qolelis on 8/8/2024 at 08:25
Quote Posted by henke
Have you guys played that Sanitarium game from 1998? Just discovered that it's in my GOG account. Maybe it was a freebie at some point? Anyway, played the first hour or so. Pretty freaky stuff. Kinda clunky gameplaywise. Think I might stick with it.
I started playing it 4 years ago, got halfway, and then never returned to it, probably because of the tedious pumpkin maze I got stuck in. Maybe some day, I'll finish it, but, then again, probably not—unless I somehow run out of other games to play.
WingedKagouti on 8/8/2024 at 12:26
Quote Posted by henke
Have you guys played that Sanitarium game from 1998? Just discovered that it's in my GOG account. Maybe it was a freebie at some point? Anyway, played the first hour or so. Pretty freaky stuff. Kinda clunky gameplaywise. Think I might stick with it.
I recall getting stuck at some sound based puzzle which I couldn't find a useful walkthrough for. Given that I'm more or less tone deaf I basically need this type of puzzle to be deterministic, and the guides I could find at the time all just said to match the tones which was no help at all.
henke on 9/8/2024 at 16:27
Ok I get it, everyone but me has played this thing already! I played a bit more. Dug up a dead girl to win a game of hide and seek. This game is... really... something.
Quote Posted by Sulphur
Respectively - no, but I will; and why not, you don't lose anything, and the more of us that move on from Elmo's godawful dead bird platform, the better.
I just haven't gotten on BlueSky cause they don't have video/gif support yet, and I'm still pulling for Mastodon to somehow win the social media wars.
Sulphur on 9/1/2025 at 17:19
Whereupon Sulphur Slew the Princess
You're on a path in the woods. At the end of the path is a cabin. In the cabin are stairs to a basement. There is also a knife.
The princess stirs. You notice the knife looks a little weird because of how your ar--
There is so much blood.
X-*-*-X
You're on a path in the woods. At the end of the path is a cabin.
The princess isn't happy to see you.
There is so much more blood.
X-*-*-X
You're on a path in the woods. At the end of the path is a cabin. In the cabin are stairs to a basement. You leave the knife where it is.
The princess smiles. You talk.
The world ends.
X-*-*-X
You're on a path in the woods that leads to that time I played Slay the Princess.
I slew the princess. 6/10.
But I also played Slay the Princess again, and I slew the princess again. 8/10.
And then I played it again, and again, and again, and now it's difficult to talk about, because, you know, the Groundhog Day premise/time loop is just a structural framework for what it's really trying to do.
And what that is, is a little more complex to articulate. I'm not wholly sold by it yet, so all ratings are actually provisional, but I'm feeling like it's a sev--
Things unravel. There's blood, and blood. Blood and entrails, an unspooling, an unwinding, and there is only god's bounty laid open to the stale air, and then blackness.
X-*-*-X
I boot up Slay the Princess again. Hegel smirks. We'll see how it goes this time.
Aja on 10/1/2025 at 21:38
It's been on my wishlist for ages, but I keep hesitating because something about the art style combined with the tone of the marketing copy and the effusive Steam reviews is making me think that this may be the perfect game for some but will rub me wrong. And it's not cheap enough to just take the plunge, even when it goes on sale.
demagogue on 10/1/2025 at 22:02
I got it finally for Christmas this year, along with a slew of other games that have been near the top of the to-buy queue for a long time. It's not a game that really calls on a guy to break his gaming queue and actually pop it to the top of the to-play list, though, at least from the outside looking in. I'm reading it's at least a short play though, and evidently replayable, so that's a nick in its favor.
Sulphur on 11/1/2025 at 04:13
Both of you are right to look at it with some amount of uncertainty, because those concerns aren't unfounded.
RE: the art style and tone and player sentiment, your intuition's correct that despite its Steam rating it won't work for some. I personally like the pencil illustrations because they lend a scratchy irreality to the world, which aligns perfectly with the story. However, that Overwhelmingly Positive rating belies the fact that, as I've hinted, the game's beating heart and thesis is more a metaphysical debate than it is a character narrative (that isn't actually a spoiler, but I'm spoilering it in case you'd prefer to discover the theme on your own). That's a very take it or leave it kind of story in my view, so the Steam reviews skewing to the extreme end of positive seems like most people have taken it -- there is self-selection bias from VN enjoyers at work there, of course, but I wonder if it's mostly gushing at the technical execution and apparent layers of choice (there are a lot of apparent choices). To be clear, it's a well-constructed VN. There aren't many, if any, technical problems, and it certainly makes you feel like you've got a lot of agency. But as with all VNs, that's just funnelling you down to a selection of end states that the journey's made you feel like you had a voice in how you got there. StP certainly does make you feel like your hands guided it there.*
RE: queue-hopping, it isn't the sort of game that needs a lot of investment in time or effort, but at the same time, it benefits from that as you go on. I understand that sounds odd, so: my first playthrough took a couple of hours to get to an end state. If you replayed the game to get to each end state, it'd take multiples of that, but StP does allow you to save at any juncture to try alternate paths. The thing is, it's structured in a certain way that each branch in these paths means you need to loop through its premise a set number of times - this isn't boring! It's smart enough to introduce new elements or vary them through most of its branches, and there's been a lot of effort put into ensuring you feel engaged by it - so you will end up spending more time on it by design.
However, if you're at that juncture where you're choosing with intent to get to a certain world state, you might as well also invest some time in engaging with why it's presenting you with those paths to begin with, and more critically, whether you agree with it in spirit/philosophically. So I'd say maybe 5-6 hours overall is a good guesstimate. Certainly not a huge diversion, but more substantial than it otherwise would have seemed before you stepped your toe in.
*I don't rate this as a very important quality to a narrative I'm experiencing, though. What I rate is how well it's written overall. Agency is nice, but not necessary for that.
