'If [money] is an issue, pirate it and buy a copy later': the devs of our favourite surprise horror hit want you to play it spoiler free—by any means necessary

pcgamer.com:

Slay the Princess is one of our favourite unexpected hits from this year. It's a choose-your-own adventure style narrative game about a dutiful mission to (you guessed it) slay a princess.

I'm too much of a wuss myself, but PC Gamer senior editor Robin Valentine highly recommended it back in November, calling it theyear's most fascinating horror game: "[The game's] core structure is so compelling and fun, and such a good excuse for the game to throw in every wild, creative, and scary idea it can into a vibrant web of nastiness."

He also said that experiencing it for yourself was vital—something that the game's own developer has now officially echoed on Twitter (thanks, PCGamesN). «The game is at its best if your first experience is playing it yourself instead of watching someone else's playthrough,» writes @blacktabbygames, the shared account between duo devs Abby Howard and Tony Howard. 

This is something I'm admittedly guilty of, but only because I'm a big ol' baby. I played a little of the cartoonishly slapstick Lethal Company with some mates recently, and even that was enough to get my heart rate up. I do, however, love to hear people talk about horror games. It's like visiting a zoo: I'd be scared of a gorilla if I was in an enclosure with one, but looking through a glass pane is totally fine.

Still, I can see the point. The allure of Slay the Princess comes from your personal choices shaping the story—and you're not shaping it watching a let's play by definition. You can still get the heebie jeebies second-hand, sure, but you're not living through that crucial 'I did this' vibe.

The devs go on to write: «you can only play for the first time once, and the experience won't be the same if you're looking through the