The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe

This is not a game I’d ever heard of. But apparently it was popular amongst some of the nerdier game factions. So much so that the creators of Severance took notice and were in some way inspired by The Stanley Parable’s themes and, especially in season two, some of the look and feel. Honestly, that was my motivation for downloading and trying this thing out. A game that originally came out as an add-on to Half-Life (a game I first played back in probably 1999) in 2011 in its first iteration, then as a stand-alone in 2013 and finally added additional content to its rather small footprint in this “Ultra Deluxe” edition in 2022. In other words, this is not a modern game in any sense of the word. The graphics are… well, they’re completely fine for this game such as it is, but if you were to buy a game in 2025 and were handed this MS Paint nonsense, you’d definitely feel a little underwhelmed.

As I’ve stated like 1,000 times on this site, I’m a video game novice. I mean, I’ve been playing them for decades, but slowly and poorly. That should be made obvious by the fact I’m reviewing a game that’s been out in some iteration for the past fifteen years. So, when Googling the genre of The Stanley Parable, what kept coming up was “walking simulator.” WTF is that? I mean, that doesn’t sound like something you’d have to simulate. We can all do it. Or at least understand the mechanics involved in doing it. But, hey, if the video game nerds say it’s that, then it’s that. But, really, it’s a weird choose-your-own-adventure narrative that is just full of snark and meta and creeping horror that is in no way actual horror. It’s commentary on soulless work, the surveillance state, free choice and video games themselves. Which had honestly confounded me while playing, and had me consulting the Internet to understand what the hell was really going on with this oddball game.

You’re a dude named Stanley. An office drone who sits in a tiny office all day typing stuff on a keyboard that is dictated to you by some omnipotent power. You don’t really understand what you’re inputting, or why you’re doing it. But you do it anyway, because. Sounds a bit Severance-y, eh? One day you kind of blink into existence in your little work closet and all of your co-workers have vanished. You, as Stanley, proceed to leave your space and wander around the empty office while a sarcastic Brit narrates your moves. Sometimes he tries to tell you where to go, other times he questions your choices. And sometimes he just has running commentary about whatever. It’s all first-person, so you just kind of see what’s in front of you and have no real sense of self. Which, based on the theme of the game, makes a ton of sense. When you come to two doors and the narrator is basically saying “Stanley takes the left door to go to the conference room…” kind of trying to pre-determine your choice, you feel this great urge to not listen to him and take the right door. But is that what he’s trying to do? This asshole narrator? Is he manipulating me? And is “me” Stanley, or am I me, Mr. Hipster, the dude sitting in his house playing The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe? Kinda fucks you up. Like that jerk who asks you, right before you’re about to hit a pool ball, if you breathe in or out when striking it. It gets in your head. And that’s the point.

Though, I wondered many times during my game play: am I actually having fun? After all, you’re not shooting anything. Nothing really jumps out at you. There’s not even really that much thought put into the decisions you have to make. It’s not a puzzle-based game or anything. Mostly you’re just deciding which path to take and maybe if you should push button A or button B. The joy — if you could call it that — is in the journey. Not so much discovery per se, but the face-scrunching, what-the-hell of it all. There is no dying in this game, as far as permanent death goes. Once you either “solve” the game or reach some sort of dead end or whatever, you basically just start over in your work closet again and go through the motions. There are instances where the narrator just kind of decides you’re done and sends you back to the beginning. Just to be a dick. I believe there’s at least one scenario where you find yourseld in an endless loop with no way to end the game, so you literally have to quit out of it. Sometimes things will change after a restart, however. A new door might open or appear out of nowhere. You might figure out if you go left-left-left it gets you to a different branch of the map than left-left-right. All while that annoying Brit sometimes encourages you, sometimes berates you and other times pretty much tells you you’re a p.o.s. It’s weird.

And while you enter oddball halls, creepy outdoor paths, museums to the inane and confusing and sometimes the internal guts of some nightmare 1984 workplace — and even a really uncomfortable night in your sad aparetment with your only friend, who happens to be a bucket — it all feels kind of like a waste of time. You never really progress. You never really get anywhere. Nothing improves. You just fall back into the endless loop of an office drone trying to find your way our of a place that has no real way out. And then you just turn it off one day and never play again. Because what would be the point? Which, as you can imagine, would please the hell out of the makers of the game. The same makers who ask pretty typical video game questions and command you to do some pretty typical video game tasks whenever you boot the thing up, only to mock you for actually answering their questions or completing their tasks. It would be like the engineers and marketers of the AMC Gremlin calling to troll you for being an idiot for buying their stupid, ugly car. Thanks, bro, like I don’t feel bad enough about myself for buying this game in the first place instead of some super-popular medieval adventure game where I get to kill orcs and shit.