Slay the Princess is 2023's most fascinating horror game, a visual novel that twists itself around every choice you make

The game gets kinda meta on itself. This is mild spoilers: There's a greater overall plot that gets progressed by a looping simpler plot. The idea is that, you are instructed by a narrator to go to a cabin in the woods and slay the princess inside. The choices you make cause this plot to repeat with a twist. When the simple plot loops its influenced by what you did on the prior iteration of the simple plot. Each of these loops is actually you advancing down a branching story path, and you need enough of these branches completed to complete the greater overall plot.

Its sort of like the Stanley Parable, where you can defy the narrator, or go along with his demands. The fun is getting a reaction out of the narrator or any of the other characters by your actions or dialogue choices, and seeing the story change based on what you choose. However its still a visual novel, so its a lot of listening to dialogue.

I mean visual novels are more graphic novel than audio book, especially since most of them don't have voice acting.

But they're still video games just as much as text-based-adventure games. You control the actions happening in the story and can interact with it, some having gaming elements like minigames or an inventory system. I don't see why they wouldn't be called games.