The Stanley Parable

The Stanley Parable

Steam - World - Title card.

Developer Galactic Cafe Publisher Galactic Cafe Published 2013-10-17 Platforms Linux, Macintosh, Windows Genres Active puzzle, Adventure, Comedy, Exploration, Graphic adventure, Puzzle Themes Adventure, Comedy, Surreal Distribution Commercial

The Stanley Parable is a surreal graphic adventure puzzle video game developed and published by Galactic Cafe and first released on Windows on 2013-10-17, and then ported to Macintosh and Linux. The game uses the Source engine.

You play Stanley, an office drone who one day wakes up in his office to find that everyone is gone. A voice narrates a parable about what Stanley is supposed to have done, but you have the option of doing something else and tripping up the story. Each time the player goes off-script, strange things happen and usually lead to a different ending.

Personal

Own?	Yes. On Steam.
Won?	Yes. Found most endings. 6/10 achievements.
Finished	2017‎-11-03.

I remember hearing about this game from a friend who said it was pretty interesting, but I waited until it came out in a Humble Indie Bundle before getting it. It remained unplayed for months more, but I eventually got around to playing it and found it to be quite enjoyable.

Review

5	7	7	5	8

Best Version: Windows

— This section contains spoilers! —

Good

• The graphics, music, sound effects, and narration are all well done.
• The writing is pretty great, there were several times I laughed out loud.
• The environments are all generally eerie and strange.
• The various endings run the gamut of funny, creepy, and thought-provoking.

Bad

• Despite the many variations, I often felt like there wasn't enough to do in the game, and routinely found myself beating the same ending several times because I couldn't think of anything else to do.
• For some reason, they didn't make each ending an achievement, so you can't get global stats on them. Also, many of the achievements are lame: restart the game, don't play the game, leave the game running all day, click on a door 430 times. These are not fun, they're tedious.

Ugly

• Nothing.

Media

Maps

• 

  Flowchart of all choices.

• 

  Flowchart of all endings.

Video

How to make your game just completely hilarious.

Longplay - All Endings.

Boundary Break.

Representation

Strong female character?	Fail	There are no women.
Bechdel test?	Fail	There are no women.
Strong person of color character?	Fail	There are no persons of color.
Queer character?	Fail	There are no queer characters.

Expansion

The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe features remastered graphics, additional endings, and other bonus content.

Links