roomofstillness

[roomofstillness]

I like to think the two of them lived their lives before witnessing the end of Narrator's world. Then they'd go back to their god selves and tell them about mortals.

Narrator was a misguided soul, but I believe his purpose had good intentions. It'd be nice if he still made a difference. Maybe the two gods decided to give mortals a bit of mercy after experiencing the true terror of death as actual mortals for the first time.

also, assorted sketches:

anyways, i oughta take a break. ive become addicted to slaying the princess...

[roomofstillness]

The way that we get to see what some of the voices Look like is making me feel insane

[roomofstillness]

There's nothing to find out here. Time to check in with the missus.

4 days.

[roomofstillness]

because I'm a character design fanatic, here is my take on the voices! respectively: cheated, smitten, skeptic and oppertunist

took a lot of inspiration to get their designs that I was greatly proud of

first / second / third

[roomofstillness]

There's something about the Greys only allowing Cold as the third Voice that still confuses me a bit, I know I still don't have the full picture of it... Like, when you do some process of logic elimination, he is the Voice that makes most sense to go in there, sure - you killed a Princess in cold blood and then you killed yourself - but also I feel there's a specific nuance that I'm failing to see.

[roomofstillness]

-Voices-

A collection of portraits depicting the voices from Slay the Princess, taking inspiration from the style of the video game Disco Elysium! The Voice of the Hero, a knight, an iconic silhouette against a luminant halo. A color palette of black, blue, and teal.

The Voice of the Hunted, a beast trying to protect its heart from danger, represented here as a crosshair.

The Voice of the Smitten, the knife wound letting loose lovely streams of swirling bodily juices into the air.

The Voice of the Cold, dark, and angular. Something completely unafraid to kill.

The Voice of the Skeptic, attempting to fly, tearing himself away from chains and what looks like his own body.

The Voice of the Paranoid, Frantic and multi-eyed, clutching at a wound.

The Voice of the Contrarian, flying in stark contrast to the others, glowing instead of secluded, a mischievous fairy or will o' the wisp, instead of a grotesque figure.

The Voice of the Broken, shattered and leaking. A humanoid figure is no longer recognizable.

The Voice of the Stubborn, Fiery eyes, and big meaty claws. The brushwork is chaotic.

The Voice of the Cheated, smoke leaking from puncture wounds still embedded within him. He's holding a cigar, too; probably where all the smoke is coming from.

The Voice of the Opportunist, carrying multiple masks on his person, and wielding a poorly concealed knife.

And finally (for now) The Long Quiet itself, the night sky, swirling sigils blurred in the dark.

[roomofstillness]

I’m just an Echo.

Someone created you, after all, and I’m what’s left of him.

Guy who’s so afraid of death and change, he made gods to kill each other over it. I’m obsessed with him. I wanna put him in a blender.

[roomofstillness]

Uhh are you okay if people take inspiration from your designs? I'm trying to develop a STP AU and Im ngl I just keep picturing your designs for each of the voices but I don't wanna just plagiarize bc that'd be kindaa shitty of me?

Yeah it's totally ok! Go absolute crazy with your designs and AU, I wanna see it >:D

[roomofstillness]

[roomofstillness]

So, in No Way Out, if Paranoid is there when Cheated and Contrarian make you pick up and throw out the blade–

I love this nervous little critter so much.

ISJEIDJDKFMCJR

(and once again, Paranoid’s right on the money about how the Construct works)

[roomofstillness]

Here we have the Princess and the Damsel, in their AU outfits and colors

For more worldbuilding, I decided that the world would be similar to the Construct, but on a larger scale, and populated exclusively by fragments of the Shifting Mound (except for the Long Quiet, Narrator and Voices). Since she's infinite, she definitely has enough potential to spawn enough vessels to populate an entire fantasy continent.

(and yes there would be men, because who's to say SM can't have trans vessels lol)

The Princess in her vanilla form and the Damsel would play the role of sisters here, with their own nation to rule.

[roomofstillness]

left: previously witch right: previously beast

:D

[roomofstillness]

Lovebird

[roomofstillness]

Imagine an au where the Long Quiet and the Shifting Mound are just, like, people

The princess really is/was the princess of a kingdom locked away by her subjects

The Long Quiet is just a guy, a knight probably given the circumstances

Maybe the LQ and the voices are all some merry Robin Hood crew or smth

There's no changing reality

No multiple universes

Just some good ol' Medieval fantasy au drama

Idk it seems neat

[roomofstillness]

Slay the Princess Concept Art

We shared a bunch of concept art on Twitter today. Sharing it here, too, where you can find it all in one post. Post contains spoilers, so proceed with caution (or just play the game already if you haven't 😉)

Going to start with the first piece of concept art Abby drew for the game.

In the earliest stages of development, we toyed around with the concept of there being multiple "end game" forms of the Princess.

The initial outline, rather than being tied together by an overarching metanarrative, structured a full playthrough as a 5-6 chapter long, self-contained journey down a single route, determined by your decisions in chapter 1. Here's an alternative late-game form:

The idea of deviating end-game forms didn't lost for very long, though. As we explored the game's themes more deeply, it made the most sense for there to be a singular "true" form.

If your reality is shaped by subjectivity and perception, then the "truth" has to be what's left when that subjectivity is swept away. the Shifting Mound's final design feels like that initial truth for the Princess, though there's also another truth if you push back against her and press on into the final cabin.

We really liked this "void" design, and I played around with the idea of it being an intermediary to the final form. The "void" Princess would be what you saw upon encountering the final Princess without understanding your own truth, but once you had that understanding, you would see her as the Shifting Mound, as depicted in the game.

That gave way to the intermediary design of the SM being a sea of disembodied limbs, and we also took parts of both designs and incorporated them into the protagonist (particularly the wings.) You can see the eyes and feathers for this void form in the ending card of the original trailer below:

You can see extremely early concept art for the spectre (top), nightmare (top-right), stranger (left), beast (bottom) and ??? (right) as well!

The eyes became a motif in the Nightmare route (Paranoid's manifestation of the fear of being watched), but I also like to think of them as a part of The Long Quiet's truth. You are space and emptiness, but you're also that which observes those things, and it's your perceptions that give the Shifting Mound shape.

Anyways, on the note of the original original concepts for the game, the Princess was initially going to remain human for several loops before taking on more monstrous forms. Some concepts of that are below. Had to get Abby to tone down some of the more horrifically cartoonish designs because they creeped me out and I didn't want to romance them in a video game.

We had to hold our cards close to our chest in the non-metanarrative early drafts, which is part of why, even in the first demo, the cabin doesn't really change much in chapter 2. More room to subtly play with the concept of transformation over time.

There were a lot of reasons we moved in a different direction for the full release. The branching was unmanageably large to write, and the game felt like a slog to write.

Using an overarching narrative as a framing mechanism in the final version gave us a lot more freedom to explore wildly divergent ideas within routes while still driving the player towards the originally planned finale.

Anyways, now we've got some concept art for individual princesses. There's a lot more than this lying around somewhere, but it's all in sketchbooks, and we'll probably wait until we make an art book to show it off.

First is the tower, who really didn't change much at all. (She got a little thicker, I guess. All of the Princesses did)

Not a lot to say about her, other than the fact that we knew we wanted a set piece where she gets so big that the trees and cabin orbit around her.

The stranger went through many many redesigns over the course of development. Here, she was a "princess skin" filled with a hive of sentient bugs. The script wasn't working for me, though, so instead she became a peak behind the curtains without the necessary context to know her.

A lot of people ask how these earlier drafts of the Stranger route would have played out, and the answer is I can't tell you, because I couldn't figure out something worth writing.

The writing process for individual routes didn't really start with outlines or plot beats. Rather, the routes started from a theme and a relationship dynamic, and I organically found their outcomes by exploring actions within those themes, and then seeing if those passed Abby's editor brain.

Neither of us found actions we wanted to explore with those versions of the Stranger, at least actions that weren't a beat-by-beat retelling of chapter 1, which contained way too much variation to put on a single chapter 2 route.

If each princess examines a relationship formed by perception and first impressions, the Stranger examines one that's fundamentally unknowable. One where you've seen too much, too quickly.

An insect hive-mind pretending to be a person seemed like a good starting point, but it was too difficult to write any interactions that didn't immediately feel knowable, if still strange. So the final version of the Stranger was designed in such a way where her unknowability makes interacting with her on a human level fundamentally impossible, and you don't get to have a real conversation with her unless you satisfy extremely specific criteria.

Anyways next up is the razor's final form. We decided she needed more swords.

Hearts became an accidental motif very quickly in the development process, too. (The fact that it is only strikes to the heart that fell her in the demo was accidental, but it felt poetic so we extended it to the rest of the game.)

So on top of adding more swords, we made her heart visible. This is something we did with the fury as well, as a way of showing their emotional (and physical) vulnerability.

Here's an early version of the Adversary and what would eventually become the Eye of the Needle, back when she was still called the Fury. Originally her hair was going to be fire (as seen on the right), but it didn't feel right in its execution.

She's hit the gym since this concept art. Good for her :)

And we're going to end with the Beast, who at this point was called the Adversary. I think this was before the Witch was added? The Beast was originally designed to be a Questing Beast who lurked in the shadows, where you'd only see glimpses of her, and where each glimpse would make her appear to be a different animal. This was too difficult to execute, though we gave her a more chimera-like appearance in the final game.

This design was from when we still has the Voice of the Obsessed, and the route was going to be a more feral mirror of what eventually became the Adversary, but it felt too thematically similar while being less interesting, so we moved in the direction of making the Beast about consumption as a form of love.

Anyways, that's all we've got for you right now. Hope this was fun!

[roomofstillness]

Heard a little crow say you wanted art requests so im here to deliver VvV

As for what to draw, have you tried drawing the Adversary from Slay The Princess yet? Or maybe your favourite scene from the game. Hope this helped!

I wish you could do this and then get the Smitten for chapter three

[roomofstillness]

Much like with the princesses, did you expect the voices popularity? Any surprises with them?

the only surprise is that the cold has yet to become a tumblr sexyman