The Stanley Parable is a story-based video game created by Davey Wreden and William Pugh. In the game, players control a silent character named Stanley, who is guided by narration from British actor Kevan Brighting. As the story unfolds, players face choices that lead to different paths. If players ignore the Narrator's suggestions, those decisions are included in the story. Depending on the choices made, players may experience various endings before the game restarts from the beginning.
The original version of The Stanley Parable was released on July 31, 2011, as a free modification for Valve's Half-Life 2 by Wreden. Later, Wreden and Pugh released a standalone remake using the Source engine under the name Galactic Cafe. This remake included many choices from the original mod, added new areas and story paths, and improved the game's graphics. The remake was approved through Steam Greenlight in 2012 and released for Windows on October 17, 2013. Updates later added support for macOS on December 19, 2013, and for Linux on September 9, 2015. An expanded version called The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe was released on April 27, 2022. It is now available on consoles and other platforms, with added content and improved graphics. An iOS version of Ultra Deluxe was released on October 7, 2024.
Both the original mod and its remakes were highly praised and sold over one million copies within a year of their release. Reviewers highlighted the game's storytelling and its exploration of themes like player choice, the relationship between creators and players, and ideas about fate. The game and its themes have been widely discussed by analysts.
Gameplay and synopsis
The player views the game from the perspective of Stanley, a character who can move through and interact with parts of the environment, such as pressing buttons or opening doors. However, Stanley does not have abilities related to combat or other action-based tasks. The Narrator guides the player through the story. The Narrator explains that Stanley is employee 427 in an office building. His job is to watch a computer screen, monitor data, and press buttons as instructed without asking questions. One day, the screen goes blank, an event that has never occurred before. Confused about what to do, Stanley begins exploring the building and finds that it is completely empty.
At this point, the story divides into different possibilities based on the player’s choices. When the player reaches a point where a decision is possible, they can choose to follow the Narrator’s directions or take the opposite action. The first decision involves two open doors. The Narrator mentions that Stanley previously traveled through the leftmost door, but this event has not yet happened. The Narrator considers the player’s choices and responds with new narration or attempts to guide the player back to the intended path if the player’s actions contradict the story. For example, if the player follows the Narrator’s directions and enters the leftmost door, the story continues with the plot about missing employees. If the player instead chooses the rightmost door, the Narrator changes the story. The Narrator may encourage the player to return to the "correct" path, but the player can continue making different choices, leading to further changes in the story. In some cases, the Narrator directly addresses the player, breaking the fourth wall.
In the original 2011 version of the game, there were six different endings. The creator, Wreden, estimated that it would take about an hour for a player to experience all of them. The 2013 remake added more than ten endings, changed some existing endings and the paths that lead to them, and included additional Easter eggs and choices that affect the story.
The Ultra Deluxe version expanded the game further by adding more endings, new areas, and additional story routes. Players can choose an option stating they have played the game before to access new content more quickly. Otherwise, players must complete several endings before the new content becomes available. As Stanley, the player discovers a new area labeled "new content," which includes a bucket that can be used to change the game’s endings. Another added route leads Stanley to a new area called the Memory Zone, where the Narrator shares all the praise The Stanley Parable received. However, the Narrator later encounters a section filled with Steam user reviews (referred to as "Pressurized Gas" in console and mobile versions) that criticize the game, causing the Narrator to express frustration. Once all new content is completed, including a route where Stanley learns that "The Stanley Parable 2" received negative reviews, the title screen changes to display the new title. No further changes to the game’s content occur after this.
Development
The original The Stanley Parable was created as a mod for Half-Life 2. Davey Wreden, who was 22 years old when the mod was released, began thinking about making the game about three years earlier. He was inspired by the way most video games tell stories and wanted to explore what would happen if players chose to act differently from what the story expected. He also saw this project as a way to help him achieve his goal of becoming a game developer.
At the time, Wreden noticed that many popular, high-budget games made assumptions about how players would experience them and rarely answered questions like "what if" that players might ask. He believed that some games, such as Metal Gear Solid, Half-Life 2, Portal, Braid, and BioShock, were starting to address this by creating more engaging and thought-provoking stories. Wreden’s original plan was to create a personal project that asked questions about why people play video games. However, he later discovered that other gamers had similar questions. He aimed to make a game that would spark discussion among players after they finished it.
Wreden described his design plan as "Mess with the player's head in every way possible, throwing them off-guard, or pretending there's an answer and then kinda whisking it away from in front of them." He chose to use an "unconventional narrator" to explore what would happen if the player disobeyed the narrator’s guidance.
With no prior experience using the Source engine, Wreden learned the basics by studying information from wikis and forums about the Source Development Kit. Outside of Kevan Brighting’s voice-over work, Wreden created all parts of the game. He used an audition process to find a narrator and chose Brighting’s submission because it fit the game well. Brighting recorded his lines in one session.
Wreden wanted the game to be short so players could experience all the endings without spending too much time replaying the game. This allowed him to include unusual and nonsensical endings, such as "and then everything was happy!" which would not have been appropriate as a reward for completing a long game. Most of his ideas were included, though some had to be removed because he could not figure out how to implement them in the Source engine. For example, he wanted a puzzle where players had to press buttons, but he could not bind keyboard input to do this. He left this as a "broken" puzzle, which later received praise from players for creating a sense of confusion during the narration.
Wreden described the project as "grueling" and said it limited his ability to pursue his career goals. His efforts became more intense after he learned that other players were interested in the game.
Before releasing the mod, Wreden tested it with a friend and posted it on ModDB on July 31, 2011, a few weeks before graduating from college. After graduating, he planned to open a video game-themed bar in Australia, similar to the Mana Bar, where he had worked for about a year. However, his plans changed after the mod gained popularity. He received offers to work on new games and job offers from larger developers, which he declined because he did not want to work in that industry. Instead, he began gathering independent programmers to improve the mod and create a new game in the future.
Soon after the original mod was released, Wreden was contacted by William Pugh, a player who had experience creating environments in the Source engine and had previously won a Saxxy Award for his work. Pugh heard about the mod through word of mouth and wanted to help improve it. He and Wreden collaborated daily for two years to create an updated version of the game. Initially, Wreden wanted to recreate the original game exactly, but discussions with Pugh led them to change some parts and add new content, creating an "interpolation" of the original game and turning it into a stand-alone title. The remake includes the six original endings and several new ones. Brighting returned to voice the Narrator, as Wreden believed his performance was a major reason for the game’s success. A custom soundtrack was also created for the remake by Blake Robinson, Yiannis Ioannides, and Christiaan Bakker.
Pugh and Wreden worked together on the Narrator’s script, adding and refining elements. They also made changes to the environment, which helped shape the Narrator’s personality. Wreden carefully designed the first scene where players can make a choice—where the Narrator says Stanley went through the left door, but players can choose the right door—to ensure players felt the choice was their own. Pugh noted that the Narrator’s bias influenced the game’s office setting, as the Narrator did not consider including unimportant functional items. Wreden said the game was about the relationship between the player and the Narrator, explaining that it was not a power struggle but a challenge for both to understand each other. He noted that players had about a "fifty-fifty split" between those who followed the Narrator’s advice and those who did not.
During play-testing, Pugh found that players disliked a flowchart showing where choices occurred in the game, so it was removed. However, without visual cues, players often missed choices, so Pugh added color highlights to indicate where choices were available. In the original mod, one route included sections modeled after Half-Life 2. In the remake, Pugh and Wreden added a route where players are dropped into a Minecraft world and another where they revisit the opening of Portal before being trapped in the original 2011 version of The Stanley Parable. These routes were approved by Minecraft’s creator, Markus Persson, and Valve, the company behind Portal.
To distribute the new version, the team first considered a "pay what you want" pricing model but later used Steam Greenlight, a service that allows independent developers to get votes from players to help Valve offer the game on Steam.
Critical reception
Within two weeks of its release, the mod was downloaded more than 90,000 times. Most players responded positively, and Wreden became "an overnight internet sensation among hardcore gamers."
The Stanley Parable mod was praised by journalists as a thought-provoking game. They highlighted it as a highly experimental game that players could experience in a short time. Many journalists encouraged players to try the game themselves to avoid spoilers and to discuss it in their sites' forums. Ben Kuchera of Ars Technica noted that while the game claims to give players choices, many of these choices do not affect the outcome, as "to feel like you're in more control than you are." Brighting's voice work was considered a strong part of the game, adding dry British wit to the complex narration. The game was listed as an honorable mention for the Seumas McNally Grand Prize and "Excellence in Narrative" award at the 15th Annual Independent Games Festival. The Stanley Parable received the Special Recognition award at IndieCade 2012.
The 2013 remake was highly praised by reviewers. At Metacritic, as of March 2020, the game had an 88/100 score based on 47 critic reviews. Forbes included Wreden in its 2013 "30 Under 30" list for success and marketing of The Stanley Parable. For his work on the game, William Pugh was named one of 18 "Breakthrough Brits" for 2014 by BAFTA.
Some critics focused on the game's themes of existence. Ashton Raze of The Telegraph noted that the game "offers … a look at, not a critique of … the nature of narrative construction" that can influence other video games. The remake won the Audience Award and was nominated for "Excellence in Narrative" and "Excellence in Audio" at the 2014 Independent Games Festival Awards. It was also nominated for "Best Story," "Best Debut Game," and "Game Innovation" awards at the 2014 BAFTA Video Games Awards. Brighting's performance was nominated for the "Performer" award. At the 2013 National Academy of Video Game Trade Reviewers (NAVGTR) awards, the game won "Writing in a Comedy" and "Performance in a Comedy, Lead (Kevan Brighting as Narrator)." At the 17th Annual D.I.C.E. Awards, the game was nominated for "Downloadable Game of the Year," "Outstanding Innovation in Gaming," and "Outstanding Character Performance" for the Narrator.
Wreden reported that more than 100,000 sales were made within the first three days of release. This was much more revenue than he expected, as sales from these three days would allow him to live comfortably and work full-time as a developer for five years. The game sold over one million copies in less than a year. The game's demo was also well received, and Wreden considered it a key part of the full game's success. IGN's Luke Reilly listed The Stanley Parable's demo as one of the top six demos in video games, noting it was "an entirely standalone exercise designed to prepare [the player] for the unique player and narrator relationship that forms the core of The Stanley Parable experience."
A patch was released shortly after the game's launch to replace imagery in a 1950s-style instructional video that some players found racially offensive. Wreden stated, "[W]e always wanted the game to be something that could be played by anyone of any age. If a person would feel less comfortable showing the game to their children, then I've got no problem helping fix that!" After the remake, Wreden began developing his next title, The Beginner's Guide, released in October 2015. Meanwhile, Pugh set up the independent studio Crows Crows Crows. Their first game, Dr. Langeskov, The Tiger, and The Terribly Cursed Emerald: A Whirlwind Heist, was released in December 2015.
The book The Ethics of Playing, Researching, and Teaching Games in the Writing Classroom analyzed the game as an example of a game "that speaks to other games." It noted that the game's lack of player agency combined with its many branching paths created tension between the game's will and the player's will. The book also stated that the game's central ethical question—whether the entire game was constructed before the player arrived—made players not just play the game but experiment with it to test their own agency against the game's design. It analyzed an ending where Stanley is locked in a room with a bomb that explodes when the timer reaches zero, noting how this ending punished players for thinking outside the box and caused them to question the game's purpose. Another part of the game, "The Baby Game," where Stanley must press a button to stop a baby from walking into an incinerator, was analyzed for the ethical question of whether the player's choices to save the baby had real meaning or if the player was being manipulated. The book Fictionality, Factuality, and Reflexivity Across Discourses and Media noted how the game drew attention to how the game itself is presented, highlighting the connection between fiction and reality. The "Confusion" ending, where the Narrator and Stanley encounter a wall with all the Narrator's dialogue, was used to show the game's self-awareness of its storytelling and how the story follows a linear path that cannot be changed, even by those who seem to be in control. The book also analyzed the game's interactivity, noting how the divide between Stanley's identity and the player's identity allowed the game to blend the real world and fictional world into the same narrative. It analyzed the game's "Freedom" ending, where Stanley disables a mind control facility and walks outside to freedom. The book noted the game's self-irony, as the Narrator tells Stanley how to feel in situations, and to "free" Stanley, the player must give up control, making them unable to be free.
The book Against Flow: Video Games and the Flowing Subject analyzed how the game encouraged players to stop and question their reasons for playing, something most games try to avoid. It noted that while this might seem to stop the flow of the game, it actually encouraged it due to the game's self-reflexive nature. The book also stated that while the game created a "playful" atmosphere, it also "turned a critical eye on play itself," analyzing it as a "deeply ironic game" that satirized how games are seen as escapism. It noted that the game's medium criticized the structure of video games as a whole but
In popular culture
In May 2014, a special pack with the voice of the Narrator was released for the game Dota 2. At the same time, The Narrator became an optional announcer for Johann Sebastian Joust, a game included in the collection Sportsfriends.
The Stanley Parable was shown in episode 7 of the third season of House of Cards, along with other games like Monument Valley. In the episode, President Frank Underwood is introduced to the game by a novelist and video game reviewer who is writing his biography. The game’s ability to challenge and change its own story was used as a way to show how politics work in the story.
The Apple TV+ series Severance was inspired by The Stanley Parable.