Reading Excerpt - Let's play The Stanley Parable (Patreon)

"The Stanley Parable is a first person exploration game. You will play as Stanley, and you will not play as Stanley. You will follow a story, you will not follow a story. You will have a choice, you will have no choice. The game will end, the game will never end. Contradiction follows contradiction, the rules of how games should work are broken, then broken again. This world was not made for you to understand.

But as you explore, slowly, meaning begins to arise, the paradoxes might start to make sense, perhaps you are powerful after all. The game is not here to fight you; it is inviting you to dance."

- Game Description, The Stanley Parable Steam Page

"Inviting you to dance" is honestly a better summation than anything you'll find me saying in this video (layered on a video - ooh he fancy), but if your curiosity is peaked, you can still watch to see my try to explain why I find this game so exciting. One of the most difficult things to do in interaction design is to give us commands we are meant to / are able to disobey. The Stanley Parable takes what seems like a familiar, "choose your own adventure" style and instead moves beyond the simple black/white of "right/wrong answer" or "right/wrong ending," creating a hilarious, layered, varyingly antagonistic relationship with the voice in your head that constantly leaves you guessing who is really in control.

It's such a sly and clever thing to guide someone from "fighting" to "dancing," and this game is one of the better foxtrots I've ever had the pleasure to caper through.

Check it out!