Favourite Games of 2013: Number 6 - The Stanley Parable

(PC)

The Stanley Parable is a first person exploration game, where you play as Stanley who works in an office and his job consists of pressing buttons that he is told to press until the end of the work day.  Stanley never speaks and the only dialogue present is the dry wit of the narrator describing the actions that Stanley undertakes (or does not).

The Stanley Parable is a commentary on the concept of choice and free will.  To go into detail about the premise would be to spoil it too much.  It involves a lot of repeating, but it is this very repetition that compels yourself to further investigate the game in order to discover the different outcomes based on the choices that can be made.

A free demo is available on Steam, but the demo does not include a portion of the actual game.  The demo is more like a sample for what to expect of The Stanley Parable - that is to expect the unexpected.  For those that are unsure, I suggest they download the demo as a reference to the find out the kind of whimsical humour that is present in the full Stanley Parable experience.

In one sentence The Stanley Parable can be described as a transcendence of the metaphysical realm of the multi-verse, or perhaps I could just call it fun.