The Stanley Parable Sets A New Benchmark For Indie Games

In the past few years, more and more gamers have found themselves with the ability to create as much media as they consume, and an increasingly large community of modders and independent developers are out there creating experiences for their fellow players. While many aim for pure entertainment, every now and then a game comes along that sets the standard for what user-generated content can be. The Stanley Parable is one of those games.

Independently produced by the enviable young team of Davey Wreden and William Pugh (also know as, ‘Galactic Cafe’), The Stanley Parable is a first-person experience that exposes the player to a meta-as-balls-commentary on story-telling, gaming and choice, and it does so with humour and heart and straight-out smarts. The game holds up a mirror to the player, and you’ll start to question yourself as it questions you.

The opening is simple: you are Stanley, a non-descript nothing man, working in a non-descript nothing office cubicle, doing non-descript nothing work. You push buttons when told to, and you’re told that you’re happy with your life. But your world is turned upside-down when you discover that everyone in the office has disappeared, and you embark on a journey to unravel the mystery.

You’re ‘assisted’ along the way by a narrator whom you can choose to obey or disobey at your whim, and your relationship with this temperamental companion ends up driving the story far more than the initial complication. It’s about how you react when you’re told what to do, and how you react to power and a lack thereof.

As the player, your choices are limited: those you are granted drastically alter the story, offering a huge amount of replay value. The narrative progresses and develops in ways your puny human brain wouldn’t even think to consider as it reacts to your previous play-throughs, and the game will be ready for you if you try to break the rules. One instance had me racing through a section I’d learned off by heart, only to have the narrator tell me to slow down and force me to listen to some ‘calming new age music’ before I could progress. Another time, the same action prompted the narrator to hurry the action along and he seemed as eager to get to the next choice as me.

The Stanley Parable nails all the themes it brings to the table — the game looks at the limited nature of choice, the individual’s response to oppressive authority, and the impossibility of complete autonomy when everything you do is socio-culturally determined — and still, it manages to never be too heavy-handed. As you get drawn in and begin obsessively seeking out all the different endings, you start to make real, emotional decisions that force you to reflect on how your choices represent you as a player and a human being. I had a severe moral crisis when the narrator pleaded with me to just stay with him in a safe and peaceful room, while I wanted to move on and uncover more of the story. He got upset, then I got upset… It was just a rough time.

In such moments, the game speaks to us about how we interact with technology, with each other, and with power, and it remains incredibly entertaining throughout (in particular, the voice-acting from Kevan Brighting as ‘The Narrator’ is very British, very smarmy, and very perfect).

The recent release of the game is actually an update of the original version, now in all its Hi-Def glory, and it sold over 100k units after just a few days. As you can see from the makers’ development blog, it was made with love and stress and tears, and the result is an indie success story through and through.

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The Stanley Parable is now available on Steam (there’s a free trial there, too). Head to stanleyparable.com for more details.

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Lachlan is a guy who does things and is currently writing, drinking, and occasionally studying Writing and Cultural Studies at UTS.