The Stanley Parable

I haven’t played the demo and so decided to take this opportunity to give it a spin.

The game started up to this screen:

Faint music played in the background as I waited for it to proceed to the next scene.

…

…

(uhhh….)

…

Perplexed, I thought the screen froze and gave my mouse a wiggle. The screen slid and revealed that I had been staring at a white board with the words printed on it for the past five minutes. I did absolutely nothing so far, but I was already liking the (unintentional?) irony.

After figuring out the controls, I made my way to a waiting room where I was told to wait until my number was called. Paper was littered all over the floor and closer inspection revealed that they’re forms to sign up for the demo. Huh, looks like the demo is setting this up to be some sort of experiment? My number hasn’t arrived yet, but I eventually realized that nothing was stopping me from moving to the next part. The freedom was surprising. But what was even more surprising was the range of choices I was given, some of them not so obvious. The gameplay was relatively linear, I was expected to follow the instructions given by a very, very sarcastic and disembodied voice. Walking around prompted dialogue from the voice who would explain what I was looking at/interacting with or instruct me to do something and revealed bits and pieces of the voice’s personality. Refusing to comply with the instructions led to the voice contemplating about the motives behind the rebellious act before devolving into snide insults that finally withered into resignation to the possibility of me being entertained by pressing a button over and over.

The 8 Game! You literally press the 8 button and the number 8 appears on the walls as well as an automated voice saying “eight!” That’s it. Moving on. Yes, let’s move on. There’s nothing to read here. Stop reading here. I mean it, how can you be possibly entertained by my attempt to bring the word count up to 200. There’s little to glean by the following words. Please cease your futile attempt to discover what I have to say because I have nothing more to say here.

The end.

Ha, yea right. I suddenly was set back to the beginning. The voice became increasingly frantic about the “missing” demo as I was flung into different rooms and instructed to start over from the beginning repeatedly until I got it “right.” The environment of familiar locations became warped and glitched as I entered the real end. At least, it was a real end in the sense that the voice brought me through a sequence of “flashbacks” where I was able to walk a bit. The flashbacks transformed into unexplored locations that the voice claimed that we have went through and the brief time I was able to walk in them made such locations ever more tantalizing.

The end. For real, I promise.