Adventure Gamers - Forums

The Beginner’s Guide is a narrative video game from Davey Wreden, the creator of The Stanley Parable. It lasts about an hour and a half and has no traditional mechanics, no goals or objectives. Instead, it tells the story of a person struggling to deal with something they do not understand.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/303210/

Came out of nowhere and probably best played without knowing anything about it. I don’t really know how to explain it without spoiling it, reminded me of Adaptation but about games creation.

rtrooney - 01 October 2015 08:33 PM

Is there any interaction at all that would make this different from watching a movie?

Yes, you walk around and press buttons. There is one puzzle.

The best part was the super symbolic meta-ending, the one where i got a refund on steam because it was really short and i didnt like it
I shouldv filmed my hand in slow motion hitting the enter key on the refund request to music, they could sell that as dlc.

Is Coda real?

I would assume no. At most he’s based on people the author has known and their experiences. There certainly are obscure avant-gard freeware games out there. It was an interesting premise.

Also thought he wasn’t, at the end my theory is that Coda is himself

Not a bad theory, i think what particulary supports it is At the end you see these messages sent by coda to the narrator, and you see him say stop editing in lamp posts to the levels. So either thats the narrators craziness, trying to make the games more meaningful in his quest to vicariously enjoy sharing them.. or its coda talking to himself.
It is also worth pointing out though it seems like coda may be female. The character is often addressed as she and ma’m. But that doesnt rule out it being the narrator, as its just a representation

Mr Underhill - 06 October 2015 03:11 PM

Haha, man, I’m sorry for the dev, which I now am a fan of (only first played the Stanley Parable last night with my girlfriend and we loved it), but your post made me spit kombucha all over the keyboard. So yeah, nice one. You owe me a keyboard, buddy.

And I’m kind of looking forward to the game, either way

haha. Yeah i feel bad for the dev too. A less than 2 hour game on steam is going to have sales issues. I wasnt happy with it, so i refunded. I liked the stanley parable much more. Still, this had some interesting stuff to think about in it.

zane - 06 October 2015 11:27 AM

Not a bad theory, i think what particulary supports it is At the end you see these messages sent by coda to the narrator, and you see him say stop editing in lamp posts to the levels. So either thats the narrators craziness, trying to make the games more meaningful in his quest to vicariously enjoy sharing them.. or its coda talking to himself.
It is also worth pointing out though it seems like coda may be female. The character is often addressed as she and ma’m. But that doesnt rule out it being the narrator, as its just a representation

Seemed like he was showing his experiments with various games and how loved that period of creative freedom but then he started to add goals to make the game more “commercial” and possible to be shown to other people and that took away his freedom, added pressure.
Like you said, I think gives a lot to think about (and I’m not even a developer).

Karlok - 07 October 2015 05:48 AM

I have mixed feelings about TBG. It didn’t really resonate with me, although I’m sure everybody recognizes and shares Davey’s/Coda’s emotions. Near the end I started feeling somewhat uncomfortable. It was as if I’d been invited to be a voyeur. I accepted that invitation by playing the game to the end, and it did make me think about my experience of the game and its content. That’s good, I guess. I might replay it at some point to see if I feel more involved the second time.

That is good point, the game did started to feel uncomfortable at some point. And also sad, that last level was just sad.
That cleaning level reminded me of Sunset and at the end also thought of Tale of Tales as developers and some of the preblems they had.