The Stanley Parable is a story-based video game created and written by developers Davey Wreden and William Pugh. In the game, players control a silent character named Stanley, while a narrator, British actor Kevan Brighting, tells the story. As the game progresses, players face different choices and paths. If players ignore the narrator’s directions, those choices become part of the story. Depending on the decisions made, players will experience different endings before the game restarts from the beginning.
The Stanley Parable was first released on July 31, 2011, as a free addition to Valve’s Half-Life 2 by Wreden. Later, Wreden and Pugh released a stand-alone version using the Source engine under the name Galactic Cafe. This remake included many choices from the original version, added new areas and story paths, and improved the game’s graphics. It was approved through Steam Greenlight in 2012 and released on October 17, 2013, for Windows. Later updates 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, including improved graphics and additional content. An iOS version of Ultra Deluxe was released on October 7, 2024.
Both the original version and its remakes received high praise and sold over one million copies within a year of release. Reviewers highlighted the game’s storytelling, its exploration of player choice, and its themes about the relationship between game creators and players, as well as ideas about fate and predestination.
Gameplay and synopsis
The player sees the game from Stanley's point of view. Stanley can move around and interact with parts of the environment, such as pressing buttons or opening doors, but he cannot fight or perform action-based tasks. The Narrator tells the story to the player. He explains that Stanley is employee 427 in an office building. Stanley's job is to watch data on a computer screen and press buttons as instructed without asking questions. One day, the screen goes blank, which has never happened before. Confused about what to do, Stanley begins exploring the building and finds that the workplace is completely empty.
At this point, the story splits into many possible paths based on the player's choices. When the player reaches a place where a choice is available, they can follow the Narrator's directions or choose the opposite action. The first decision involves two open doors. The Narrator mentions that Stanley traveled through the leftmost door, but this has not yet happened. The Narrator considers the player's choices and responds with new narration or tries to guide the player back to the main path if the player goes against it. For example, if the player follows the Narrator's directions and enters the leftmost door, the story about missing employees continues. If the player chooses the rightmost door instead, the Narrator changes the story. In this case, the Narrator may encourage the player to return to the "correct" path, but the player can keep choosing differently, causing further changes to the story. Sometimes, the Narrator talks directly to the player, breaking the fourth wall, when reacting to the player's decisions.
In the original 2011 version of the game, there were six different endings. The creator, Wreden, said it would take about an hour to experience all of them. The 2013 remake added more than ten endings, changed some existing ones, and included new paths to reach them, as well as additional Easter eggs and other choices.
Ultra Deluxe added even more endings, new paths, and new areas in the game. Players can choose an option stating they have played the game before to access the new content faster. 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 path leads the Narrator to guide Stanley to a place called the Memory Zone, which shows all the praise The Stanley Parable received. However, Stanley later finds an area filled with negative reviews from Steam users (called "Pressurized Gas" in console and mobile versions), causing the Narrator to express frustration that the game was not good enough. Once all new content is completed, including a path where Stanley learns that "The Stanley Parable 2" received poor reviews, the title screen changes to show the new name, and no further changes occur.
Development
The original Stanley Parable was released as a mod of Half-Life 2. Davey Wreden, who was 22 years old when the mod was released, created The Stanley Parable about three years earlier. He was inspired after thinking about how most video games tell stories and wondering what would happen if players chose to act differently than the story expected. He also saw this project as a way to help him achieve his goal of becoming a game developer. As a player, Wreden noticed that many popular video games made assumptions about how players would experience the game and rarely answered "what if" questions players might have. He believed that some recent games, like the Metal Gear Solid series, Half-Life 2, Portal, Braid, and BioShock, started to address this issue by making players think more about the story instead of just following it. Wreden initially made the game as a personal project to explore questions about why people play video games. However, he later found that other players had similar thoughts. He aimed to create a game that would spark discussion among players after they finished it. Wreden described his design plan as "messing with the player's mind in every way possible, surprising them, or pretending there is an answer and then taking it away." He used an "unconventional narrator" to show what might happen if the player ignored the narrator's guidance.
Wreden had no experience working with the Source engine, so he learned the basics by using information from wikis and forums about the Source Development Kit. Outside of Kevan Brighting's voice-over work, Wreden did all the work on 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 voice 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. The short length also allowed him to include silly or nonsensical endings, like "and then everything was happy!" which would not have been a good reward for finishing a long game. Most of Wreden's ideas for the game were included, though some had to be removed because he couldn't figure out how to make them work with the Source engine. In one case, he wanted players to press buttons as the narrator and screen prompts instructed, but he couldn't bind keyboard input to do this. He left this as a "broken" puzzle, which later impressed players because it made them feel like they had no control during that part of the game. Despite the game's success, Wreden found the project very difficult and said it limited his career goals. He noted that his efforts became more intense once he learned other players were interested in the game.
Wreden first tested the game with a friend before posting the mod on ModDB on July 31, 2011, a few weeks before he graduated from college. After graduating, Wreden planned to move to Australia to open a video game-themed bar similar to the Mana Bar, where he had worked for about a year. However, his plans changed after the mod became successful. He received offers to help develop new games and job offers from larger companies, but he declined them because he did not want to work in that environment. Instead, he gathered other independent programmers to improve The Stanley Parable and work on 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 won a Saxxy Award for his work. Pugh heard about the mod through word of mouth and, after playing it, saw that Wreden needed help improving it. The two worked together every day for two years to create an updated version of the mod. At first, Wreden wanted to recreate the original game exactly as it was, but after discussing ideas with Pugh, they decided to change parts of the game and add new content, creating an "interpolation" of the original. The remake includes the six endings from the original mod and adds several new endings. Brighting returned to voice the Narrator in the remake because Wreden believed his performance was a major reason for the game's success. A custom soundtrack was also created for the remake, composed by Blake Robinson, Yiannis Ioannides, and Christiaan Bakker.
Pugh and Wreden worked together on The Narrator's script, with each adding ideas that the other would then refine. One of them would also change the environment, and the other would use those changes to develop The Narrator's personality. Wreden said the first scene where the player makes a choice—where The Narrator says Stanley went through the left door while the player can choose the right door—was carefully designed so players would not notice anything unusual. He wanted the choice to feel natural and made by the player on their own. Pugh noted that The Narrator's bias in storytelling influenced the game's office design, as the narrator did not include typical office items that were not important. Wreden explained that the game was about the relationship between the player and The Narrator, saying, "I don't think it's a power struggle between you and me, but I also don't think it's really a power struggle between Stanley and the narrator. Ultimately, these things are trying to understand one another, but they're having great difficulty doing so." He also said that the possibility of reconciliation between the player and The Narrator was always there, but it depended on how players chose to play the game. According to Wreden, about half of the players followed The Narrator's advice, while the other half did not.
During play-testing, Pugh found that players did not like having a flowchart early in the game that showed where choices occurred. This was removed. However, Pugh also noticed that without visual cues, players often missed these choices, so he added color highlights to indicate where decisions were available. In the original mod, one route included sections modeled after parts of Half-Life 2. In the remake, Pugh and Wreden added a route where the player is dropped into a Minecraft world and another where the player briefly returns to the opening of Portal before being trapped in the original 2011 version of The Stanley Parable. These routes were approved by their creators, Markus Persson and Valve, respectively.
To distribute the new version, the team first considered a "pay what you want" scheme but later used Steam Greenlight, a service that allows independent developers to get votes from players to help Valve offer the game on their platform.
Critical reception
Within two weeks of its release, the mod was downloaded more than 90,000 times. Most players responded positively, and Wreden became very famous online among serious gamers.
The Stanley Parable mod was praised by journalists as a challenging game that encouraged creative thinking. They noted it was a very different type of game that players could finish quickly. Many journalists encouraged players to try the game themselves to avoid spoilers that might change how players experience it. They also wanted to discuss the game in their websites’ forums. Ben Kuchera of Ars Technica said that although the game claims to give players choices, many of these choices do not actually affect the game’s outcome. The voice acting by Kevan Brighting was considered a strong part of the game, adding dry British humor to the complex storytelling. The game received special recognition for the Seumas McNally Grand Prize and "Excellence in Narrative" award at the 15th Annual Independent Games Festival. The Stanley Parable also won the Special Recognition award at IndieCade 2012.
The 2013 remake of the game received high praise from reviewers. At Metacritic, as of March 2020, the game had an 88/100 score based on 47 critic reviews. Forbes listed Wreden in its 2013 "30 Under 30" leaders in the games industry for the success and marketing of The Stanley Parable. For his work on the game, William Pugh was named as one of 18 "Breakthrough Brits" for 2014 by BAFTA.
Some critics focused on the game’s themes about the meaning of life. Ashton Raze of The Telegraph said the game "explores how stories are created in games" rather than criticizing them directly. 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 copies of the game were sold within the first three days of its release. This was much more revenue than he had expected, as the sales from these three days would allow him to live comfortably and work full-time as a game developer for five years. The game sold over one million copies in less than a year. The game’s demo also received positive feedback, 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 that it was "a complete experience designed to prepare players for the unique relationship between the player and the narrator in The Stanley Parable."
A patch was later released to replace imagery in a 1950s-style instructional video that some players found racially offensive. Wreden said, "[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 game, The Beginner’s Guide, which was released in October 2015. Meanwhile, William Pugh started 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 control combined with many choices created tension between the game’s design and the player’s desires. The book also said that the game’s focus on the idea that the game was created before the player arrived made players question whether they were truly playing or experimenting with the game’s rules. It analyzed an ending where Stanley is trapped in a room with a bomb that cannot be stopped, noting how this ending made players question the game’s purpose. Another part of the game, called "The Baby Game," where Stanley must press a button to save a baby from an incinerator, was studied for whether the player’s choices had real meaning or if the game was manipulating players. The book Fictionality, Factuality, and Reflexivity Across Discourses and Media noted how the game made players think about the connection between fiction and reality. It also analyzed the "Confusion" ending, where the Narrator and Stanley meet a wall with all of the Narrator’s dialogue, to show how the game recognizes its own storytelling and how the story follows a fixed path even when it seems to allow choices. The book also studied how the game separated Stanley’s identity from the player’s, blending the real world and the fictional world into the same story. It analyzed the game’s "Freedom" ending, where Stanley escapes a mind control facility and walks outside to freedom. The book noted how the Narrator tells Stanley how to feel in certain situations and how, to "free" Stanley, players must give up control, making them lose their own freedom.
The book Against Flow: Video Games and the Flowing Subject analyzed how the game made players pause and think about why they were playing, which is unusual because most games try to keep players focused. It said that even though the game made players question their actions, it still encouraged them to keep playing because of its self-aware nature. The book also noted that while the game created a playful atmosphere, it also critically examined the idea of play itself,
In popular culture
In May 2014, a special pack featuring the voice of the Narrator was released for the multiplayer online battle arena game Dota 2. During the same month, The Narrator became an optional announcer for Johann Sebastian Joust, a game included in the compilation 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 this 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 contradict its own story was used as a way to represent political themes in the show’s fictional world.
Severance, a series on Apple TV+, was inspired by The Stanley Parable.