Slay the Princess
Game
Documents about Slay the Princess
Whitepaper5 pages
Fantasy Beyond History: Games as Method for Ecocritical Understandings of Time and Change
This paper argues that historical game studies (HGS) should draw on fantasy as a distinctive mode of engaging with time, rather than treating fantastic games merely as inaccurate historiography.
- The paper argues historical game studies should treat fantasy as a distinctive mode of engaging with time rather than as inaccurate historiography, and frames this within the Anthropocene, where human activity has become a geological force threatening societal survival.
- Historical game studies has expanded rapidly over the past decade but has been slow to incorporate developments in historical theory and has tended to reproduce Eurocentric and anthropocentric assumptions inherited from academic history.
- Ecocriticism exposes two gaps in historical game studies: the neglect of non-human agencies (animals, matter, climate) in historical processes, and the difficulty of reconciling everyday temporal experience with geological timescales that exceed human recording capacity.
DiGRAJul 2025
Whitepaper22 pages
Temporal Agency and Timeplay in Video Games
"Temporal Agency and Timeplay in Video Games" argues that the player's capacity to manipulate in-game time, through rewinds, loops, pauses, and branching narratives, constitutes a distinct and underexamined form of ludic agency.
- The paper argues that player control over in-game time (through rewinds, loops, pauses, and branching narratives) is a distinct, underexamined form of ludic agency that existing frameworks such as Zagal and Mateas's four temporal frames and Hanson's account of recursion and save mechanics do not adequately explain.
- The authors propose a four-part typology of "Timeplay" (Adaptive, Strategic, Ethical, and Reflective) to describe how time manipulation reshapes a player's sense of control.
- The study analyzes twelve games in which time manipulation is foregrounded, using gameplay analysis, Let's Play videos, and critical reviews, with detailed case studies of Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, SUPERHOT, The Forgotten City, Undertale, Slay the Princess, The Stanley Parable, and The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante.
DiGRAJun 2025
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