(Meta)identity: Renegotiating Identity Through Metamodern Design in Slay the Princess

This paper, presented at DiGRA 2026, analyzes the horror adventure game Slay the Princess (2023) by Black Tabby Games through a metamodern theoretical lens, arguing that the game dramatizes the struggle to construct and renegotiate identity within an apparently fixed or constraining system. The author, Katarzyna Matlas of the University of Silesia, positions the game's branching, looping narrative as a vehicle for reflection on the human condition in contemporary society, with its core message centered on identity, relationships, and the polyphony of human and non-human agents.

The central analytical focus is the cabin, the game's mutable primary space, which the paper reads as a simulacrum of the fairy-tale environment and an active narrative agent that responds to player choices and reshapes its form accordingly. Drawing on object-oriented ontology and Marco Caracciolo's concept of "object-oriented plotting," the paper contends that nonhuman objects co-construct the story, distributing agency among player, characters, and environment. The author also applies Steven Conway's notion of "ludic kennings," design gestures built on repetition and looping, to show how the game's recursive structure generates multiple interpretive possibilities, a feature the paper identifies as characteristic of metamodernism.

Methodologically, the study adopts a structured qualitative approach drawing on Consalvo and Dutton's game analysis toolkit, combined with critical play and textual analysis, together with procedural rhetoric as a means of examining how the game's mechanics convey meaning. The paper does not rely on survey data or a quantified sample; its evidence consists of close readings of the game's narrative, spatial design, character interactions, and interface. Its conclusions hold that Slay the Princess realizes metamodern narrative structure by presenting identity as continually renegotiated rather than predetermined, and by positioning the player as co-creator of a pre-structured but changeable story.