The Beginner's Guide

The Beginner's Guide is a single-player storytelling computer game created by Davey Wreden along with a team called Everything Unlimited Ltd. and released on October 1, 2015 for Windows, OS X, and Linux. The game is Wreden's second creation after his acclaimed 2013 game The Stanley Parable. Davey prefers to let the game "speak for itself" instead of giving public interviews about it.

Gameplay
The Beginner's Guide consists in exploring and interacting with eighteen partially developed 3D environments (called "games", "chapters", or "levels") from a first-person perspective. Those occasionally feature simple puzzles and dialog trees. There is no way to die or "lose" the game in any of the levels. As one chapter ends, the next one begins, as in a book or TV series.

Depending on the player's pacing, a casual run through the game can take anywhere from around 45 to 90 minutes in average.

By default, the gameplay is followed by Davey Wreden's narration, which is essential to understand the plot. However, after beaten, an option to turn off the narration is unlocked in the game's settings, which lets you play Coda's levels "as intended" (without narration and with minimal to no alteration on Davey's part).

Plot
The game is narrated by Davey Wreden, the creator of The Stanley Parable. Davey says he will show the player several game projects created by Coda, a fellow game designer he met at a game jam. As the story progresses and more weird game projects are shown, Coda is revealed to be an enigmatic figure. Davey begins to state his theories on the meaning of Coda's games, getting increasingly emotional. According to Davey, Coda's games reflect their creator's frustration, depression and isolation through time.

Development
All levels in The Beginner's Guide were developed on the Source engine. Davey comments about the engine's limitations in Down. The game was first announced on September 29, 2015, two days before its official release.

Reviews
Upon its release, The Beginner's Guide received mostly positive reviews. Of 11 gaming websites that reviewed it, 8 gave it at least an 8/10 (or equivalent). On Steam, the game was reviewed by English-language users almost 11,000 times and those reviews were overall "very positive". The game was praised for its strong emotional appeal and allusions to game development.

However, there were some negative reviews too. The website Shacknews rated the game 3/10 and called it "pretentious" and "forced", suggesting that the reader play The Stanley Parable instead.

System requirements

 * OS: Windows Vista or better / Mac OS X 10.8 or better / Ubuntu 12.04 or better
 * Memory: 2 GB RAM
 * Storage: 4 GB available space
 * Processor: 3.0 GHz P4 (2.8 GHz for Linux): Dual Core 2.0 (or higher) or AMD64X2 (or higher)
 * Sound card: Compatible with DirectX 9.0c or OpenAL
 * Graphics
 * Windows: ATI Radeon X800 or higher / Nvidia GeForce 7600 or higher / Intel HD Graphics 2000 or higher - *NOT* an Intel Express graphics card; 128 MB and Directx 9-compatible
 * OS X: ATI Radeon 2400 or higher / Nvidia 8600M or higher
 * Linux: Nvidia GeForce 8600/9600GT / ATI/AMD Radeon HD2600/3600; compatible with OpenGL 2.1 Nvidia 310 or AMD 12.11