Fresh off the release ofSlay the Princess: The Pristine Cut, the Black Tabby developers are enjoying some pristine reviews. A year after launching as an indie darling,Slay the Princesscan assert a claim to the crown asone of the best narrative-rich indiesreleased in years.
Game Rant spoke with Abby Howard and Tony Howard-Arias, the partners behind Black Tabby, about the development of The Pristine Cut ahead of its release, ranging from the making of it, refinements made within, and what it means to “Slay the Princess.“The following transcript has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Revisiting the game after a year gave Black Tabby the time to breathe, review their work, and identify the places they could’ve done better, the developers explained. They were able to flesh things out, expand on certain routes, and add new endings toSlay the Princess,as well as better drive home the things they hoped players to experience with the game. Changes like that are whatmake director’s cuts of titleslargely seen as the definitive experience of the game.
Making a Pristine Cut
Q: Can you both introduce yourselves?
Tony:Yeah, I’m Tony Howard-Arias. I’m half of Black Tabby Games. I’m the co-creator, lead writer, and programmer forSlay the Princess.
Abby:I’m Abby Howard. I am the other half of Black Tabby Games. I am the co-writer, co-creator, and lead artist.
Q: What made you want to revisitSlay the Princessfor a director’s cut?
Tony:I think the main thing was just havingspace and time away from the original project. The first version of the game was kind of a non-stop sprint from conception to the initial release, so we got it all done in about seven months of full-time work, which was really great for the flow of making it. However, it meant that we never had a breather to look at the big picture outside the context of working on it. As soon as we had time, we saw some things that we felt could be fleshed out better.
Abby:For me, it kind of felt like there were a few holes in the structure of how it was. While we were finishing it, it very much felt like “I would like to have this done by the time it has to get done.” That means that I will not sit around asking myself, “Well, what if we did try this? What if we did add this chapter?” because I couldn’t come up with anything on the fly, and I was too busy trying to finish at home. But then, once we had a couple of weeks, I revisited the holes, and I wondered what if we did put something here so that the structure is like the way that it is because there were a few Chapters Three that did not have anything. It just felt like we should even it out, so that it was kind of a question of ‘how do we do that? Where are the places where we could flesh this out more?’ There were a few very obvious ones that we managed to kind of fix, so yeah, it was very satisfying.
Tony:Where a lot of holes come from in projects like this is any creative project that is the product of multiple people. The final productis all of these different visions coming togetherinto a new vision that’s all its own thing.
Abby:There were those few Chapters Three where Tony’s original vision was apparently that most endings were going to feel unsatisfying in a specific way. That was not really something that I picked up on because there were lines that were things like, “You deal the finishing blow,” I would draw art that reflected that, and then Tony would say, ‘Oh, she wasn’t meant to be stabbed. Like, stabbed here, like you weren’t supposed to draw the actual blow landing’. And I’m like, “You said…”
Tony:I think where a lot of this came from was there were a few places where I used the expression ‘strike true,’ not understanding the actual meaning of the expression. Abby drew something where a blowwas being struck true, and I was like, “But that’s what happens in stories I read growing up before it landed.” I think, just from my memory, it meant that we had the split where most of the endings for routes were supposed to be kind of unsatisfying in that, right as you’re about to reach a resolution, it’s snatched away from you, and that was going to be what fed into the larger narrative.
Abby:I think the issue really arose from the fact that some of them actually did feel like there was just more to them. This meant that the unsatisfying ending actually felt unsatisfying, like in a way where you’re like, “Oh no, I wanted more from this,” versus unsatisfying, which made it feel like we had run out of time.
Tony:I think it was also something I’d been clinging on to since my undergrad days of, “Oh, wouldn’t it be cool to artistically do something that’s kind of unsatisfying and ride with that emotion.” And I feel like at the end of the day, you could make something that is narratively satisfying, but that also carries that feeling of dissatisfaction, and maybe we should just do that instead.
Abby:Because a feeling of unsatisfaction can very easily just be that, right? It’s kind of easy to cut off a story before it gets good.
Q: Some of the existing chapters are getting glow-ups. What can you share about that?
Abby:They’re really good now. These are three chapters three–The Den, The Fury, and Apotheosis, which come from The Beast, The Tower, and Adversary. They were very labor intensive, I think, and also where there was a lot that we realized we hadn’t explored with them. I was going to say The Fury especially, but no, it’s true for all of them. They now have like five endings each, a lot of variation to find. Coming from chapter two, you can do a lot of changing, and then there are also actions you can take in the chapter itself that show you a lot.
Tony:Those three were routes that very much fit the answer to the previous question–they were kind of intentionally written to be a little dissatisfying. I think part of that was holding on to this original idea we had around the concept of the princess, right? Where she’s this being of perception, who changes her identity and her abilities based on what other people think that she is. And there was an angle of what are these sorts of death spirals of belief, where you get stuck somewhere, kind of fighting something that keeps changing and getting better as you keep getting smaller and weaker, compared to her. I think, especially the Apotheosis and the Fury, were both states of “You have created someone who is so far beyond you that there’s nothing you can do, it’s over,” which was unsatisfying.
Abby:They needed some more space to explore how you got there, why she is the way she is, and toreintegrate some more player choicethere. And to say, even if you are very small compared to her and very weak, you are still here, what do you do now?
Tony:It’s like any work of fiction. while it’s being made, is this living, breathing thing. Some of those ideas were things that were ideas on day one, but what the game was on day one isn’t what it was on day 10, which wasn’t what it was at the end of development. I think, at the end of the day, what the glow-ups really do is they refocus those roots to be about what the game actually wound up being in the end.
Q: You’re also adding some new chapters. Can you tell us anything about them?
Abby:Yes, they are coming from the Specter, the Damsel, and the Prisoner. Each of those gets their own distinct chapter three, which they did not have in the release version of the game. And they’re very good.
Tony:I thinkwhen Markiplier played our game this summer, he would have gotten new stuff for every single one of his routes had he just waited for this to come out.
Abby:But I was like, “Oh, you would have loved it.”
Learning to Slay the Princess
There are a lot of different iterations of the titular royal inSlay the Princess, but even more remain on the cutting room floor. Black Tabby went into everything from ideas before the player’s target was even a princess to bugs in a princess suit, but in the end, the game’s focus was more onthe multitudes within flesh and blood people, they explained.
Q: Were there any routes for the princess that you thought would be cool, but were either too extreme or too impractical?
Tony:I think the biggest one was the original concept for the Stranger. The Stranger is the princess that you meet by refusing to go to the cabin in chapter one, and in the release version of the game, she’s kind of like this peek behind the curtains before you understand what’s going on and is like a superposition of every type of Princess at once.
Abby:I like to think of her as an overture to the rest of the game.
Tony:I like that a lot. But originally, her preacher-like concept was that she was a bunch of princess-shaped bugs inside a bad skin suit.
Abby:She was the skinsuit Princess because from just the concept of you walking away and knowing that there is a Princess, somehow the world ended anyway. You didn’t go and slay her, then she isn’t really a princess, that there’s something else going on, but you don’t know what it is. That’s where the skin suit came from. However, we didn’t know where to go from there, yeah.
Tony:Initially, she was not a Princess masquerading as a princess. We leaned towards insects because the way they behave and think is so alien compared to other species. I think the real wall we kept hitting with her was it was such a hard reset of the scenario that it would need so many ways to branch it would have to be almost similar in scope to the rest of the game. And we just didn’t think that there was anything valuable to explore there.
Q: There’s a quote out there, from you Abby, about how making the game and seeing others experience it are very different things. Can you dive into that a little?
Abby:Honestly, I feel very satisfied withSlay the Princessand watching people play it–like I feel we were able to really predict how people were going to feel in a way that we haven’t been able to do before, where people would often say something and then the hero, the narrator, or one of the other voices would say it,
Tony:I think a big part of it and I would say this probably applies to all games, especially narrative ones that have heavy mystery components, is that when you’re making them, you’re making these games with perfect information. You know where it’s going, you know what the themes are. You know this foreshadows that. You know that this is a similar scenario to that one, and your players don’t have that information.
Abby:I think some people go into the game not knowing what it is going to explore, and thinking that they’re supposed to explore something different, especially withSlay the Princess, where I think some people go in with expectations that the game is immediately trying to tell you to do that without question, whereas we do want it to be something where you see that and you’re like, “Well,I don’t want to slay a princess.” The title alone is something that you’re supposed to reject it immediately because it’s a ridiculous proposition of just murdering someone you’ve never met before. Some people say you’re a real hero and you want to save the world. Yeah, the narrator’s a perfect little guy who’s like, “Okay, whatever you say,” which we do have people who do that, and then they get the good ending in five minutes and are like, “Great game. I’m never picking it back up.”
Tony:I do think there’s this thing too, where so many players approach games as puzzles.
Abby:It’s like they approach it as a puzzle that they need to solve and, therefore, they jump to conclusions really quickly about what they’re interacting with and what their goal should be, versus wanting to explore it as just a player who’s emotionally invested in a story. I think the game does help you figure this out–we often see this happen, where one or two runs, people will be like, “this is a puzzle I need to solve,” and then when they’re unable to solve it, because it isn’t a puzzle they’re supposed to solve so much as an emotional experience that they’re supposed to be having with this other character, then I think they start to kind of get into the groove of making choices, not as some kind of multi-tiered plan, but a way to just say, “well, this is what I would do now.”
Tony:I think one other thing to add about why I likeSlay the Princessspecifically in this context, is going back to the perfect versus imperfect information thing. Our mental model of the game is every single permutation of every single route at once. That’s the full story. Whereas, when we watch other people play it, they are experiencing a very personalized fraction of a fraction of what that is.
Abby:It’s so interesting then to see what people’s opinions are, especially of the princess as they go through and some people really love her as a character. Some people are like, “Wow, she keeps hurting me and killing me over and over again, she is my enemy,” which I think was a little unexpected for me. But of course, it would be that, especially depending on what routes you get, she’s always antagonistic.
Tony:A big part of the vision this ties into The Pristine Cut is, by the end of the collection of five routes that you do on your playthrough, the last one or two should be the really out there deep dive, metaphysical routes, where all the pieces come together. I’m hoping The Pristine Cut is structured in such a way that you always get at least one of those on a playthrough, and ideally, you get one at the very end. Oftentimes you’ll see people who, by the end of it, understand the rules of the game and how it works, and they get it. Ssome people, just because there are so many possible permutations and there are so many ways to engage with it, it’s like a key piece of information is lost, and they reach the climax not understanding that there is a logic and methodology to how everything connects and works.
Q: You’re kind of touching on it right now, but what do you hope players take away fromSlay the Princess?
Abby:I hope they take away that every person can be an entirely different person to someone else, that one person’s concept of the princess and who she is is completely different and yet also still entirely who the princess is. I think I talk about this a lot, but a big part ofSlay the Princess, for me, beyondall of the metaphysical fear of death stuff, is how one brief interaction with a bunch of key variables can make a person an entirely different person, even though they are still the same core human being, say, bringing down the knife instead of not bringing down the knife. In chapter one, the princess has an entirely different dialogue, is basically an entirely different person to you, but it’s because you decided to bring down a knife, which is just an inherent threat. She’s not going to be sweet and friendly to you the way that she is if you don’t bring down the knife because then you might be somebody who’s there to help her.
Tony:Building on that, people contain multitudes. Not only do other people contain multitudes, not only is it that other people are constantly changing versus static beings, but that’s you, too. A thing that I like to talk about in the context ofSlay the Princessis the way that if you haven’t seen people from high school in a long time, and you see them again, you’re able to often find yourself reverting back a little bit to who you were then. This is the identity that was given to you. I feel a key takeaway is you can do that if you want, but also, you know you don’t have to be stuck as this person in this context forever. You are able to shape yourself if you just have the will to do it.
Q: Where did the idea of the princess being a mirror for the player’s actions come from?
Abby:I think that was the first thing you really came up with.
Tony:It kind of spawned from a logistical problem. We have this other game that we’re working on,Scarlet Hollow, which is another visual novel. Its structure and length are even more intricate thanSlay the Princess. So we could continue working onScarlet Hollowand fund its development, we wanted to do a smaller game in between chapters, and that meant that I would be taking more of the writing lead and ideally would be putting less on Abby in terms of art needs. We just kind of started with “Well, what is a scenario that’s interesting, that’s kind of limited to one location and one character who’s like on screen, other than the player.”
Abby:The original idea for the princess was a creature that you were sent to kill and are not told anything about, specifically becauseperception is something that changeswhat they are. Basically a character where, if you’re told this character is this powerful thing, it’s so scary. You’d better not go in with expectations that they’re going to do anything to you, to stop you because then they will, because they’re based on what you think of them.
Tony:That’s like the first interesting idea we had that fit that criteria.
Abby:That was before she was the princess.
Q: You mentioned another game,Scarlet Hollow. Can you talk about that a little?
Abby:Scarlet Hollowis actually our first game and is ongoing because it’s episodic, so we didSlay the Princessin the middle of it. That was the first kind of thing that we were doing.
Tony:It’s kind of like aTelltale-style episodic adventure.
Abby:It’s got even more choices thanSlay the Princessby a lot.
Tony:You’re called upon by a cousin you never met to attend her mother’s funeral in this small Appalachian coal town, you wind up being stuck there, and spooky stuff keeps happening.
Abby:It’s seven episodes, and we’re currently working on Episode Five. It’s going well, though. I’m really happy with how it is, and we’re also releasing a patch for that later this year.
Q: Is there anything else coming up for Black Tabby Studios?
Tony:Scarlet Hollowis the main thing.
Abby:We’ve got game three simmering on the back burner. Yeah. In fact, I think we’ve assembled the ingredients, and they’re in the fridge. That’s kind of where we’re at with that.
Tony:Yeah. It’s kind of a very loose concept at this point that we play around once every few weeks when we hit a wall with other projects, and ideally, everything lines up so that right when we’re finishingScarlet Hollow, wehave that breakthrough momenton that one and hit the ground running.
Q: Is there anything else you would like to add?
[END]
