The Beginner's Guide - New Steam game from the creator of Stanley Parable
Blind Sniper
Moderator
Hey guys! Since I assume most-if-not-all of us here are fans of games with good stories, I thought I'd share with you all this new narrative focused game that just recently released on Steam. It's from the creator of The Stanley Parable, and if you've played that game, it's very similar mechanically. Whereas Stanley Parable was a more comical game, Beginner's Guide is more of an emotional and thought provoking title.
If you haven't played either, both games are first person narrative based titles where you walk around. Kind of like how a Telltale game has minimalist gameplay where you mostly select dialogue, both Stanley Parable and Beginner's Guide are minimalist in that you walk around and influence the story through interacting with the environment in a first person perspective. I don't want to spoil too much, but the game has some really fantastic writing that resonates pretty deeply. (I'd also recommend The Stanley Parable if you haven't played that either!)
http://store.steampowered.com/app/303210/
The Beginner's Guide is a narrative video game from Davey Wreden, the creator of The Stanley Parable. It lasts about an hour and a half and has no traditional mechanics, no goals or objectives. Instead, it tells the story of a person struggling to deal with something they do not understand.
I really recommend going in blind (cue obligatory Blind Sniper puns) as it's one of those stories that are much better when you take it in first hand without any preconceived notions of what to expect (beyond what I described earlier about expecting minimalist gameplay). The narrative isn't high octane like Walking Dead/Game of Thrones/etc, but if you want something a little more high brow, it's really worth checking out.
Comments
If it is as good as TSP, then I'll probably give it a try. I wouldn't mind a short description of this game, just so I know what I'm gonna play. But I guess it's better that way, since the magic of TSP was how we didn't know what to expect. :P
I'd post a spoiler tagged description here, but spoiler tagged posts show up without the spoiler tag on my profile. I'll PM you a brief description.
EDIT (October 4): I think at this point, since this comment isn't as prominent on my profile page, I can update this comment to include the vague description I PM'd CatWolf so other people can see it.
Beginner's Guide is a lot like Stanley Parable in that both games are self aware narrative games, but Beginner's Guide is more serious in tone and thought provoking. The general and broad premise of the game is that you are playing through various short tech demos made by a friend of the developer, but as opposed to being a quirky game where you influence the narrative by obeying or disobeying the narrator like in Stanley Parable, you instead focus more on a greater narrative being presented to you as you play the tech demos while the developer of Beginner's Guide offers commentary. It still has funny and quirky moments like Parable, but overall it focuses more on the serious parts. It's really hard to explain what is compelling about the game without spoiling and ruining the story, but if you like emotional games I'd recommend it.
I'll have to check this out. The ending where you unplug the phone in The Stanley Parable is one of my favorite things.
Thank you!
This game also has it's quirky and funny moments like Parable does, but overall it's more emotional and sophisticated while still being self aware.
I enjoyed the The Stanley Parable so i just purchased this, i haven't read any spoilers so hopefully it's just as good
Edit: I just finished the game, it is defiantly a thought provoking one and i am not going to post spoilers yet but i do have some theories about what the game could mean.
Thread: The beginner's guide (game)
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The Beginner's Guide is a narrative video game from Davey Wreden, the creator of The Stanley Parable. (this is a full gameplay by Swingpoynt)
It's a really interesting game/story... Have you seen it? What do you think about it? If not you should definitely check it out.
I literally just finished watching this and was about to make a thread on it.
I don't know what to think about it.
All I'll say, is that 'Dear Davey' scene, holy crap that got to me.
It's definitely worth the price of admission if you want to play it first hand. Of course, the experience won't change too much, but still.
I'm the same here..maybe I don't get the meaning of it a 100%. I have questions. I need more narration
I'd love to hear about your theories!:)
I might be reading it wrong but i think Coda and Davey are the same person, i'm guessing most of these maps are things he created prior to the Stanley Parable and he was telling the story about himself from another persons perspective.
If Coda is a real person who didn't want people seeing his maps and Davey decided to publish this game with his maps on Steam without his permission it would be a pretty crappy thing to do which makes me think that Coda is Davey.
The game is a masterpiece and pure genius this game made me proud to be a gamer and caught my imagination
What I love is take away the narration you have a boring lifeless game with poor designs at times which makes no sense most people would not pay a euro for it. But put in the narration it turned this world into a beautiful tale of Coda and his inner struggles the creativity and imagination to create that within the levels he was given is nothing short of magically. It doesn't have random explosives or violence to appease you like regular games but just relies on the story to form the levels and it just drags you in
I learned so much in this game of acceptance and understanding of the inner struggles we all deal with that it's ok to be different and love yourself for who you are. That we hide our insecurities in the search of impossible perfection and seek validation off others to feel good about ourselves and our work etc
SPOILERS BELOW
In my opinion Coda and the narrator are the same person it's a tale of his inner struggles on his way to becoming a successful game maker. It's like split personality Coda is his private self who just adores games and wants to makes games by himself with no rules while the narrator is his public self who needs to sell and promote games and make his employers happy which means changing his beloved games to fit their needs and wants of the public.
If you look at the narrator who created the game previous work Stanley the levels in this which are made by Coda are similar type of design this is a massive red flag for me
The ending was for me was a self reflection the inner doubt he feels like a sell out now and is losing his inner self and love for games his Coda.
He trying to accept himself where his been(coda) to what he has become that is his inner struggle(him now)
The story is about the narrator reflecting on his past and accepting himself as he is now imo
I'd know this might get an angry response to say but if this got GOTY I wouldn't be mad I never saw such a unique and imaginative game in years it's a masterpiece of gaming and deserves credit so daring and brave to sell this not made for a target market full of gaming cliches, romantic elements or explosions to sell copies but tell a story he wanted to tell just genius
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That makes sense, but what did the ending mean? with the beam and starry sky.
I'm still not sure what I think of this game, but I'll definitely watch another gameplay when I have the time.
I'm not exactly sure what the end could mean, we float up above a infinite maze so it might represent finding your way out?
I'm going to play again at some point to see if i pick up on things i might have missed on my first playthrough.
[Beginner's Guide Spoiler Warning (for those reading this from my profile page)]
I thought the infinite labyrinth was supposed to be a representation of the narrator coping and coming to terms with his inner demons by ascending above the maze, which represented all the inner conflict different parts of his personality felt. If you recall how one of the later games had the level's walls removed to show the other locations players could not see or visit, I think the ending was in part referencing that idea once more and trying to evoke the same feelings. The epilogue level was presumed to be created by the narrator and not Coda, so when we see the maze that represents us ascending above the epilogue level, I can confidently guess this was supposed to be a more concrete representation of the narrator's internal feelings and not those of Coda.
Speaking of Coda, as several others guessed, I'm assuming Coda is one of the facets of the Narrator's personality.
We need more of everything!
edit: nvm. forgot to edit it.
I finished it. I'm confused... amazed, but confused. We need more games like this and I would really like to hear you guys' opinions.
Me to BUMP
I loved "The Stanley Parable" to death, might as well try this one out. Though the best trait of TSP for me was the humor, so I don't know if I'll like this one as much.
It's scary how much I could relate to this game in terms of being a writer. When I've been thinking ideas for stories over the years for a novel [and I don't mean fanfics, I mean original work] I've gone through this exact same stop and start motion, where you keep coming up with ideas and changing them again and again, alternate versions of the same concept and although they're good ideas, there's something about them that isn't right, that you can't just get them to work like it's missing something. So you abandon it, you do something else, but then the same process happens over and over, and you're just not getting anywhere and you start to feel hopeless like you're not good enough, that you're never going to get there, and you don't even know what it is that you want to write, what story you want to bring out or the meanings behind it. You feel like a failure for it and wonder if you should just quit and give up so you don't have to put yourself through it anymore.
The ending of floating out from the maze to me felt like escaping that, finally at last reaching a conclusion through all that hard work and going around in circles. All these mixed up incomplete ideas concept of the games seen earlier, suddenly feel more grounded and completed by the end as if he's figured it out. Now I want a floating glitch.
Loved your interpretation. This game is so confusing though.
Do you think they were the same person?
I interpreted the labyrinth as being a representation of the different parts from the narrator's conflicted personality, with the ascension above the labyrinth representing him coping with and starting to move on from his problems.
I love how our interpretations of this game says more about us than about the game itself or about the creator. Afterall, that's even what ''Coda'' was trying to tell Davey.
Lilac is such a good writer though her opinion is fact to me on this XD
Yep it's very deep.
Good analisys but you can't forget "Do not judge the artist for his art" that was a pretty big theme too.
I loved it. I loved that he sent so many powerful messages. My favorite is to not judge people for they're work.
People in the forum know me as a really nice guy and a good friend. But the characters i make for inter-fics are dark and have many violent and evil tendencies. So a person would think that i am like that when in every case that's false. I just really like writing villains.
Another big one is trying to find problems with people when they don't have any. "Davey" admits that he could have just misinterpreted Coda's depression and maybe he just liked making prison games.
There's a lot more but i think this game was MADE to make people analyse it themselves, and find the deep messages that they connect to. I think people should find what it means to them.
But anyway the game was amazing. The REAL Davey (Don't confuse him with the one in the game) is a genius and i REALLY hope we see more from him
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Yes, I think it was by how the narrator spoke in first person at times as if speaking Coda's thoughts like it's an internal battle of creativity. The narrator came to him when Coda gained an deeper interest for making games and kept encouraging him to keep going and think new ideas up, but the more this went on, it started to take a toll on him and he gets depressed. The gaps between each game grows bigger as if it was getting more difficult to create them. Like writer's block, the ideas are floating but he can't catch them and figure out what to do. He keeps reusing ideas like the door puzzle and he can't understand why he interested about it and the space between them, but he just is, and the lamppost that's a reoccurring theme, so much he gets sick of the thing and tells the narrator to stop putting them there. I could so relate to that!
The game reaches a point of a wall the blocks your way and more it pushes out, the more negative words get splattered over it "I can't keep making these!" "Please someone talk to me!" "Don't you understand you won't be happy until you love me? This is for you!" "Help I'm blind!" "This is key: how do I achieve it with no effort?" "I'm sorry I have to leave!" and then there's the dialogues of 'making games is simple' and soon after you get the dialogue options of 'but that was a lie' and 'why did I feel so awful when I said that?' a voice encourages you to keep saying positive things at that moment, but the positives things are lies that fail to make you feel better that your plans aren't working. It goes to a woman trapped in a cell crying, and then to another game with an invisible maze that takes you back to the start of it again and again, like hitting a wall and resetting what you're doing and you get more and more frustrated; a number lock that would take forever to solve like a complicated puzzle, and then that when you get through all that crap, you just come to a room where you can't progress any farther like ideas can do. The solution is there but it's out of reach.
I think making anything that you're passionate about like writing or games or films or drawing even, it isn't always easy, it's hard work and people can go running around in circles with ideas for years and it feel like you're going nowhere and that all that time and effort is for nothing that you could just give up. When Coda addresses the narrator, it's him saying to himself finally saying enough is enough. He stopped listening and creating those ideas. And then after some point in time he went back to making games again and was able to put his ideas together into something that feels more complete rather than bits of things that sometimes don't make much sense like he finally figured it all out. The narrator's conversation shifts to things you might worry about, like wanting praise, worrying people are going to hate you, thinking about not putting the work out there, and then the narrator leaves as if he's not needed there now because he has other things to focus on.
I think that's why it's called The Beginner's Guide, it's showing it's normal to feel that way and for the things you enjoy to be a challenge that they can almost turn against you, but that you shouldn't give up on your dreams and what you want to do no matter how difficult it gets.
Well, I couldn't have put this any better. Even though I still have a lot of questions, what you just said makes a lot of sense. We need more games like this one.
@Lord_EAA
Too bad we won't see anything from him anytime soon.
Just played it and... wow. That really is one of the most powerful emotional experiences I've ever had in gaming. There is a twist that is as mind blowing as Bioshock and Spec Ops: The Line. Wonderful.