
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.
Modeled estimate, not a reported figure. How we estimate →
Prices
Each in the currency that store quoted — not converted: the gap between two rows is the publisher's pricing, not an exchange rate.
Every market we collect.
Discounts
Every price cut of more than 20% we have observed, in each market that quoted one, with this game's chart position on either side of it. These are episodes, not a model: a sale is one event, and one event cannot tell you what the next one will do.
Reviews, worldwide (the counter carries no country): 2.57/day in the week to Aug 10 → 15/day in the week after.
For scale, across Steam · Top Sellers · Brazil over the last 30 days: the 24 chart moves that followed a price cut of more than 20% went a median of 9 places towards #1, and the 2,404 moves with no price cut behind them went 2 away. One store, one chart, one country — it is the only place we have enough observations to say even that.
Prices outside the United States have been collected since 6 August 2026 and chart positions since 19 July 2026, so a cut older than that has no market to compare and a market that joined later has no history yet. Nothing here is converted between currencies.
About
Genres
Updates
Build ids and update times come straight from Steam's PICS — the same source SteamDB reads. Patch history grows as we record new builds.
Engagement
Reviews
Themes across 1068 recent reviews and how positive each mention is. A keyword signal, not full sentiment analysis.
Reviews
This is not a game in any traditional sense, but instead subverts the expectations of what a game really is to put forth a thought-provoking narrative. It is not just a message for game developers or even creatives as a whole, but is a deeply human story that, while a work of fiction, is very much based in real emotions and struggles that many can relate to. What you get out of the game is entirely up to you, and has no one simple message or intention, but I'd absolutely recommend playing the game and sitting on what you just witnessed, cause it's a large pill to swallow.
这是一个关于创作者内心挣扎的故事 更多像视觉小说或超现实场景步行模拟,但内核却和现实高度相关 它完整展现了一个创作者在创作过程中可能的喜悦、乐趣、迷茫、怀疑 下面是玩时的记录与感受,可能涉及剧透 [spoiler]逃离prison. 有了对话.对话.与谁对话?最终版本的prison,玩家与自己对话(在prison内的自己)…… "talking to someune other than themselves." 表现的形式:与他人的连接、与自我的对话,他在游戏创作中都进行了尝试。[/spoiler] 关于"游戏可玩性"的讨论 [spoiler]如果将你的创作物仅仅作为一种表达的手段和方法,而忽略其“可玩性/功能性”是否还能被他人接受/认可?[/spoiler] [spoiler]创作是对自我的表达、它应当遵从内心的"机器",还是注重其功能性?选择前者,当"执器"停止运转时,又如何面对对自我与外界的期待? "more...more More people telling me that I'm great.. It's like a disease" 游戏中coda作为内心创作的原初自我,以及受外界关注驱动下的Davey,Davey审视着coda的创作,最后亲手毁掉了coda曾经那些“愚蠢的作品” "或许他就是喜欢做关于prisons的游戏" 那个他觉得有无限乐趣、无数个版本但可能有些意义不明的prisons. "如果创作是为了有人能认同,这一切会很艰难吗?" 不论是coda还是Davey,他们(他)最终和解,沉默。走到那个机关面前,被那个熟悉的bug送上天空,迷宫被尽收眼底:眼前的无尽延伸的迷宫,他们(他)自己的迷宫 你是否已经走出那个巨大的迷宫? 作者是否在回答:看见迷宫,或许就是走出本身[spoiler]
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Price dynamics, follower growth, revenue and sales trajectories with interactive tooltips
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Stats
All-time low is the lowest price we've recorded for this game since we started tracking it.
Languages: English*, French, German, Spanish - Spain, Russian*languages with full audio support
Hours played at review time, across 1.1K reviews with recorded playtime.
positive critical· bar length = how often the theme comes up
Это искусство. Хотя может я сам додумываю. This is art. Or maybe I just made it up in my head.
make sure to play fully blind in one sitting
Идеальный пример, доказывающий, что видеоигры - это мощное искусство. Это весьма странный, сюрреалистичный проект, который при своем абсурде умудряется выстреливать из чеховских ружий и задавать игроку очень сильные вопросы. /// спойлер аллерт Я также, как и люди ниже - не смогу описать смысл игры. Самое смешное, то что может быть в этом и есть смысл? Мы привыкли налепливать на чужие произведения свою ношу, натуру и оценивать чужое под маской своего. Видеть в обычном пне - древо и корни, когда пень может быть просто декоративным. Тогда насколько мы имеем право судить других людей, анализировать в депрессии ли они, а не мы сами? Наверно, это самый главный вопрос, поднятый игрой. Но не единственный. Как влияет чужое творчество на человека? Что есть само - тВоРчЕсТвО? Для каждого ответ свой. В локации, где якобы множество пользователей интернета оставили свои заметки по всей игре...Для меня это выражение того, что человек умрёт. Всё равно умрёт. Все будут судить его по этим заметкам, строить по ним образ, который, в действительности никогда не совпадёт с изначальной личностью. Автор игры увидел в этой локации символ одиночества, а, быть может, Коди ( пусть даже это и вымышленный перс ) - вообще делал простую тюрьму со странноватой механикой? Выводы делайте сами. Кумейкайте.
I needed that...
I played this game after not being particularly moved by The Stanley Parable, and to my surprise, this game was way beyond my expectations. The following contain some thoughts unrelated to the game's content. I believe everyone who plays this game will come away with something different, so this is just a record of my own thoughts at this moment. [spoiler]When I first started playing this game, I kept thinking, ‘Is Coda actually real?’ It’s got the strongest meta elements I’ve ever seen — some of them almost feel unhealthy. Usually I’m against games that try to push a negative message. Not because I need a constant positive vibe, but that I just don’t see the point. You can’t really learn anything or become a better person from games like that.[/spoiler] On a side note: this game reminds me of myself after finishing both Death Stranding 1 and 2 recently. I've started liking my friends' posts more often, and when reviewing games, I try harder to find their strengths while downplaying their weaknesses — just so I don't let any hasty or ill-considered judgment negatively affect the developers or anyone who genuinely enjoys the game. After all, writing a review might be a low-barrier activity, but it can mean a great deal to some people in a certain way. I think this is part of the social charm that emerges when single-player games and gaming communities come together. It truly connects developers to players, and players to other players. [spoiler]At the final chapter, I really wanted to reach through the internet and talk to Coda(or the author himself): the desire for recognition is not a disease.No matter how much you disapprove of your own work, sharing it is always worth encouraging.[/spoiler] Now I completely abandoned my previous bias against games that might contain negative or pessimistic ideas (except for horror games, that's a different kind of stuff that I can't enjoy). Because every work may contain something extremely important from the author's consciousness, and I'm willing to believe that this core is always positive and worth exploring. Gifted by o1ta 26/03/22
https://youtube.com/watch?v=7VYXgy5LSyg&list=RD7VYXgy5LSyg&start_radio=1&pp=ygUhc3RyYWlnaHQgdG8gbnVtYmVyIDEgdG91Y2ggYW5kIGdvoAcB
Starts out super interesting and then falls on its face in a gigantic melodramatic heap. Save yourself a couple of bucks and watch any daytive tv show that has two teenage girls arguing about being misunderstood about the other.
Попытка понять не понятое. Нам свойственно искать смысл там, где его нет. Отличная игра.
Players by region
Where this game's players are, estimated from review languages.
Players also reviewed
The games this title's players most often review too — audience affinity.
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