Quick Look: The Stanley Parable

@customotto: There's part of the game that wouldn't seem out of place as "art"

I don't get it.

I think this game is alright.

If anything, it's a sort of wakeup-call to think about how we spend our existence.

This is a cool little thing

How does if differ from the mod?

@thedez: Only the theme is the same, along with some of the places.

This looks fantastic. Game play looks really limited but source engine stuff excels at these world building exploration heavy scenarios. I'd like to play this but it's not going to look great on my PC set up at the moment. I might be willing to sacrifice a flawless graphical experience if I get to see how deep the rabbit hole goes... Thanks for this video. Now I know what the hell this thing is.

I just watched 33 of the 24 minutes of this video. Stanley's reality altering "Groundhog Day Like" Insanity is effecting my computer as well!

awwww....keep going!!!

A fun game to talk about. The idea of agency and decision making in video games is the whole point of this game. Gives me a Flower, Sun, and Rain vibe. Very cool.

Some of the endings or the paths Stanley takes are really fantastic in the game. I was really, really surprised to find out just how far it pushes the premise and how detailed some of the options were.

I had a lot of fun, easily as much fun as watching Hitchhikers for the first time. One of the best comedic games I've played and there are way too few of them.

It's a nice exercise on the idea of branching paths and exploration. Really nice for a couple of hours of poking around.

And the narrators are really funny and charismatic.

Try to go for the broomcloset ending.

It actually is nothing like Portal. I mean, Portal, in its core, is a puzzle game that revolves around the idea of the Portal Gun, closed testing chamber environments and physics. The only thing that they have in common is that they are First Person games with some comedy in a way -- though the humor is not even very similar between then, so I wouldn't put both in the same bag.

I've been meaning to play this for a long time now. Now thats its an actual game I guess nows the time to finally play it,

Looks like a really cool game.

Jeff is trying really hard to get into office 420.

I love it when nerds call things out for trying too hard to be smart, having failed to learn from a lifetime's worth of societal intelligence-shaming.

I'm really torn with this. I want to play it, but I'm not sure I want to buy it. It seems the demo is pretty on point with the game itself from what I've seen, so I suppose I'll get that and see if I like it first?

I will say, of all the horror games I've played, this isn't even a horror game and it just seems damn haunting.

I imagine you would enjoy original Source Engine version. It seems like a pretty similar idea. It looks different, but seems to play on the same ideas.

I think I would have had a more positive experience with the game if I didn't hate the narrator's voice. I did enjoy the game and I like English accents, I just dislike this guy in particular.

I liked the choices in Mass Effect. It's true that they didn't impact the story (most of them anyway) that much and ultimately, it was always a binary choice more or less. Wrex dies, Wrex doesn't die. Kaiden dies, Ashley dies and so on. But in that game with its mechanics, it made sense and was fun to play. I liked that universe and just being able to choose what to say, even though it doesn't really matter which option you pick, made me more invested in that universe.

Not every game needs to have choice that is so elaborate in its consequence.

Jesus Christ! the sneeze scared the s*** out of me... :D

Love this kind of thing. It seems like a gimmick at the outset, but the developers have clearly put some work into making a playable game out of this choice(?)-based gameplay. Reminds me of that mission in Rome: Total War where the Senate tells you to off yourself because you've grown too powerful. Of course, you couldn't really do it, but that fourth-wall-breaking-esque moment, where the game almost acknowledges your power, was just super thought-provoking.

Or that scene where the Colonel in MGS2 tells you to turn off the game. Obviously more fourth-wall-breaking, but of course that doesn't acknowledge your turning off the game as Stanley Parable would for an action not following its directive.

This game is like playing Inception, while fighting the matrix, and then waking up questioning you exist.