2013 PC indie treasure The Stanley parable released its revised, multiplatform, expanded Ultra Deluxe update yesterday, which in itself is a remarkably strange act. This version of the game, which can just as well be considered a sequel given how much is new, is a Möbius strip of meta in meta that delights in trolling its player as much as anything else. And this time, it extends to its performance. One of them requires a person not to play The Stanley parable: Ultra Deluxe for a decade. We spoke to one of the game’s developers to get answers.
The Stanley parable was, and is again, a game built from the ground up around the concept of confusing its player. Always a few steps ahead of you, no matter how you try to outwit it, developers William Pugh and Davey Wreden play with you as malicious scientists teasing rats in a maze. So it is only fitting that in this decade later recreated version, there are performances that plague its new audience on consoles.
The game has the same 11 achievements across all platforms, whether it’s PC, Xbox or PlayStation, and some of them are pretty simple. There’s one to start the game! Another to stop and play another time. And one more, um, to set all the sliders on the Settings screen to all available numbers.
Then things start to get a little weirder. Players are rewarded for clicking on door 430 a total of five times, as well as another for not jumping. Well, try and fail to jump as they removed jumps from the game as an option. There is also a speedrun performance in there, to finish the game in under four minutes and 22 seconds. Some 4.1 percent of Steam players have apparently already managed.
Another level of curiosity is the performance named “88888888888888888888,” with the description “8888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888.” Thank you William and Davey, thank you. Add to that: “Test performance, please ignore,” described as “Test performance description! Replace this!” and my personal favorite, “Commitment,” which requires players to “Play The Stanley Parable for the entire duration of a Tuesday.”
So last, and definitely least, is “Super Go Outside.” This is where the most controversy arises, an achievement that requires players not to play The Stanley parable for ten years.
What an amazing troll of achievement hunters, you lovely but strange people who put more emphasis on getting a jpeg to appear in the corner of the screen than on enjoying the game you’re playing. And console gamers are getting even more confused about this, because somehow some people have already ticked off the trophy. 1.5% of a very large audience on Steam have this in their collection, compared to 0.1% of even more diligent players who have mysteriously already played it for an entire Tuesday. (It was released on Thursday.) Oh, and then there’s even the performance to get all the other performances.
We found co-developer William Pugh, pinned him to a wall and demanded answers. Why should he do this to people?
“Patience is a skill that needs to be learned and honed like anything else required to ‘achieve’ something,” Pugh said. Kotaku, between breaths. So we asked what he hoped they would learn through this process?
“How to wait and be comfortable with waiting. How to live with the fact that not everything is exactly as you want it right away, right now. How to expose discomfort and know that just by waiting, they will finally get what they want.As an ancient saying goes, ‘good things come to those who either wait or change the system time’.
But what if someone dies during that decade of waiting? Is it really fair? “When we die, we’ll all miss a lot of cool stuff,” Pugh replies. “You can say the same thing about the Ice & Fire books, or Better Call Saul, or another cooler piece of media that only teens know about.”
When he was pressed, Pugh suggested “They could insert their will, ‘Please open TSPUD after this date to get my performance’.” He pauses and then adds, “But it’s kind of a hacky solution.”
PS. The click door 430 five times performance? Definitely try it. Trust me.