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This is a difficult game to write about, but a few hours after playing it, I was left with several thoughts and feelings still floating around about what I’ve experienced. There’s a lot to process and possibly more than I think I’ll be able to get to here. I’ll be interested in replaying it and seeing where things stand from there, but for now this is what I’ve taken away from the game.

I heard good things about The Beginner’s Guide but not any details about what it was. At first I assumed it was a video game about being a rogue leftover part of a game in the middle of being made (The Magic Circle, I think) so as it turned out I knew even less than I thought about the game. It’s by Davey Wreden who made The Stanley Parable, a fantastic game which my brother introduced me to the demo of by insisting it was entirely different to the game itself. It was and the game is something fantastic to experience. This is a little along those lines as far as using the mechanics of a video game to tell a story.

The game stars one speaking character; Davey Wreden. He narrates the games which make up The Beginner’s Guide, acting as a kind of documentary of the works of a person called Coda. Coda’s a character whose personality and backstory is only provided by the commentary of Davey and the designs you walk through. I guess in a way you are the third character as the audience member walking through Coda’s world, curated by Davey.

To start off with, you’re wandering a Counter Strike map designed by Coda and right away there are things wrong with it, only visible once you start moving within the world. I knew a few people who tinkered with CS back in the day and it places this designer firmly in the era of people modding games that I know of. The errors look like they could be due to a first-timer learning what they’re doing but Davey tells us of recurring themes in the work of Coda. There are floating boxes, strange cubes and dead ends. It’s alienating and within or without the fiction it’s entirely on purpose to set the tone. We are not a person in the world, we’re a witness to a game being designed.

Once you have had a bit of a search and heard what Davey has to say, we skip ahead in time to the next project of Coda’s. It’s a space game with a non-working gun and an actual maze. Again, it’s something an amateur or an artist may have made and Davey has his own insights. The look of the levels are oddly charming in the same way that I find using the old graphics as to see how the original looked back in the day. There’s a moment where you die and Davey talks about Coda’s intent simply be that you die, only he experienced a bug which he replicates. You’re elevated into the air and can see the maze, the ship, all without a ceiling and the edges of the game world. There are sharp corners on the background and space itself is just a box you’re in. This is important, this change of perspective.

The narrative of The Beginner’s Guide is presented through the game’s mechanics, but on several levels. One of the next games is one where you play a character who can only move backwards through a level. This section is something which I could imagine standing on its own easily enough and has messages unique to the game as well as to the greater narrative. It reminded me a little of Passage which was a game asking whether you want freedom with loneliness or companionship with restriction. There was no right answer in that game. This one the restriction’s a little more linear and you switch between the ability to see what’s ahead or the ability to move without seeing to navigate. Again, this is important. All of it is. There are puzzles, but not many, this is more of a journey than anything else, but a ‘walking game’ which uses the minimal mechanics of the game to its’ advantage. In games like Dear Esther, you would be in awe of a heavily detailed world but at a loss of what exactly to do between chunks of narration. Here, the worlds are small and bite-sized, the worlds can be as small as a single room or massive and awe-inspiring.

Davey talks of the grander designs being experimented with and the meaning behind it all, as well as his experiences with Coda in real life. His interpretation of things like the series of small prison games, the domesticity of one game. There are recurring styles presented and some aspects evolve which reflects Coda’s growth as a person. His voice is only really experienced by little floating circles in one level and the dialogue options in a handful of games. Otherwise we’ve got the mechanics and Davey’s accounts as all you have to go on.

It’s fascinating to see and for ninety minutes as a documentary, fake or otherwise, it makes for a great use of the medium. The games themselves are fairly small and definite works in progress, but there’s something which has inspired the narrator and hearing his analysis of it helps drive us through. And this is where we get to the spoilers.

I don't know how this community is with spoilers, so I'm going to link to my site where the rest of the information is. There are a couple of flips in the narrative where it made me think deeply about one thing, then turned it round and made it all new again, all in a really short game. It's impressive and sticks with you. As I said, this all goes to spoilers. I hope you don't mind being shielded from them by me linking to my site here.

http://fakedtales.com/2015/10/15/the-beginners-guide-review/

Easily one of the best Roguelikes I've played since getting a working PC. If you like Metroidvania games, if you like roguelikes but get annoyed at the lack of overall progression, definitely try this out.