For this week’s critical play, I played The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe through Steam on a Mac. Developed by Crows Crows Crows, the game targets an audience with a moderate level of media literacy, as much of the meta-commentary relies on players being familiar with the trope that the game satirizes. This target audience allows the game to run wild with its witty remarks without fear of alienating players or causing general confusion. From the portion I played, the game seems to focus most heavily on the narrative and discovery types of fun.
In The Stanley Parable, walking is cleverly utilized to give the player agency and convey the game’s story. The game doesn’t have many movement mechanics; players can only move using the WASD keys on their keyboard and crouch using the control key. Furthermore, in my experience, the crouch button served little practical purpose and was more of a false option. Throughout the game, players are implicitly given a choice: follow the narrator or chart their own path. This choice is consistently presented through two paths: the path provided and the path not traveled. In some cases, two doors will open, allowing the player to walk through one of them. In others, there may be a button or other interactive element that steers the player away from the narrator’s directions.
In the above image, we see the first real choice that the game presents to the player. Here, we observe a few key elements of how the developers encourage the player to stray from the beaten path. First and foremost, when you enter the room, both doors swing open simultaneously. Furthermore, the narrator states what the player is supposed to do without mentioning the other choice at all. Both of these design choices create a sense of intrigue for the player. “Why do I have to go through the left door?” one may wonder. “What will the narrator say if I don’t?” These trains of thought are core to the gameplay loop and lead to the discovery of a range of weird and wacky outcomes.
The aesthetics of The Stanley Parable contrast sharply with one another. On one hand, there is the abandoned, liminal space of the office. Most of the time, there are no sounds at all, except for the narrator’s voice, the player’s clicking, and the whirring of various machinery.
This absence of flashy or notable elements highlights the few elements that do exist, most notably, the narrator. However, the intrigue of an abandoned office mystery is accompanied by another key aspect of the game’s aesthetics: wit and irony. Some of this wit is more subtle and emerges through exploration of one’s environment.
The player can tell at a glance that all these infographics are about nothing in particular, but the absurdity of the environment lightens what could be a far eerier mood.
Finally, a key aspect of the game’s aesthetic comes from the narrator. As the only source of the game’s plot and the player’s sole companion, the narrator does much of the heavy lifting to convey courses of action and outcomes. However, rather than simply stating what is happening, the narrator is very opinionated and does not hesitate to make fun of you or let you know that you’re making a mess of the game’s intended direction.
The narrator is undoubtedly the most heavy-handed means by which the game conveys its aesthetics, and they do so wonderfully. The narrator’s witticisms delight the player, and the absurdity of their responses inspires a desire to continue defying their directions. Indeed, the narrator is a significant part of what distinguishes The Stanley Parable from other walking simulators. Here, there are no glowing indicators or marked objectives. The only guidance you have on how to progress is what the narrator says, and everything else is entirely self-directed. Their voice is as integral to the storytelling as the game’s environment, if not more so.
All of these elements come together to make The Stanley Parable a delightful and intriguing gameplay experience. The subversion of both medium and genre expectations keeps the player guessing about what will happen next and provides motivation to continue exploring. Crows Crows Crows exhibits a masterful understanding of audience experience and brings it out to its fullest.
Ethics
My experience with violence in the game I played was very different from that of the walking simulator. In section, I served as GM for a short game of a TTRPG called “Sexy Battle Wizards,” in which you’re a sexy wizard that can engage in battle. As can often happen with games in this medium, players would resort to violence as their first option, resulting in cartoonish deaths for all those they encountered. In this environment, violence is essentially an expectation, and it’s reflected in both the title and how players engage with the system.
In the Stanley Parable, on the other hand, violence plays a very minor role. There is not any explicit violence within the game, and the small moment of violence is simply an implication by the narrator that the player has died and was replaced by a second player. This commentary makes light of a subject that is often very dark in reality, and serves as just another bit in a long string of jokes. The absence of violence in The Stanley Parable is key to its aesthetic, as the tone of an abandoned building is far more sinister with the implication of violent means. As it is, things are just seen as eerie, and the game can maintain its lighthearted nature more easily.
