Slay the Princess — The Pristine Cut News

One of 2023's weirdest indie successes gets a big update and discount

Slay the Princess is one of the best kind of videogame success stories. Launched late last year without much by way of mainstream anticipation, it quickly spread by word of mouth with the same kind of 'you've got to see this for yourself' buzz that made similarly twisty (and similarly dark) visual novels like Doki Doki Literature Club, Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc, and The Nonary Games so popular. Now there's good news for anyone who hasn't had the chance to see what the fuss is about firsthand, as Slay the Princess has just received a big update and an accompanying discount.

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"The End of Everything" Content Update is Here!

Hey everyone!

We're both extremely excited to share a surprise content update with you all. This is not The Pristine Cut, but it's our answer to a pretty important question:

Should I wait for The Pristine Cut to play the game?

For those of you who don't know, The Pristine Cut is a major (and free) story expansion we have planned for later this year that extends the game by about 25%, adding several brand new routes and significantly lengthening several others.

On top of this, we originally planned an overhaul of the game's climax as part of The Pristine Cut, but we didn't want to make people wait for what now feels like a definitive version of the late game. So we're decoupling most of that work now, meaning new players don't have to worry about waiting before diving into their first playthrough.

Since giving details on those changes is obviously spoiler heavy, we're publishing the specifics in a separate page, which you can access here: https://steamcommunity.com/games/1989270/partnerevents/4112422231972353094

(TL;DR for the "Should I Wait" question. The median player replays the game at least once. If you're in that bucket, there should be nothing stopping you from picking it up right now and getting an ideal first experience, and then revisiting new routes when they come out later this year. If you're the sort of person who only ever plays a game once, then you should still wait.)

On top of these changes, we replaced several of tracks in the game with live orchestral renditions (courtesy of the Czech National Symphony Orchestra), and remastered the music, all of which is now in uncompressed FLAC.

Tracks with live accompaniment are:

Transformation
The Shifting Mound (Movements, II, III, V)
Apotheosis

If you've purchased the Supporter's Pack, it should automatically update with a new folder containing these tracks, as well as bonus live recordings of The Princess and The Damsel. You should also be able to find an album with these live tracks on major streaming services!

Old saves should be compatible with the new build, though they won't play any music until you get to the next music change in that playthrough.

To celebrate this update, we're running out first ever 20% discount for the game, and we're co-launching the extremely exciting "Cabins in the Woods" bundle with indie heavy-hitters Inscryption and What Remains of Edith Finch. You can get all three games for a stacking 10% off, and if you already own one or more of them, you can still complete the bundle to apply that discount to the others!

(And for those of you who want to check out more of our work, we have a standalone bundle with Scarlet Hollow that lets you grab both games for an additional 15% off!)

We know a lot of you are really eager for more news on our timeline for The Pristine Cut's release schedule and things like localizations, we're not in a position to share more details at the moment. When you're marketing a game, making announcements at the right time is incredibly important, so as much as we'd like to be fully transparent, I'm afraid right now we have to keep any and all cards close to our chests (if we even have cards (we do (or do we.)))

All of that said, though, we think you'll be happy with the end result! :adversaryexcited:

Finally, while we feel that all of these new updates only improve the game, we know that some folks are going to want to go back to an earlier build, either for nostalgia's sake, or, if you're new, out of curiosity. So we've created a beta branch on Steam that has the most recent "release build" prior to this patch. You can access it in the "betas" tab under "properties" with the password "originalrecipe"

If you're using one of the many unofficial fan translation mods, you will need to use this old branch until the mods are updated (or play with the English version on the main branch.)

Thank you so much for all of your support, it's been a huge privilege getting to share our work with you!
Tony and Abby

Patch Notes: The End of Everything Update

Patch Notes for the big "End of Everything" update, sequestered here so there aren't any spoilers on the big announcement post. Still spoiler tagging out of an abundance of caution:

End Game

The Shifting Mound encounter now has fully animated transitions between vessels.
Menus in The Shifting Mound encounter have been expanded and restructured — it should now be more clear which dialogue options are specific to a given vessel vs which options directly address the Shifting Mound.
Added several argumentative through-lines for the encounter; it is also now clear when a given response is a continuation of a previous option.
Edited several vessels' "poems" to have improved flow. Re-wrote The Eye of the Needle's "poem" entirely.
Significantly expanded the conversation in the basement at the start of the "Unknown Together" ending.
Added two new dialogue options in the Long Quiet scenes to challenge the unfinished mound's style of speech.

Music

"Transformation," "The Apotheosis," and "The Shifting Mound (Movements II, III, and V)" have been reworked to include live orchestral performances.
The entire soundtrack has been converted to FLAC and remastered for an overall improved audio experience.
The Supporter's Pack has been updated to include a new orchestral EP. In addition to the tracks mentioned above, this EP also includes live renditions of "The Princess" and "The Damsel"

Miscellaneous

The quick menu has been updated to have icons/a proper UI. It's also been moved to the top left of the screen, which should resolve the majority of issues players have had with the controller getting stuck.
The narrator's scream in the Tower route has been re-recorded to be a little more tonally fitting.
We should be caught up on bug fixes.
The Voice of the Broken no longer appears for a single line in the Razor route for playthroughs where he isn't present.
A small number of lines previously cut in the pacing patch have been restored.

Legacy Build

For archival purposes, we've moved the final updated version of the release build to a separate beta branch on Steam. We think the changes in this update (and the upcoming changes in the Pristine Cut) only make the game better, but in case you prefer that earlier version, or in case you're curious to see what older versions were like, it's now available to you.
You can access this beta branch with the password "originalrecipe"
To enter this password, right-click the game in your Steam library, select properties, and then navigate to "betas" in the sub-menu.

Slay the Princess’ endgame is now bigger and stranger with more choices and over 3000 words of new dialogue

Here’s one for all you connoisseurs of the horrific consequences of your own actions. Regicide-em-up visual novel Slay the Princess’ new update brings with it new dialogue and music, fleshing out the game with additional choices, expanded scenes, and orchestral renditions of some choice tracks. The new content takes the form of new animations and “more than 3,000 words of additional and restructured dialogue choices and conversations.” That is easily enough words to tell the Stanley Parable-esque narrator that you’re on to him and whatever mind games he’s playing, with enough left over for the other voices in your head to make you doubt your own morality with alarming frequency.

Development Update and Live Performance of the Main Theme

Hey folks!

We've been a little quiet here, but that usually means we're too busy cooking to have the time for writing the longer updates we like to write.

But it's time for an update!

First thing's first, the script for Slay the Princess: The Pristine Cut is finished! And we're very, very happy with it. It adds a little over 43,000 words to the length of the game, or, putting it another way, extends the script by about 25%. These additions include significant expansions to three chapters (Fury, Den, and Apotheosis), several brand new chapters (sorry, those details are going to remain hidden for now), and a restructured and bigger climax that should feel much more fluid to move through and that will give you all even more avenues for self-expression.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

As part of this update, we also hired the Czech National Orchestra to provide live strings and piano to several important tracks in the game. We hope you enjoy this live performance of the title track in the attached video. While we're keeping the in-game version of this track the same as it already is for the Pristine Cut, this live version will be available on streaming platforms, and also available for purchase through Brandon's store and the supporter's pack. Several tracks in game *will* be replaced by live versions, including Transformation, the Shifting Mound Movements, Apotheosis, and more. While we think this rendition of "The Princess" is beautiful, there's a quiet loneliness to the release version that we want to retain.

As a few other notes, we'd also like to take the opportunity to let you know that:

We've started work on more merch. You can pre-order a hoodie here, and a t-shirt here. You can also pick up sticker sheets, extra Thorn posters, and some of Abby's comics from our store.
I know some folks have asked about less minimalist apparel designs as well as other merch. To all of you, you'll be excited to here that we have a lot on the roadmap for the rest of the year.

We know a lot of you have been waiting for an update on Scarlet Hollow, and on that note, Episode 5 continues to come along, but it remains an enormous undertaking, with the end product roughly approaching the total scale of the first three episodes combined. We'll bring a continuation to your adventures in the Holler as soon as possible. But we're still a ways off from being ready to share updates — for us, the script always precedes the art, and the script is still a 500 page-long novel away from being ready. Please know in the meantime that this project remains incredibly dear to our hearts, as would, I hope, any project that a pair of people writes a million words for.

A big part of the reason we're finishing the Pristine Cut before Episode 5 is so we're not pulled in multiple directions while working on our most ambitiously scaled release to date. We also have several things lined up downstream for Slay the Princess later this year that require the project to be finalized before other people's work on it can begin — localizations being a major example.

Thank you so much for bringing us to this point with your patience and support — we've finally reached a place where we can create free from worry, and we never would have gotten here without you. And it's because of you that we're able to make the Pristine Cut a free upgrade for everyone who owns the game. If the Pristine Cut being free feels unfair to you, too bad, but also that's very sweet. If you insist, you can always support us on Patreon, where you can get the earliest previews of what we're working on, as well as access to seeeeeecret channels on our Discord. But that's neither here nor there and wholly unnecessary.

Thank you again so much, and all the best,
Abby and Tony