Gameful Experiences, Playable Stories Archive

The Stanley Parable and The Stanley Parable Ultra Deluxe

https://www.stanleyparable.com/

Entry by Jason Boyd

A. BASIC INFORMATION

Note: The Stanley Parable was originally released by Davey Wreden on July 31, 2011 as a free modification for Half-Life 2. This entry describes the 2013 ‘remake’ as well as The Stanley Parable Ultra Deluxe, which is not an extension or DLC of the ‘remake,’ but a remaking of the remake in Unity, with additional content. 

Creator(s):

  • Davey Wreden & William Pugh (Writers & Designers)
  • Kevan Brighting (Narration)
  • Collin Eddings & Jack Parsons (Additional Level Design)
  • Jesus Higueras (Programming)
  • Andreas Jorgensen (Modelling)
  • Robin Arnott & Eduardo Ortiz (Sound Design)
  • Blake Robinson, Yiannis Ioannides & Christiann Bakker (Original Music)
  • Lesley Staples, Aviva Pinchas & Jenny Kuglin (Additional Voicework)
  • Taggart & Dean Darko (Stanley Character Skin)
  • Miika Lahti & Simon Boxer (Original Artwork)
  • Ry Soderberg & Maxime Lebled (Animation)
  • For Ultra Deluxe: Crows Crows Crows
    • William Pugh (Director)
    • Dominik Johann (Art Director)
    • Jan Stroetmann (Development Lead)
    • Richard Baxter & Marishka Zachariah (Additional Development)
    • Tom Schley (Composer)
    • Alicia Contestabile (Producer)
    • Additional credits on website

Studio website: www.galactic-cafe.com (but redirects to URL above)

Creation technology: Source (remake); Unity (Ultra Deluxe)

Publisher: Galactic Cafe

Date of original release: October 17, 2013 (remake); April 27, 2022 (Ultra Deluxe)

Platform(s): Windows; Mac OS X; Linux, Playstation; Ultra Deluxe also released on XBox, Nintendo Switch, iOS

Peripherals required: Mouse, keyboard, speakers/headphones

ESRB Rating: T (Teen)

Awards/Distinctions:

  • Writing in a Comedy & Performance in a Comedy, Lead (Kevan Brighting as Narrator), National Academy of Video Game Trade Reviewers (NAVGTR) Awards 2013
  • Audience Award, Independent Games Festival 2014
  • Ultra Deluxe: Freedom Tower Award for Best Remake, New York Game Awards, 2024

Version used for entry: PC (Windows 11)

B. GAME INFORMATION

Game/eLit Genre(s): Walking simulator; exploration; metagame

Time to complete: 3 to 6 hours to explore most of the multiple paths and endings.

Replay required/useful? Replay is essential to experience the multiple storylines in the game.

Gameplay: Played from a first person perspective (as Stanley), the player explores the environment (using WASD) and can interact with various objects (using the mouse). The CTRL button is used to crouch; in some parts, the player is instructed to press other keys. 

C. LITERARY INFORMATION

Related Literary Genre(s): Parable, Metafiction, Absurdist/Humour Fiction

Story/Plot Summary: A humorous and thought-provoking exploration of issues of player agency as they relate to narrative/authorial/gamemaker control.

The Stanley Parable opens with a cinematic introduction in which the Narrator (voiced by Kevan Brighting) explains the game’s scenario: Stanley is employee 457 for an unnamed and undefined company. His job consists of sitting in his office at his computer, where he receives instructions on his monitor to press certain keys: “[A]lthough others might have considered it soul-rending, Stanley relished every moment that the orders came in, as though he had been made exactly for this job. And Stanley was happy.” (The game player’s interactions with the computer, as the game suggests at certain moments, are essentially identical to Stanley’s job.) The Narrator goes on to explain that one day, no orders appeared on his monitor, and, after waiting a time, Stanley decided to investigate. The game proper then begins, from a first-person perspective, with the player as Stanley facing the open door of his office.

In the ostensibly intentional pre-designed main story, the player (as Stanley), following the explicit (and excessive) prompts of the Narrator, discovers a secret monitoring and mind control facility within the company that Stanley shuts down, after which he escapes into the ‘real world’ (see Walkthrough, 7a: Win/Freedom/Happiness Ending). This is a conventional yet unsatisfying game story arc, and, largely because of the Narrator’s ‘help,’ it offers no suspense or challenge and no feeling of achievement (or any real explanation about the scenario: what does the company do? Why is it controlling its employees? Why are all the employees, and Stanley’s boss, missing?). This dissatisfaction prompts the player to (as intended) replay the game and disobey the Narrator, thereby discovering multiple additional storylines and endings (see the Walkthrough). 

Suitability for Teaching

The key dynamic of the game is the tension between the game player and the programmed game and the game creator in terms of control and agency when it comes to the game experience and the ‘story’ that results. There is a popular belief that what differentiates games from other media and what makes for a ‘good’ game is the degree of latitude for players to make choices about what they get the player character to do (and thus what ‘story’ is constructed). The Stanley Parable questions what kind of agency a game player truly has, but also humorously explores what can happen when players exploit the agency they are given to play against a game designer’s expectations, what kinds of experience this produces, and what kinds of pleasure this agency at the expense of the game’s design provides (if any).

This tension is largely dramatized by the Narrator, who initially acts as if he was in a book or film, presuming that what he says Stanley does and what the player as Stanley does will be identical. When the player goes ‘off script’ the Narrator reacts in a variety of amusing ways.   

Possible Teaching Approaches

The various storylines and endings of The Stanley Parable touch on a number of issues that can be explored in a class discussion:

The illusion of player agency: In the replay where the player follows the Narrator’s instructions up until the Mind Control Facility decision, but then decides to activate rather than shut down the Facility (see Walkthrough, 7b: Countdown/Explosion Ending), the Narrator taunts Stanley’s delusion that he has any real control and demonstrates that he/the game has ultimate control over what happens, irregardless of Stanley’s choice or actions. He ‘punishes’ Stanley by blowing up the Facility (with Stanley in it) without Stanley having any ability to stop this from happening. In a similar storyline, caused when the player has Stanley, instead of taking the stairs up to his bosses office, take the stairs down (Walkthrough, 4c: Madness Ending), the Narrator declares that Stanley is mad, and takes his story and his life away.

A number of storylines play with the idea of the player acquiring agency by finding secrets (“easter eggs”), by playing against expectations (Walkthrough, 5b: Escape Pod Ending), design glitches (Walkthrough 2b: Map Glitch Ending) and cheats (Walkthrough 13: Serious Room Ending), but these are revealed as deliberately designed by the game’s creator.

Attempts to deliberately not play or play wrong as a form of player agency are treated in the Coward Ending (Walkthrough 1b), the Broom Closet interlude (Walkthrough 4a), and the Jump to Death Ending (Walkthrough 10b).

The desirability of player choice: The argument that game design should not be about pandering to player demands and giving them as much control as possible, and that the role of game designers is to provide well-crafted experiences within a limited range of choice, is explored in the Game Design Ending (Walkthrough 12b). 

Everything is predetermined by programming: All of the above storylines imply that the Narrator is the designer and controller of The Stanley Parable, but other storylines suggest he and Stanley are both constructs trapped in the game, doomed to enact what the program has determined. There is the Stanley’s Wife Ending (Walkthrough 11a), where the Narrator admits: “But I don’t make the rules. I simply play to my intended purpose, the same as Stanley” (in the opening montage, the Narrator notes that it was “as though [Stanley] had been made exactly for this job”). The metalevel Museum storyline (Walkthrough 8) points out that the Narrator and Stanley are programmed into an endless cycle of (re)play, and that the only way to save them is for the player to stop playing the game. In the Suicide Ending (Walkthought 12a), the Narrator himself tries to convince Stanley to escape from the game with him by staying in a room he has created for the purpose. Perhaps the most extended and most humorous storyline on this issue is the Confusion one (Walkthrough 9a), where the player’s disobedience completely throws the Narrator off-course, and he attempts repeatedly to salvage a story before it is revealed to him that all these bumbling attempts are in fact predetermined.

The Corrupted Game Ending (Walkthrough 11b), which returns to the issue of player agency, is offered as the ‘real’ ending (in that the ‘The End’ appears and the credits roll). In this storyline, an unexpected action by the player takes the Narrator aback, and makes him realize that Stanley is being controlled by a ‘real person’ who is capable of making ‘wrong’ choices. These wrong choices eventually end up corrupting the game. The Narrator berates the player and tries repeatedly to get them to play ‘correctly.’ Eventually, the player escapes from playing Stanley, leaving an inactive Stanley and the Narrator at an impasse.

D. WALKTHROUGH

This walkthrough acts as a flowchart of choices that guides the player to the various endings. A visual flowchart of The Stanley Parable is available on Wikimedia Commons.

It is recommended that, on the first playthrough, the player follow the Narrator’s instructions in order to experience the ‘correct’ or ‘intended’ game before one starts to disobey the narrator. 

The player always starts in Stanley’s Office. Depending on the ending, the game will auto-restart or require the player to manually quit to the menu (ESC key) and select the ‘Begin the game again’ option.

While The Stanley Parable Ultra Deluxe (SPUD) Bucket endings are indicated below, only those that offer a new or particularly substantive ending (rather than just additional amusing bucket-inflected dialogue) are described. For the introduction of the Bucket, see section X, below.

1. Stanley’s Office 

  • 1a. Leave Office: go to Choice 2. 
  • 1b. Stay in Office (close door) → A. RELUCTANT/COWARD ENDING: The Narrator says that Stanley decides he can’t take the pressure of making a choice or being responsible for an outcome, so he decides to wait in his office until answers come. Just as the Narrator says, “Here it comes…,” the game auto-restarts.  

2. Room outside Stanley’s Office 

  • 2a. Continue into the hallway directly ahead →  go to Choice 3. 
  • 2b. Climb through the exterior window → B. MAP GLITCH ENDING: The player can climb onto desk 434 and then over the partition to the attached desk, and by crouching (CTRL key) fall through the window into a blank white space. The Narrator then informs the player that, although it may seem that the player has found a glitch in the map, it’s clear that this path is designed since he (the Narrator) is speaking to the player. He sarcastically congratulates the player and then a question is displayed: “Are you tired of this gag?” with ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ options.
    • Choose Yes → SONG: The Narrator tells the player he could have (and still can) just press the ESC key at any time; if the player delays, he sings a satiric song about Stanley while waiting for the player to do so (manual restart).
    • Choose No → VOICE OVER: Narrator asks if the player thinks the outcome would be meaningfully different if they had chosen Yes. Each response to this additional question generates a different response from the narrator; but eventually the player must manually restart.
  • [2b. SPUD Bucket modification]: The Narrator recounts that the Bucket tells Stanley that now that they have escaped the Narrator, it can reveal its true identity, and starts recounting its dramatic life story. The Narrator says Stanley is incredulous, pointing out that it is just a bucket, and the Buckey replies that it was transformed by an evil wizard. The Narrator says the Bucket starts to transform into “a mighty beast of untold power,” and then the screen goes black, there are sounds of swords clashing, and a spotlight lights up the Bucket, on its side and bloodied, with a knife stuck in it. The Narrator congratulates Stanley on vanquishing the Bucket.

3. Room with Two Doorways

The Narrator says that Stanley takes the doorway on the left.

  • 3a. Choose Left Doorway: This leads to the Meeting Room, where the Narrator then prompts Stanley to visit his boss’s office → go to Choice 4. 
  • 3b. Choose Right Doorway → go to Choice 9. 

4. Hallway and Stairs to Boss’s Office

The Narrator says that Stanley takes the stairs up to his boss’s office. 

  • 4a. Enter Broom Closet → BROOM CLOSET GAG: In the corridor between the Meeting Room and the stairs to the boss’s office, there is a door labelled, “Broom Closet.” The Narrator says that there is nothing in the closet and that Stanley got back on track. If the player does not do anything, the Narrator is at first puzzled, then sarcastic about the player not heeding his prompts. He concludes the player must have died, and calls out for the player to be replaced by someone who knows how to play video games. When the player eventually leaves the closet, the player greets them as ‘Player Two.’ [+ SPUD Bucket modification]
  • 4b. Go up Stairs → go to Choice 5. 
  • 4c. Go down Stairs: → C. INSANE/MADNESS/MARIELLA ENDING: The player gets trapped in a loop of repeating rooms, while the Narrator points out the unreal absurdities of the game’s scenario, disabuses Stanley of his belief that he must be dreaming, and confirms that Stanley has gone mad. The screen goes blank. Then the Narrator says, “This is the story of a woman named Mariella…”. A cut scene follows, showing a top down view of Stanley, who had “stumbled through town talking and screaming to himself,” sprawled dead on a sidewalk being contemplated by Mariella (auto restart). [+ SPUD Bucket modification]

5. Boss’s Office Antechamber 

  • 5a. Continue into Boss’s Office → go to Choice 6. 
  • 5b. Walk in and back out of Bass’s Office → D. ESCAPE POD ENDING: By walking into the boss’s office and quickly backing out into the antechamber before the doors close, the player can retrace their steps back to Stanley’s office, where a door next to Stanley’s office door is now open. This takes you to an elevator shaft and stairwell where there is a sign reading ‘You Are Leaving’ and another directing the player to an Escape Pod on level 780. There is no narration. After climbing a number of flights of stairs, Stanley reaches the Escape Pod, but before entering it, the game auto restarts. [+ SPUD Bucket modification: the Bucket is placed in the Escape Pod.]

6. Boss’s Office

In the Boss’s office, the Narrator says, “What he [Stanley] could not have known was that the keypad behind the Boss’s desk guarded the terrible truth that his boss had been keeping from him. And so the boss had assigned it an extra-secret PIN number: 2845. But of course, Stanley couldn’t have possibly have known this.” (If the player delays, the narrator will repeat the PIN a number of times, with increasing irritation; conversely, if the player rushes to input the code, the Narrator says Stanley is in such a hurry that he can’t even wait for the Narrator to finish narating and makes Stanley listen to some calming music). After inputting the PIN, the Narrator says: “Yet incredibly, by simply pushing random buttons on the keypad, Stanley happened to input the correct code, by sheer luck. Amazing.” A secret door opens which leads to an elevator that goes down to a passage leading to the ‘Mind Control Facility.’ 

  • 6a. Continue into the Mind Control Facility → go to Choice 7.
  • 6b. Take the Hallway with the ‘Escape’ sign → go to Choice 8.
  • SPUD Addition: PRESS CONFERENCE ENDING: The player can ride the elevator up and down (and return to the boss’s office) multiple times. The Narrator is incredulous and sarcastically expresses how exciting this is. The Narrator then takes a moment to process and accept that this is “a breath of fresh air in the landscape of storytelling that has grown stale and repetitive.” The Narrator tells Stanley that he is such an innovative storyteller that he has arranged a press conference for him. The elevator opens onto a theatre lobby and the Narrator directs Stanely backstage. Stanley walks out onto a catwalk and towards a podium greeted by cheers. The game restarts. [+ SPUD Bucket modification]

7. Mind Control Facility

The Facility consists of a huge circular room with monitors ranged from floor to ceiling, a series of platforms connected by catwalks, and an elevator that takes the player to a control room above. Once in the control room, there is further room with the sign ‘Facility Power’ with On and Off buttons. The Narrator prompts Stanley to be the hero and shut down the Facility by turning the power off. 

  • SPUD Addition: Fall into the Black Hole → “GOOD JOB” SONG ENDING: On the first platform in the room with monitors (with the console with the lightbulb icon button), Stanley can climb onto the desk and over the railing, falling into the blackness below. The Narrator observes this was a bug in the original release of The Stanley Parable, and that players who found it and pointed it out to the developers “acted very superior about it.” The Narrator says that they realised they had to do something about this ‘goof,’ and wrote a song especially for this ending. “Good Job. You’ve Made it to the Bottom of the Mind Control Facility. Well Done,” a bad rock song. [+ SPUD Bucket modification]
  • 7a. Press Off Button → E. LIFE/HAPPINESS ENDING: A hangar door slowly opens onto a green landscape. The Narrator says that Stanley has won. Although he says that Stanley initially wants to re-explore the facility because there are clearly many puzzles left unsolved, he concludes that none of these puzzles matter to him now because it is “happiness, not understanding” that Stanley wants. As the player moves into the landscape, control of Stanley’s movement is taken away, and the game auto restarts. [+ SPUD Bucket modification]
  • 7b. Press On Button → F. BOMB/COUNTDOWN ENDING: As if talking to a truculent child, the narrator tells Stanley, “If you want to throw my story off track, you’re going to have to do much better than that. I’m afraid you don’t have nearly the power you think you do.” A countdown timer starts. The Narrator taunts Stanley’s mistaken belief that they have control and demonstrates that he is the one in control by adding to the countdown to prolong Stabley’s agony and relish Stanley’s lack of control. The Facility explodes. [+ SPUD Bucket modification]

8. ‘Escape’ Sign Hallway

After visiting the Mind Control Facility once, in replays there appears, right before the Facility entrance, a passage on the left with a hand-written sign reading ‘Escape.’ →  G. MUSEUM ENDING: The Narrator says that this route will lead to Stanley’s “violent death,” and tries to persuade him to go back. At the end of the passage there is a hatch in the floor that Stanley falls through. Stanley lands in a machine conveying him towards two crushing plates. The Narrator says that Stanley concedes that he doesn’t know the real story, and that he willingly accepts and resigns himself to his violent end. Just before he is about to be crushed, the plates stop, and a female voice says: “‘Farewell, Stanley!’ cried the Narrator, as Stanley was led helplessly into the enormous metal jaws…”. The voice narrates Stanley’s death and continues, as the player walks towards a large ‘The Stanley Parable’ sign, under which a door appears: “And yet, it would be just a few minutes before Stanley would restart the game back in his office, as alive as ever. What, exactly, did the Narrator think he was going to accomplish? When every path you can walk has been created for you long in advance, death becomes meaningless, making life the same. Do you see, now? Do you see that Stanley was already dead, from the moment he hit ‘start’?” The player ends up in a series of rooms showing labelled models for the room and object designs for The Stanley Parable, and three posters with Credits. One room has another ‘The Stanley Parable’ sign, under which is an On/Off switch, where the female voice says, “Oh, look at these two. How they wish to destroy each other. How they wish to control each other. How they both wish to be free.” [After flipping the switch] “Can you see? Can you see how much they need one another? No, perhaps not. Sometimes these things cannot be seen” the female voice says. The player ends up back in the crusher, and the female voice says urgently: “But listen to me: You can still save these two. You can stop the program before they both fail. Push escape and press quit. There’s no other way to beat this game. As long as you move forward, you’ll be walking someone else’s path. Stop now! It will be your only true choice! Whatever you do, choose it! Don’t let time choose for you!” Stanley is then crushed. The game auto-starts. [+ SPUD Bucket modification]

9. Corridor past Employee Lounge

After taking 3b., the narrator says, “This was not the way to the Meeting Room, and Stanley knew it.” Stanley ends up in the Employee Lounge where the Narrator makes some sarcastic comments if the player lingers. Once in the corridor at the other end of the lounge, the Narrator prompts the player to take the doorway on the left to get back on track (i.e., to Choice 4). 

  • 9a. Take doorway on left → H. CONFUSION ENDING: This leads to a room with an elevator that can be taken down. (The player can continue through this room and end up in the corridor leading to the Meeting Room.) At the bottom of the elevator is a room with a number of doors. Since the player has gone off script, the Narrator becomes disoriented and is unsure about where to tell Stanley to go. He opens some doors, and realizing he is mistaken, closes them, and then directs the player through a door that leads out to a balcony in the room of monitors in the Mind Control Facility. The Narrator panics and says that the player isn’t supposed to see this room yet (it’s a “spoiler”) and says that he is going to restart the game (auto-restart).
    • After restart, when Stanley gets to the Room with Two Doorways (see 3), there are now six doors, and the narrator asks Stanley if he did something to ‘move the story somewhere’ but then says, “Why am I asking you? I’m the one who wrote the story. It was right here just a minute ago.” The narrator opens all the doors and invites Stanley to find the story. After some aimless wandering, the Narrator says that this is a terrible story, and restarts the game (auto-restart).  
    • This time, when Stanley gets to the Room with Two Doorways, there are no doors. The Narrator suggests that Stanley retrace his steps to see if he missed anything, Stanley’s office has turned into a corridor, but it leads to a dead end. When Stanley retraces his steps, he ends up in an unfinished room with wood plank walls. The Narrator says, “I don’t recognize this place at all. Is this the story? I don’t think so.” The Narrator then tells Stanley that since he can’t remember what the story was about, “How about this?” and a ‘YOU WIN!!’ message appears. But he then admits that Stanley really didn’t win and restarts (auto-restart).
    • This time, on the floor outside Stanley’s office, there is a yellow line labelled “The Stanley Parable Adventure Line,” which the Narrator says will lead to the story. While following the line the Narrator wonders whether doing so is creating the story rather than leading to the story. The line starts to veer onto walls and ceilings in a meandering fashion. Still following the line, Stanley ends up back outside his office. The Narrator, confused, says, “Line, you do know that we’re looking for The Stanley Parable, right? The Story? Is any of this ringing a bell?” Still following the line, Stanley ends up on the balcony in the room of monitors in the Mind Control Facility again. The Narrator says, exasperated, “Line, how could you have done this to us? And after we trusted you,” and restarts the game (auto-restart).
    • This time the Narrator suggests that he and Stanley forget the line and make up their own story. He opens one of the doors in the room outside Stanley’s office. As Stanley wanders along a twisting doorless and windowless corridor, the Narrator says, “Now, yes! This is exciting! Just me and Stanley forging a new path, a new story—well, it could be anything. What do you want our story to be? Go wild. Use your imagination. Whatever it might be, Stanley, I’m ready for it.” Stanley arrives at a circular room with two doors. The Narrator says, “Aha! A choice. We get to make a decision,” and after some deliberation opens the door on the right. This door (as well as the door on the left) leads to a room with one wall taken up by a screen titled “The Confusion Ending,” which lists a schedule of eight restarts (the current one being the fourth) and a timer indicating how long the player has been playing this ending. The Narrator is outraged: “It’s all determined?” “Why don’t I get to decide? Why don’t I get a say in all of this?” He refuses to restart the game. The timer stops. “Did we break the cycle?” the Narrator asks. “Will something happen? So. Okay. I guess now we just wait. You know, I suppose in some way, that this is a kind of story, wouldn’t you agree? I’m not quite sure if we’re in the destination or the journey, though they’re always saying that life is about the journey and not the destination, so I hope that’s where we are right now. We’ll find out, won’t we, eventually? Well, in the meantime…” (auto-restart). (The remaining four endings listed on the screen are not actually implemented in the game).
  • [+ SPUD Bucket modification] → BUCKET-DESTROYING MACHINE ENDING: As the elevator goes down, the Narrator expresses his concern that the Bucket is monopolizing Stanley’s attention and leads him to a room with a Bucket-destroying machine. The Narrator pleads with Stanley to destroy the Bucket (which the player cannot actually do), and the machine eventually overheats and explodes. The Narrator provides a brief eulogy for the machine and the game restarts.    
  • 9b. Go through doorway straight ahead → go to Choice 10. 

10. Cargo Bay Moving Platform

Having now ignored the Narrator’s directions twice, the Narrator says that, given that Stanley is so bad at following directions, it is surprising that he wasn’t fired a long time ago. 

  • 10a. Ride platform to the other side→ go to Choice 11. 
  • 10b. Jump off platform onto cargo bay floor → J. JUMP TO DEATH/POWERFUL ENDING: The Narrator says that Stanley decides to show how he is in control by leaping to his death, adding sarcastically, “Good job, Stanley. Everyone thinks you’re very powerful” (auto-restart). [+ SPUD Bucket modification]
  • 10c. Jump off platform to catwalk below → go to Choice 12.
  • 10d. Get on, then off platform before it moves → K. COLD FEET ENDING. The Narrator tells the player the platform isn’t coming back, and goads the player into jumping to the floor below, saying he won’t be killed. When the player jumps and is killed, the Narrator apologizes for being wrong and restarts the game. [+ SPUD Bucket modification]
  • SPUD Addition: To the left of the moving platform, there is a pile of boxes with a plank resting against them that allows Stanley to climb on top of the boxes and jump down to a plank walkway. This leads to a Stanley figurine, but there is also a duct to the left of where Stanley first lands. This leads to a storage room where there is a desk with a cassette player. There is a Non-Bucket and a Bucket scene here.

11. Phone Room

As Stanley rides on the platform, the Narrator tries to convince him that he (the Narrator) is not Stanley’s enemy, that he is on Stanley’s side. He points out that the game has been all about him (Stanley), and then asks Stanley to think about “her”. The player ends up in a room with a ringing telephone, which the Narrator urges Stanley to answer. 

  • 11a. Answer phone → L. WORK/STANLEY’S WIFE ENDING: The scene cuts to a hallway with a door labelled 427. We hear a woman’s voice on the other side of the door saying, “Oh, Stanley is that you?” The door then opens and an undressed female mannequin slides into view. The Narrator laughs derisively, says “Gotcha!,” and asks what person would ever want to marry Stanley. The Narrator says he is trying to make a point. “This is a very sad story about the death of a man named Stanley,” he says, then embarks on a long monologue about Stanley’s impoverished life: how, although Stanley weaves fantastic adventures while working, every day he goes back to work is a reminder that none of them will ever happen to him. So he begins to fantasize The Stanley Parable. While this is happening, instructions appear on the screen (e.g., “Good morning Employee 427. Press ‘V’ on your keyboard”), which the player needs to follow in order to keep the game going. The player is thus compelled to enact Stanley, and the apartment gradually transforms into his office. “And I’m trying to tell him this: As long as he remains here, he’s slowly killing himself. But he won’t listen to me. He won’t stop. Here, watch this: ‘Stanley, the next time the screen asks you to push a button, do not do it.’” The instruction “Please press ‘K’ to be at work in the morning” appears on screen, which has to be followed or the game won’t progress. The Narrator becomes sad and despairing, wondering if he can do anything to get Stanley to realize that this life is killing him: “But I don’t make the rules. I simply play to my intended purpose, the same as Stanley. We’re not so different, I suppose. I’ll try once more to convey all this to him. I’m compelled to. I must. Perhaps…well, maybe this time he’ll see. Maybe this time. [‘Please Die’ appears on screen] And I tried again. And Stanley pushed a button. And I tried again. And Stanley pushed a button.” (auto restart). [+ SPUD Bucket addition]
  • 11b. Unplug Phone → M. CHOICE/CORRUPTED GAME ENDING: The Narrator says that unplugging the phone wasn’t supposed to be a choice, and is confused how Stanley did it. The Narrator says he didn’t know it was possible to choose incorrectly. He asks, “How on earth are you able to make meaningful choices?” and then realizes that the player is not Stanley, but a real person. He is outraged that the player has been making ‘wrong’ choices and forces them to watch an instructional film, “Choice,” about “safe decision making in the real world.” After the film, the room is visually glitched, the result, the Narrator says, of “narrative contradiction.” He tells the player they are going to revisit an earlier choice. The player backtracks, with the moving platform now featuring a fence around it (“Now that we know your choices are meaningful, we can’t have you jumping off the platform and dying. Imagine the main character dying senselessly half way through the story. That story would make no sense at all.”). The Narrator says the player will choose the door on the left, get the correct ending, the story will have resolution again, and “you’ll be home-free in the real world.” “Now remember: all you need to do is behave exactly as Stanley would. That means choosing responsibly and always putting the story first.” If the player chooses the door on the right (a dead end), the Narrator is alarmed and tells the player to go back. Going through the left door, the player arrives at a glitched meeting room. The Narrator is furious and accuses the player of destroying his work, and says he has to shut down the work. He tries, but it doesn’t work, and he berates the player some more.
    • The game auto restarts in the Room with Two Doorways. If the player chooses the door on the right, the game restarts in the same room. If the player chooses the door on the left, they can go to a different version of the boss’s office, with a door with a voice receiver behind the desk. The Narrator says that Stanley saw the passcode on his boss’s computer, and says that Stanley speaks the code into the receiver. The player cannot actually do this, and the Narrator gets frustrated that the player is not obeying his instructions, and starts berating the player again, asking why they couldn’t just play like Stanley.
    • The game auto restarts, and the player is now standing above the ceiling inthe Room with Two Doorways, looking down on Stanley standing in front of the two doors. The player no longer controls Stanley, and can hear the Narrator pleading with Stanley, saying he needs Stanley to make a choice, that the story needs him to make a choice. ‘The End!’ appears on screen and the credits roll (auto restart)
  • [11b. SPUD Bucket modification] → COMEDIC TIMING ENDING: After unplugging the phone, the Narrator tells Stanley the Bucket is not actually talking to him–it’s a joke. He wonders if his comedic timing is off and discovers there is a ‘What is Comedic Timing?’ video they can watch, which turns out to be a 1950s animated instructional video. The Narrator says they should return to the Room with Two Doorways (see 3) and run through it again. If Stanley takes the door to the right, the hallway will end at the Phone room, confusing the Narrator and causing him to restart in the Room with Two Doorways. If Stanley takes the door to the left, the Narrator says Stanley didn’t follow the script and has ruined the joke. The game auto restarts, and the player is now standing above the ceiling in the Room with Two Doorways, looking down on Stanley standing in front of the two doors. ‘The End!’ appears on screen and the credits roll, as the Narrator tries to work on his comedic timing to an unresponsive Stanley (auto restart).

12. Red/Blue Doors

The Narrator chides the player for being rude and irresponsible for jumping onto the catwalk while he is narrating. He says he really does want to help Stanley, to show him something beautiful. He asks Stanley to give him a chance to prove he is on his side. He prompts the player to choose the red (left) door. 

  • 12a. Choose Red Door → N. SPACE/SUICIDE ENDING: The Narrator says that they would both be happier if they just stopped instead of always trying to run somewhere that isn’t here, and he has a solution. He opens a door, and the player walks out onto a platform surrounded by a starry sky and floating lights. The Narrator says that if they both stay here, they can be happy. When the player leaves, the Narrator asks Stanley where he is going, and they end up in a room with stairs leading up to a platform. The Narrator pleads with Stanley not to kill himself (thus losing the happiness room). If the player jumps, they do not die, to the Narrators’ relief. If the player jumps repeatedly, the Narrator sadly asks, “Is this really how much you dislike my game?… You’re literally willing to kill yourself to keep me from being happy? … Maybe you’re just getting a kick out of it. … I just wanted us to get along. But I guess that was too much to ask. It looks like you wanted to make a choice after all. Well, this one is yours.” This time Stanley dies and the game restarts. 
  • 12b. Choose Blue Door → O. GAME DESIGN ENDING: If the player keeps choosing the blue door, the Narrator eventually removes it, leaving only the red door. But there is another door open to the left, and the Narrator gives up and allows Stanley to see what lies at the end of the path he has chosen. They come to a large room that the Narrator says he hasn’t finished building yet, and asks sarcastically whether this was worth ruining the story he had specifically written out just for Stanley. He then tells Stanley to let him “take a stab at a new design” and then Stanley can give him feedback. The scene changes to the Room with Two Doorways, and the Narrator opens a new, third door to the right. This leads to an unfinished room with a sign reading ‘Please Rate Your Experience’ and buttons labelled 1 to 5. The Narrator says that based on this feedback and data from previous playthroughs, he’s come up with a new design. The scene returns to the Room with Two Doorways, where there is now a “The Stanley Parable Worldwide Leaderboard.” The Narrator then asks for feedback on the Leaderboard. He then says that he has a new game prototype that he wants the player to playtest. The game consists of a picture of a crawling baby on right that moves towards a fire on left, and the player is to press a red button to keep the baby from crawling into the fire, which the Narrator describes as “a very meaningful game, all about the desperation and tedium of endlessly confronting the demands of family life. I think the art world will really take notice.” He says that the “message of the game only becomes clear once you’ve been playing it for about four hours” (see 14e. ART ENDING). When the player lets the baby burn, the Narrator says that if the player did so to spite him, then he doesn’t know what to do, because he’s completely out of ideas for improving the game. He then says, “Why don’t we play someone else’s game?” The game switches to Minecraft, and the Narrator asks, “Well, Stanley, is this any better? At last, the one thing you always desired: a game I had absolutely nothing to do with.” The narrator decides Minecraft is too open-ended, that he wants something more linear, and switches to Portal. When the player gets to the elevator, it goes up and the player falls down the shaft, and wanders around. The screen goes black. The Narrator says, “I wonder what he found. If what he wanted was to be the leading man in his own story, well perhaps he’s gotten it, down in wherever he is right now. I wonder if he’s happy with his choice, and if he’s learned the heavy cost that comes with it. He’ll understand soon what I was trying to tell him: He needs me. Someone who will wrap up everything at the end, to make sense out of the chaos, and the fear and the confusion. That’s who I am.” 
  • [12b. SPUD Bucket modification] → IS IT A BUCKET? ENDING:  As Stanley is about to enter a door with a ‘No Buckets Beyond this Point’ sign, the Narrator shuts the door and expresses his concern about whether Stanley knows what a bucket is. He opens a door to an ‘Is It a Bucket?’ game show studio and quizzes Stanley about whether Stanley can identify a bucket. In the process, the Narrator himself becomes confused about what a bucket is. He tells Stanley he is going to get rid of all the buckets, and everything goes black. This leads the Narrator to think everything in the game, besides himself and Stabley, is a bucket. The Narrator says he is going to restore all the buckets and restart the game. 

X. SPUD Addition: ‘New Content’ Door

When one first starts SPUD, in a hallway between Stanley’s Office (see 1) and the Room with Two Doorways (see 3), there appears an open door marked ‘New Content.’ This leads the player to a moving platform that offers a promotional introduction of The Stanley Parable and The Stanley Parable Ultra Deluxe, narrated by a voice other than the Narrator’s. At the end of the tour, the player enters an elevator, while the Narrator expresses his excitement to see what the new content is. The elevator opens on a corridor that leads to a large hanger with a sign reading: ‘New Content! The Jump Circle” and a counter showing 36 jumps remaining. There is a circle on the floor in which the player can jump using the spacebar. Another corridor leads off to another elevator. The Narrator expresses his disappointment at this new content. The elevator opens on another corridor which ends in an empty room with a whiteboard stand with ‘Thank you for enjoying the New Content’ written on it in marker. The Narrator is outraged. He goes on a rant about game developers releasing shoddy expansions just to make money. Eventually he restarts the game.

When the game restarts, the room outside Stanely’s Office is different. As the player explores it, the grate of a vent on a wall falls open, and the Narrator whispers to Stanley to enter the vent, saying he has something to show him. (If the player instead takes the stairs, they end up back in the regular room outside Stanely’s Office.) As the player crawls through the vent duct, the Narrator explains that he thinks The Stanley Parable was much better than The Stanley Parable Ultra Deluxe, so has made something special and ‘tucked it away’ where the game’s developers won’t find it. This turns out to be a building called ‘The Memory Zone,’ a museum for the The Stanley Parable. A second building features two glowing reviews of The Stanley Parable, and the Narrator waxes nostalgically about the game. Some stairs lead down to a door marked ‘Maintenance.’ This leads to a junkyard/wasteland filled with Steam reviews (Steam is an online store for videogames). The Narrator is chaginned after reading some ‘Not Recommended’ reviews, one of which says that they wished there was a ‘skip’ button for when the Narrator was ‘long-winded.’ The Narrator says that this seems to be a good idea. Stanley enters a room where there is a column with a ‘fast-forward’ button. Each time the button is pushed the time that supposedly has elapsed becomes longer and longer, the room becomes more and more decayed, and eventually the Narrator is gone. A portion of the ceiling eventually collapses, and then a wall, and the player can walk out onto a barren desert landscape. The game auto-restarts.

[+ SPUD Bucket modification (accessible after Z. Epilogue, below, is played)]

Y. SPUD Addition: ‘New New Content’ Sign

After having played through X, above, the next time the player encounters the ‘New Content’ door, there is a neon sign on the wall next to it reading ‘New New Content.’ The Narrator tells Stanley that SPUD was so disappointing that they should forget it and take it one step further, and introduces ‘The Stanley Parable 2.’ The player ends up in a high-end corporate office for the sequel (apparently the marketing department). The Narrator admits he is not yet sure what the sequel will be. Eventually the player ends up in an Expo Hall showcasing the new features, including a button intended to say the player’s name when pressed (currently it only says ‘Jim’), an ‘infinite’ hole, a Free Achievement machine (not yet working), and Stanley Figurine collectibles. The Merch booth has a QR code that takes one to https://stanleyparable2.com/, which has a 1950s-style educational video called “The Stanley Parable, Sequels, and You!” There is a door marked “Settings World Achievement,” which opens if the player goes into the game’s settings and fiddles with all of them. The Narrator congratulates the player on winning the ‘Settings World Achievement’ trophy, and says he will introduce a new setting called ‘bumpscosity,’ although he hasn’t yet figured out what that will be.

One room in the Expo Hall contains the Reassurance Bucket. The Narrator explains that some players of The Stanley Parable found it “confusing and paradoxical” and the Bucket will assuage that. The player can take the Bucket. Stanley finally ends up in a circular theatre where the Narrator attempts to put all the new features together; however, after a couple of attempts he admits that they don’t result in a coherent game. He then decides to insert these features into the original game. The game restarts to the menu, which now reads ‘The Stanley Parable 2.’ In the Settings, there is now a ‘Bumpscosity’ setting. [+ SPUD Bucket modification]

In successive playthroughs of SPUD, the Bucket now appears on a column in a room on the way to 3, above. Taking the Bucket triggers the Bucket modifications. The New Content door will disappear, and will reappear after the Epilogue (see Z, below) has been completed.

Z. SPUD Addition

  • FIGURINES ENDING. There are six Stanley figurines that can be collected, for no reward, the narrator points out, except for the satisfaction of completion. Beside the figurine in the Expo Hall, the other figurines are at the bottom of the stairwell to the boss’s office (see 4, above), in the boss’s bathroom (see 5, above), in the room connecting the boss’s office to the secret elevator (see 6, above), in the cargo bay (along the plank walkway; see 10, above), and in a room off the room with the red and blue doors (see 12, above). After collecting all the figures, on a new playthrough, the Narrator says that he can’t stop thinking about the pleasure of collecting all the figurines and asks Stanley to return to the Memory Zone. The first room in this building now has steps leading down, which returns the player to the figurine in the Expo Hall, which can be collected again for a total of 7/6. Then Stanley collects again the figurines at the bottom of the stairwell and in the boss’s bathroom. Stanley then visits a pink room which has never been encountered before, where there is a figurine. The Narrator says he doesn’t remember this room, but it must be in the game, since it is in the Memory Zone. Then Stanley recollects the figurine in the cargo bay. This prompts an amateur YouTube-style video made by the narrator, with a rock guitar soundtrack. Then Stanley collects the figure in the room off the room with the red and blue doors. These doors lead to a single room from which Stanley ends up in a room with a sign saying this is the Present. The Narrator says he wants to go back to the Past, and Stanley retraces his steps and collects all the figurines again. Then they revisit the jump circle from SPUD, and then the Room with Two Doorways, and Stanley’s Office. The Narrator says he remembers there was something before Stanley’s office–that he invented Stanley, but that now he doesn’t need him anymore.
  • EPILOGUE: When the game restarts, the menu now has an ‘Epilogue’ option. Stanley is back in the desert seen in X (above). After a number of silent scenes of the landscape under different conditions, Stanley finds himself near the Memory Zone building. The escape pod from 5b is nearby, with the Bucket in it, which can be taken. In the ruins of the Memory Zone, there is a negative review of The Stanley Parable 2 on a ‘Cookie9’ blog, and a news story where the creators of The Stanley Parable say they will do no more sequels or spinoffs. In a cave, 6 more figurines can be collected and then a tunnel leads back to the office where there is a computer that brings you to the clock setting and slider prompts that have been appearing whenever you start up a session of SPUD. The prompts try to persuade the player that they should just keep making sequels–all they need to change is the number after The Stanley Parable and add a subtitle. This will appear on the menu (i.e, The Stanley Parable 3) if the player agrees to the plan. 

13. SERIOUS ROOM ENDING

This ending is only available for The Stanley Parable. In Steam, the player can right click on the game in their Library and select Properties, which bring up a window. In the General tab, there is a ‘Launch Options’ section where the player can enter ‘-console’. When the game is launched, a console window will open and the player can type in the prompt: sv_cheats 1. The Narrator tells Stanley he has brought him to his Serious Room because Stanley has tried to activate server cheats, and says Stanley has no respect for “the strict order of scripted narrative events, and I just can’t have that.” As punishment, he is going to make Stanley stand in the Serious Room for a hundred billion trillion years. The player can quit and enter sv_cheats 1 again, and the Narrator responds by deciding to punish Stanley with infinity years in the Serious Room. Repeat the command again, and the Narrator concludes the Serious Room is not serious enough. Manual restart.

14. Various Gags

  • 14a. ELEVATOR MUSIC: After a few replays, the door opposite to the doors to the Boss’s Office in the Boss’s Office Antechamber can be opened. In this room there is an elevator which the player can get in and press the up or down button. Elevator music will play, and when the player presses the up or down button again, the door will open on to the same room. 
  • 14b. SECRET DISCO PARTY: During one replay, when Stanley enters the boss’s office, the Narrator opens the secret door, saying, “Here’s the door. Just go.” Stanley enters the Mind Control Facility. Instead of taking the elevator out of the monitors room, the player can wait for the gate back to the last platform to reopen, and walk back to the first platform. The screens will light up in disco colours, and disco music will play.
  • 14c. WHITEBOARD ENDING: At a certain point, a restart will result in a different room outside of Stanley’s office. Room 426 contains a whiteboard that reads: “Welcome to the Whiteboard Ending!” 
  • 14d. BUTTON HEAVEN: Computers at stations 419, 423, boss’s secretary’s desk, 434, and Stanley’s computer will display an “Awaiting Input” message and a bar that is filled by activating each computer, The game needs to be restarted after every activation. A message then displays: “Welcome Stanley, to heaven.” This consists of rotating bands of large, multicoloured buttons that can be pressed. 
  • 14e. ART ENDING: If the player does follow the Narrator’s instruction to play the Baby Game (see 12b) for four hours, the narrators will drop in occasionally and comment on the player’s tenacity.. After two hours, the Narrator decides that something is lacking in the game, and adds a second button that has to be pressed to prevent a puppy from being lowered into a tank of piranhas. When the player nears the four-hour mark, the room starts to shake. The Narrator declares “art is about to burrow into your skull. Aren’t you excited for spiritual immortality?” The screen goes white a message appears from “the essence of divine art.” 
  • 14f. SPUD Addition: DOOR 430 ACHIEVEMENT: The Narrator leads the player on a pointless door clicking goose chase to obtain a pointless Steam achievement. 

E. SOURCES AND RESOURCES

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