Video games are so well known, loved, hated, and conflicting because of their very purpose to give players an opportunity to immerse themselves and interact with a world that’s outside of their own. However, we have to think about how much players really get to immerse themselves and interact with the game.
Playing Slay the Princess was an incredible experience, and when thinking about it alongside Sarah Stang’s and Simon Parkin’s arguments, it becomes clear that narrative games operate in a tension between the illusion of choice and a very real, personal sense of agency. While the outcomes of these games are ultimately pre-scripted, the experience of playing them, such as how we interpret situations, make decisions, and emotionally respond, creates something that feels like genuine control. In this sense, narrative games don’t fully give players agency over outcomes, but they do allow players to shape meaning and interactivity in ways that feel uniquely their own.
Slay the Princess is a narrative game that tells a love story through various possible branches that contain gore, horror, love, and
philosophy. More than anything, the game’s outcomes feel like a direct reflection of a player’s choices, emotions, and especially their interpretation of the Princess, who’s introduced as someone who must be “slayed” in order to save the world. The looping structure of the game reinforces this, as each decision leads to a new version of the Princess, yet we always return to the same starting point: the cabin, the blade, and the path in the woods.
For me personally, I’m still piecing together all of the components and characters of the game, and even understanding who I was really supposed to be: The Long Quiet? That uncertainty’s part of what made the experience feel so personal. My choices didn’t feel random. They felt like reflections of who I am.
Stang argues that the decisions made in narrative games don’t actually grant player agency, stating that “true player agency lies not within pre-scripted videogame narratives, but in the players’ interpretations of the game text.” She makes a strong point, since regardless of what we choose, we’re still operating within pre-designed paths that simply react to our inputs. However, I think Stang generalizes too broadly and doesn’t fully account for the depth of individual experience within those constraints.
As a player, I genuinely felt like I had control over the outcome, even if that control was ultimately limited. My decisions, whether influenced by the different voices in the game or my own instincts, felt meaningful because they reflected my own values. I’m someone who believes in the best in people, someone who leans toward empathy and sometimes even pacifism. Because of that, I stopped picking up the blade before going into the basement, and I began to encounter “nicer” versions of the Princess.
In this sense, my experience aligns more closely with Parkin’s argument than Stang’s. Parkin acknowledges that while player freedom is designed and constrained, it still carries weight because games uniquely make players participants in their actions. He argues that when games include violence, creators have a responsibility to ensure that it carries meaning. This is exactly what Slay the Princess accomplishes. The violence in the game is never meaningless, it’s tied to questions of trust, control, love, and fear. Every time I chose whether or not to pick up the blade, it didn’t feel random or forced. It felt like a reflection of what I believed about the Princess and the world I was in.
Stang also suggests that many choice-based games fail to treat players as true moral agents, often reducing decisions to simple systems of “good” or “bad.” However, Slay the Princess avoids this entirely. There’s no clear moral system guiding our choices. Instead, the game forces you to sit with uncertainty and decide what you believe is right without knowing the consequences. In doing so, it allows us to fully act as moral agents, not because we control the system, but because we bring our own interpretation and values into it.
Ultimately, while Stang’s correct that games can’t offer full agency due to their pre-scripted nature, Slay the Princess demonstrates that this doesn’t diminish the player’s experience or the reality of their true agency in a limited world. What makes Slay the Princess different, is that it doesn’t just create the illusion of agency, but it actually makes that illusion visible. Even if we’re not truly shaping the structure of the game, we are shaping its meaning and various outcomes. Each playthrough becomes a reflection of the player, creating a unique experience that feels personal, even within a predetermined system.
+1 🙂