The Beginner's Guide

The Beginner's Guide poses a number of academic questions around the nature of choice, interactivity, and creativity. While it offers no firm answers, it's one of the most thought-provoking and ultimately disarming interactive experiences I've had all year, and one I won't easily shake off.

The Beginner's Guide is a fascinating journey into the thoughts and processes involved in the creation of a video game, and the people that make them.

The second game from the creator of The Stanley Parable is an intensely personal character study and one of the most daring games in years.

A peculiar experience that's personal, sincere, and full of questions to unpack, though it asks them far too bluntly.

Filling your head with questions that have no easy answers, The Beginner's Guide is confusing, thought-provoking, and unlike anything you've ever played.

[O]ne of the most emotionally alive games on the market

So did I enjoy it? Kind of. I think I appreciated it more than I enjoyed it, and then that appreciation was tinged with a wish that it could have been more. More clever, more surprising, more deep. But more importantly, it made me think, made me worry about people I care about, made me uncomfortable. And for that, I think, it deserves praise.

On the surface, The Beginner's Guide is a game about game design and critical analysis. Digging deeper, it provides a window into the mind of a man I might not have fully understood otherwise. It does all of this in a way only a video game could. More than anything else, it has caused me a lot of introspection, a feat few games ever achieve.

Davey Wreden's follow-up to The Stanley Parable attempts to loosely tie together disparate game sketches, but fails to live up to its predecessor.

The Beginner's Guide is an incredible art piece of a game that gets you thinking your relationship with the games you play.