Slay the Princess | Full Game Walkthrough | Good Ending | [PC]
Plot
An unnamed hero appears in a forest and is instructed by an off-screen narrator to slay the princess imprisoned within the basement of the cabin in the forest, who he claims will end the world if she escapes. From there, the Hero can make several decisions, including following the instructions, attempting to save the Princess (voiced by Nichole Goodnight), or even refusing to enter the cabin altogether. If the Hero (voiced by Jonathan Sims) successfully slays the Princess as directed, he leaves the basement to discover the outside world has vanished, which the Narrator(voiced by Jonathan Sims) claims is his reward. If the Hero refuses to commit suicide, he spends eternity alone in the cabin and the game ends. Any deviation from this course of action inevitably results in his death.
After dying, the Hero awakens back in the woods in a parallel world, and is once more ordered to slay the Princess. The Hero and the Princess share a continued existence from the past universe and remember their previous interactions, while the Princess’s appearance and demeanor have shifted depending on the last encounter. The new universe's Narrator is dismayed but unsurprised to learn of the Hero's previous death. After further actions from the Hero, the world devolves into an empty void called the Long Quiet (the same void seen in the "Good Ending") and the Princess’s current form is absorbed by an amalgam entity later identified as the Shifting Mound. The Shifting Mound explains that the Hero is the only being in the world that she knows, but other worlds exist that she hopes to escape to. She instructs the Hero to bring her more “Princess” forms for her to absorb, so that she may gain new perspectives and become whole.
The Shifting Mound erases the Hero’s memory and sends him back to the beginning of the loops. Despite having no knowledge of previous loops, he is unable to repeat his actions in past iterations exactly, resulting in varied Princess forms after each reset, which he can alternatively help or harm. Every “second” world contains a mirror in the cabin that the Narrator denies knowledge of, which disappears when the Hero attempts to touch it. Additionally, the Hero is accompanied by various internal Voices separate from the Narrator who each provide conflicting advice. The Hero returns to the Long Quiet and the Shifting Mound multiple times, each time briefly regaining his memories.
After the Hero has brought the Shifting Mound several Princess forms, he encounters the mirror again and finally sees the Narrator’s true form of a bird-like humanoid before the mirror shatters. The Narrator identifies himself as an “Echo” of the being that created the protagonist and reveals the Hero to be the Long Quiet itself and a nascent god. The Narrator explains that he was once a death-fearing mortal who created the Hero, the Princess, and the multiverse-spanning construct they currently reside in by splitting a cosmic entity in two. The Princess is the Shifting Mound, a cosmic entity that embodies continual change, destruction, and rebirth and is based on others’ perceptions of her. Killing her would prevent the death of the universe and allow its inhabitants to live forever, but also prevent new life and growth. The Narrator pleads with the Long Quiet to slay the Princess and dies as the construct shatters.
The Shifting Mound, now awakened as a goddess, appears and declares her intentions to repeatedly destroy the universe and recreate it, while she and the Long Quiet will eternally reign over each universe as gods. However, she can still be defeated by finding and attacking her “heart”, manifested as the mortal Princess in the cabin basement.
The game has multiple endings depending on the player’s choices. These endings include the Long Quiet accepting the end of the universe and watching the birth of a new one alongside the Shifting Mound, killing the Princess permanently to preserve the current universe, the Hero and the Princess agreeing to forget everything and reset the construct to remain in the loop indefinitely, or the two mutually rejecting godhood and leaving the cabin to face an uncertain future together as lovers.
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