You might know The Stanley Parable from its 2011 iteration as a Half-Life 2 mod. It’s funny, self-referential, surprising, and sometimes uncomfortable to play, a tale told not through one linear story but instead through many different branching paths that twists the illusion of control that video games work so hard to give us. Fun! Follow that line! Follow that story!īY KEZA MACDONALDLike Dear Esther and Thirty Flights of Loving, The Stanley Parableis an experiment with interactive narrative, another attempt to find a new form of storytelling unique to video games.
