The Stanley Parable was written in July 2011 by Davey Wreden and William Pugh based on a mod developed by Davey Wreden earlier. The plot of the Stanley Parable is that you play as Stanley, a man who works a nondescript job at an office pressing buttons when you find all your co-workers have mysteriously disappeared. The Narrator attempts to guide and narrate Stanley's adventure finding out what happens however the real fun is that the player can deviate from the Narrator's narration, exploring numerous game paths in a metafictional analysis and tug of war between narrator and player. I find it really hard to comment on the Stanley Parable, even just describing it like I did. This is partly because of it's metafictional nature, partly because it's divided into nearly 20 different routes ranging in time from seconds to several minutes with one lasting four hours, and partly because it's actually really minimalist. I said that Shamanic Princess was "likely" the shortest of my favorite series because I don't even know how long this game is. To get a single ending can take literally seconds by just closing the starting room's door. To 100% complete the game takes over 5 hours, but 4 of which are just pressing 2 buttons in a room until an arbitrary 4 hour timer is up. I'm not even sure it is a "video game". That said I'll do my best to commentate on this hard to comment on this... "game".
3 Reasons I love it:
1: Before anything else, the Stanley Parable remains a fun engaging often quite witty experience throughout regardless of the path you chose, outside the deliberate 4 hour path that is meant more as a secret then anything. If the Stanley Parable was a lesser made game it could have come across as the most pretentious piece of nonsense laughing at the player for daring to want to make choices in a video game and telling them it was all meaningless. While the Stanley Parable does mock the insane human desire to mindlessly rebel for no reason, it also mocks mindless obediance and mocks itself and other tropes. Really it's a game about exploration and rewards the player's exploration with fun narration.
2: On a related note, while the Stanley Parable is not a "large" game, it is a game where every corner is filled with things to explore. The game has a shockingly large variety of things it allows you to do and rewards it regardless. Two seperate endings are gotten from managing to clip outside a window, something that in almost any other game would just be a bug. You CAN beat the Stanley Parable in seconds, but you want to keep playing just to see what other things you can find in it somewhere.
3: While TSP makes fun of this, it's commentary on video game tropes are actually fairly insightful and useful. Specifically, it comments on what we percieve as choice in a game, and whether is actually matters. Choice and Determinism are central themes of the game, how much are choices predetermined and how much do they matter. While TSP doesn't give any conclusions to it, that's actually probably smarter in the long run given how these are questions that go back millennia, and instead it presents a perspective on them that is fun and gets you thinking.
3 Flaws:
1: I don't know if this is something that TSP is really to be blamed for, but it's a game that came out in a particularly bad time for it's type of content. That might sound insane given all the awards it's gotten but I don't mean commercially. Games, especially very narrative-based games like TSP are regularly watched rather then played. People watch people let's play on YT a lot and spoilers really hurt TSP because it doesn't have any gameplay to speak off outside trying to find things. This let's play spoiler-y world means that a lot of players will already know what's happening and what each path will lead to the first time they play the Stanley Parable which dramatically changes how they experience it. The reason it can be completed in a few hours is because you're not supposed to know where to go, you're supposed to spend signifigant time exploring.
2: The game's structure leads it to feeling a bit unsatisfying in some way because it never builds to anything. The game proudly declares that it has no end, and maybe that's true but there's a reason most stories have an end, it's beacause people enjoy the feeling of clouse and resolution. It's probably smarter to not make any big statement about choice and determinism, but it also leads to a lack of feeling any resolution. There are many paths to take and while you could see it as they all have their own ending, I don't feel like I see any bigger picture after seeing all of them (although if you've played Davey Wreden's follow-up The Beginner's Guide you could probably argue that is due to my expectations but I do still feel like having an ending is usually better then not)
3: The Stanley Parable has 1 real character, that being the Narrator, and the Narrator's character changes between each route, not so much that he's unidentifiable, but enough. The game is not a character focused game at all and while I can live with that, if you're the type of person whose really interested in characterization, this game has basically 1 character. Technically there are more people in this universe however no one is given any large amount of characterization besides the Narrator.
My Favorite Part:
Did u get the broom closet ending? Theb room closet ending was my favrite! XD More seriously, this might be an odd choice but I really like the Art Ending. To me it's a great example of why I like the Stanley Parable that they would take into account people being crazy enough to actually play the Baby Game for 4 hours and make an ending around it, plus that ending really hones in on my type of humor, where it's like somewhat ironic, somewhat not and exaggerating things past reason and using abstract imagery.
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