Game: The Stanley Parable
Target Audience: Adults and young adults who want something more experimental, though-provoking, complex, and are willing to try something unconventional. Rated T for Teen.
Game Creator: Davey Wreden & William Pugh | Galactic Cafe
Platform: PC, Mac, Console
The Stanley Parable is not your ordinary walking simulator. When I first came across this game, I was someone who played video games to enjoy action mechanics, such as playing a sport or shooting enemies. When I first booted up the game, I was introduced to our controllable main character, Stanley. He is your ordinary, run-of-the-mill office worker, and we awake at his desk where we are immediately greeted by a narrator providing us the information that all of our coworkers have disappeared. In our reading this week for the mindmap, we read about how storytelling can be done in games using “embedded narratives,” which are pre-designed content to progress the game’s story, and within that we have the concept of using rehearsal to prepare the player (tutorials, intro cutscenes, etc.). This game does the complete opposite; with no tutorial or introduction to the character or the story, no HUD, and no marked objective, we are just thrown into this office building, and only through exploration can we uncover the story. This is where I believe that the essence of “walking simulators” applies to this game, as there are no action mechanics or dialogue trees to progress the story, but we witness the story unfold of how our coworkers disappeared and who the narrator is purely through the acts of walking and listening.
This brings me to what really sets this game apart for me as a core design element: the omnipresent narrator. This game’s usage of a narrator to progress the story and help uncover the underlying narrative serves as a complement to the exploration. As the narrator guides you through the office, often instructing you on what to do, it is still entirely up to you to decide whether you follow his instructions or not. In my personal gameplay experience, I found myself actively going against his suggestions, picking the right door instead of the left, jumping off moving platforms instead of continuing on their path, all because I enjoyed hearing how the narrator would respond (and maybe I just enjoyed being rebellious without consequences). Although this ended up leading me to a sci-fi-esque visual light show and a staircase that I repeatedly jumped off of until I died and had to restart the game, this affordance to make your own decisions really cemented the discovery fun of this game and provided some entertaining moments.
It could be argued that they designed the game to allow you to do so, maybe even probing you to rebel with such definitive instructions from the narrator, but by providing this choice for you, it actually centers the mechanic of walking as the primary focus of this game. What begins as a method to explore this unknown office to uncover the story or seek quirky easter eggs eventually turns into how the player expresses themselves in the game. Walking can be a form of compliance, or it can be an act of opposition, that decision is entirely up to you. This modular structure where your decisions can shift the narrative creates this tree of decisions where you can trace branches of your choices, enforcing the concept of “emergent narratives” as meaning arises from the players interaction with the system, not just the main story.
What differentiates The Stanley Parable from other walking sims like Gone Home or Firewatch is its meta-commentary on player choice. While those games use walking to gradually piece together a fixed story, Stanley actively resists a single cohesive narrative. It acknowledges your presence, mocks your decisions, and redefines what it means to “progress” in a game. That self-awareness makes its design especially compelling.
When analyzing this game ethically, the absence of violence is apparent. In many games today, violence serves as the central mechanic: a way to interact with the world, drive conflict, and ultimately resolve the story. Games like The Last of Us or Red Dead Redemption are celebrated for their storytelling, but they still tie emotional moments to acts of violence. On the other hand, The Stanley Parable uses zero violence. There’s no attacking, shooting, or even the ability to see your own body, forcing players to engage with the game through curiosity, observation, and reflection.
The lack of violence shifted my attention away from outcomes and toward intent. It made me think more critically about why I made certain choices. I wasn’t “fighting” the game, I was negotiating with it, engaging with its systems in a philosophical way. That felt more personal, and in some ways, more profound. It was a reminder that games don’t need violence to create tension or provoke thought, they just need clever design. Ultimately, The Stanley Parable shows that walking in a video game can be more than just a form of movement, it can be the story itself.
