The Stanley Parable

So I finally got around to playing The Stanley Parable - years late, I know - a small indie game made from a Half-Life 2 mod famous for its complete non-linearity and fourth wall breaking.

I reached about five or six of the nineteen possible endings, stopping for good once I reached the "happy" one that unlocks a "beat the game achievement." I won't spoil how that's done, but there's a great ironic twist in there.

This isn't even really a game as much as a little work of art about free will and determinism in video games. The gameplay is incredibly simple. You just walk around and very occasionally press buttons by clicking the mouse. All the while, an omniscient narrator provides an account of what's going on. But here's the deal - you'll come very quickly to a set of two doors. The narrator will say, "...and Stanley took the door on the left." What you do from here is up to you. What's interesting is how the narrator reacts to being disobeyed. The whole game was, I won't lie, creeping me the hell out early on. It was all so unsettling, in part because it was an experience I'd never really had before.

Lots of games these days - particularly short, indie games - will let player choice determine the story to an extent. This, already six years old, is the only one I've ever played where you can do almost anything at all and be treated to such a wide array of different endings. A lot of them are dark and a few of them are philosophical in nature, exploring and commenting on the idea of video games presenting linear paths.

I do recommend giving it a go if you've never played it, and going in blind at that. You can get a whole lot of different experiences with this game just by fooling around for an hour or so and it's an interesting exercise to boot.