end the world if she gets free. And if you defy him too much, he personally takes matters into his own hands.
Wham Episode: In the full game, one of these always occurs on the end of your first choice. The Princess will get grabbed as a vessel by the Shifting Mound, and you'll be pulled into the Long Quiet to meet with her. The Shifting Mound will then explain that she needs more vessels, and she needs more bodies, which necessitates sending you down more routes. It's through this that the entire game shifts into a Cosmic Horror Story.
Wham Line:
- The final time you look in the mirror, you don't see your reflection. You see... something else.
  The Player: Are you me?
  The Narrator: I think you know what I am.
- One also occurs at the very beginning of "The Wild" where, instead of the Narrator's opening line ("You're on a path in the woods") you instead hear:
  The Princess: We are a path in the woods.
- In the version of the Damsel that leads to "Happily Ever After", after being told that the Damsel doesn't want to stay in the cabin on his request, the Voice of the Smitten says something in a tone of voice that reveals the normally likable voice has a dark side:
  Voice of the Smitten: I-If we just made these walls more fitting for a Princess, i-if we just say the right things! (Their voice suddenly becomes much deeper) If we just showed her the contents of our heart… she'll be happy.
- One of the biggest cases of O.O.C. Is Serious Business in the game comes in Happily Ever After:
  The Player: Slay the Princess
  The Narrator: Are... you sure you want to do that?
- On that same route, the Narrator has a similarly impactful line if you choose to free the Princess instead:
  Voice of the Hero: You're offering surprisingly little resistance. If we leave the cabin, doesn't that... end the world?
  The Narrator: Yes, well. I've seen my fairy-tale ending. And I think there might be worse things than the end of the world.
- In "The Princess and the Dragon", you are placed in the Princess' body and your own body is now controlled by the Voices, who approaches you and the Princess, blade in hand. When he finally speaks, whether or not you've heard the voice before, you know you're in for a bad time.
  Voice of the Opportunist: Oh, you would like to hear what we're thinking, wouldn't you?
What the Hell, Hero?:
- The Narrator will chastise the Player whenever he goes against his orders and guilt-trip him for choosing his own curiosity over the fate of the world.
- If the Player asks her what she wants to do when she leaves (without entering the basement with the knife), she'll deflect by asking if he's using freedom as a bargaining chip for the "right answer".
- If you decide to let the princess disarm and kill you, mid-fight in Chapter 1, or seemingly mindlessly follow her orders in The Tower the narrator/voices will react accordingly:
  The Narrator: Really?
  Voice of the Hero: All right. I'm done with this. I'm just going to sit in the corner. Let me know when we get our agency back.
A Winner Is You: Parodied.
- Successfully slaying the Princess in Chapter I and accepting the reward results in the Narrator presenting you with a crudely-drawn card saying "Good ending!! YOU DID IT!!! You saved EVERYONE!" and a cut to credits. Unless you've already met the Shifting Mound, in which case she'll snap you out of it and leave you with no option but to kill yourself to reset the loop.
- Surprisingly, you can reach a similar scenario in a Chapter II, the Prisoner route. You can slay her without dying yourself, accept your reward, and receive the card. The only difference is that you have the Skeptic with you, who will always call bullshit and force you to kill yourself for another loop.
Women Prefer Strong Men: Played with when you and the Princess manage to mutually kill each other. The Princess takes time in her dying moments to compliment your strength, even describing the fatal encounter as "fun". When you don't put up as much of a fight, she mocks your weakness as she crushes your windpipe. And in "The Tower", the Princess is a bit more receptive to you if you take the pristine blade with you.
You're Insane!: You have the option to tell the Nightmare version of the Princess this:
The Player: You're a lunatic. You know that, right?
The Nightmare: I am what I am. And right, now I'm in control.

Finally made it out. Wait... why is it so cold...?

Slay the Princess

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WARNING: Because of the reveal-heavy nature of this story, some tropes will tell you about what happens simply by their existence on this page. Proceed with caution.

You're on a path in the woods. And at the end of that path is a trope list.

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Princess Scares You To Death

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Princess Scares You To Death

Visual Novel / Slay the Princess 30 Following

WARNING: Because of the reveal-heavy nature of this story, some tropes will tell you about what happens simply by their existence on this page. Proceed with caution.

You're on a path in the woods. And at the end of that path is a trope list.

Video Example(s):

Princess Scares You To Death

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Princess Scares You To Death

Slay the Princess

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