Davey Wreden isn’t done making you sad. He co-designed The Stanley Parable and directed The Beginner’s Guide, and now he’s heading up a new team with the aim of producing games “that are beautiful, meditative, thoughtful, and sad”. So like the games he’s already worked on, but with fewer jokes.

Details about the next game are thin on the metaphorical, ‘probably a big allegory for something’ ground, but let’s have a rummage through these two job ads. Look, it’s gonna be third-person. That’s a start.

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If you ve choosed-and-adventured through Bandersnatch, the recent Black Mirror thing on Netflix, and aren t already a fan of experimental interactive fiction: I envy you. It means you re able to play actually good examples of interactive fiction for the first time.

Sure, Bandersnatch has funny lines, surprises and scene stealing performances from Will Poulter doing a pretty much exactly how I, the writer, talk in real life voice. But as a whole, video games have been iterating deeper on the main themes of control, authenticity, forced choice, meta-recursion and non-linearity for years, without also including an unhelpful portrayal of paranoid schizophrenia. When you love enough people who hear voices and suffer from castigatory delusions, maybe you become less enthused about media which depicts sufferers committing murders or throwing themselves off buildings. Fix it, Brooker. The same plotpoint was in White Christmas and it was shit back then.

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Hey everyone, look. The creators of The Beginner s Guide have made a new game. I wonder what emotional masterpiece they ve made this time? Let s go take a lo– oh. It s an RPGMaker game about Keanu Reeves indiscriminately stabbing people. Well, you know, maybe there s a hidden message. A deep satire on the state of the videogames industry. A worthy soliloquy hidden in the dialogue. Perhaps there s some understanding of the human condition to be gleaned from

No. No, it s just a rando JRPG about Keanu Reeves dealing drugs to children. (more…)

Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.>

The Beginners Guide, aka, the sad one. After the Stanley Parable warmed the innards of human animals across the world, the two creators went their separate ways. One of them resurfaced a couple of years later holding a free game with a superbly long name called Dr. Langeskov, The Tiger and The Terribly Cursed Emerald: A Whirlwind Heist. The other appeared with The Beginner s Guide. Both were good, but for completely different reasons.

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Humble Bundles come every fortnight nowadays but the Humble Indie Bundle is still a rare treat, something a bit fancier than the rest – the flagship bundle. Numero diecisiete is now upon us (I know – diecisiete already! but it has been six years of HIBs), a pay-what-you-want bundle of games including Lethal League, The Beginner’s Guide, Super Time Force Ultra, Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime, and Nuclear Throne.

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Dr. Langeskov, The Tiger and The Terribly Cursed Emerald: A Whirlwind Heist is the new game from the new studio from William Pugh, co-developer of The Stanley Parable. It starts British comedian Simon Amstell, and could arguably be said to maybe possibly feature a grappling hook. It’s free, and out now, and here’s whether it’s worth your precious, precious time. … [visit site to read more]

The Stanley Parable creator, Davey Wreden, is back two years later with a solo project, The Beginner’s Guide [official site]. Released under his new development name, Everything Unlimited, this is an abstruse wander through a mysterious collection of games and game ideas, quite unlike anything else you’ve played. Does it work? Here’s wot I think:>

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