When a narrative text-based game sells 100,000 copies , one must stop and analyze it.
And when more than one subscriber mentions it in less than a week, one must stop and analyze it.
I believe that to be a hit, you need luck, and luck can't be designed.
But I also believe that certain things need to be well-done , otherwise, it can't make it.
It's a combination of skill and luck.
This means that I don't know why Slay the Princess did well.
No one can know that.
It's like knowing the shape of an ice cube from the puddle it left after melting.
What I can say is that they satisfactorily resolved the major problems of today's narrative games, and this is worth analyzing.
To avoid dropping a spoiler in the first email, be warned: there are spoiler risks.
Although they will probably be kind of meta, as they will emerge from analyzing the game's structure.
If you haven't played it and want to, don't open emails starting with 'Slay' in the coming days.
Come back after you've played it.
If you don't mind spoilers, read them; they won't ruin the experience either.
The first thing I want to address today is that I often say that branching structure is no longer enough.
Slay the Princess is a branch-based game. There's no randomness or anything strange.
And it's enough. Or at least, I felt it was enough.
So I eat my words. At least in this case.
There are elements that we will discuss that make Slay the Princess a very interesting experience.
What interests me most is that we can find very specific answers to the problems I mentioned in the list before:
- Replayability
- Content repetition
- Player agency
- Reaction to the state
- Taming the rhizome
In the next emails, I will analyze each of these problem areas and how they are resolved in Slay the Princess.
Hope you enjoy it!
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