The Beginner's Guide

The Beginner's Guide is an interactive storytelling video game created by Davey Wreden under the studio name Everything Unlimited Ltd. It was released for Linux, macOS, and Windows on October 1, 2015. It is Wreden's follow-up to the critically praised The Stanley Parable, initially released in 2013. Narrated by Wreden, it takes the user through a number of incomplete and abstract game creations made by a developer named Coda. Wreden challenges the player to try to come to understand the type of person Coda is from exploring these spaces in a first-person perspective. Wreden has stated The Beginner's Guide is open to interpretation: some have seen it as general commentary on the nature of the relationship between game developers and players, while others have taken it as an allegory to Wreden's own personal struggles with success resulting from The Stanley Parable. The Beginner's Guide received generally positive reviews. Many reviewers readily took to the narrative and the questions and ideas it raised on game development, while others felt it forced some of Wreden's thoughts too hard and in a pretentious manner.