Game: The Stanley Parable
Release Date: October 17, 2013
Platform: PC
Developer: Galactic Cafe
The Stanley Parable is an interactive drama and walking simulator designed by American developer Davey Wreden. The game was originally released on July 27, 2011 as a free mod for Half-Life 2. Together with William Pugh, Wreden later released a stand-alone remake using the Source engine under the Galactic Cafe studio name. The remake included new story elements and upgraded graphics. It was announced and approved via Steam Greenlight in 2012, and was released on October 17, 2013, for Microsoft Windows. Later updates to the game added support for OS X on December 19, 2013, and for Linux on September 9, 2015. A further expanded edition entitled The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe is scheduled for release in 2020. It will be available on consoles and include additional content.
The game has no combat or other action-based sequences. Instead, the gameplay involves guiding a silent protagonist named Stanley alongside narration by British actor Kevan Brighting. As the story progresses, the player is confronted with diverging pathways. The player may disobey the narrator’s suggestions, which will then be incorporated into the story. Depending on the choices made, the player will encounter different endings before the game restarts. The remake recreated many of the original mod’s choices while adding new areas and story pathways. Both the original mod and the remake have received critical praise from journalists. Critics praised the game’s narrative and commentary on player choice and decision-making.
The game is presented to the player from the first-person perspective. The player can move around and interact with certain elements of the environment, such as pressing buttons or opening doors, but has no other controls.
The story is primarily presented to the player by the narrator. He explains that the protagonist Stanley works in an office building, tasked to monitor data coming on a computer screen and press buttons appropriately without question. One day that screen goes blank. Stanley, unsure what to do, starts to explore the building and finds it devoid of people.
At this stage, the story splits off in numerous possibilities, based on the player’s choices. When the player comes to an area where a choice is possible, the narrator will suggest which route Stanley will take. The player can opt to go against the narrator and perform the other action. Doing so will force the narration to account for this new direction which may return the player back to the target path or create a new narration. For example, the first choice the player makes in the game is at a set of two open doors with the narrator stating that Stanley chose the left door. The player can choose to follow this narration, which keeps the narrator’s story on track, or may choose the right door, which causes the narrator to adjust his story to get the player to return to the /”proper/” path. The narrator also breaks the fourth wall on several occasions in handling the player’s decisions. A total of six possible endings exist in the original mod, and Wreden states it would take about an hour for the player to experience them all. The remake adds in more than 10 additional endings, as well as several Easter eggs and other choice-related gameplay aspects. The Ultra Deluxe edition will expand on this further.
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