The Beginner's Guide

Wow...this, legit made me ugly cry. I implore you to not read any reviews of this game until you finished playing and just go into this as completely blind as possible. If you're a creative in any sense and are dealing with ♥♥♥♥ in your life, this is going to speak to you in a way that's (being honest here) gonna hurt. Like a deep tissue massage, it hurts to go through, but afterwards you'll be glad you did it. It's bittersweet, heavy on the bitter. As anything therapeutic, its not here to help you through your problems, but to contextualize them, so you better understand them, and in turn, know how to deal with them better.

This game is so surreal. I would recommend this game to any aspiring game developers/designers. The message is such a paradox that it makes you feel uncomfortable thinking about it after you finish the game. It is a walking contradiction and I love it for that.

its best that you play it blind and alone with no interruptions. I think even watching the trailer has potential to stain the experience. its short, its raw, its beautiful and it deeply resonated with me.

Прекрасная игра для тех, кто всё ещё сомневается, что игры могут быть искусством. Тут почти нет привычного геймплея, зато есть авторская рефлексия и ощущение, что тебя три часа аккуратно бьют по душе инди-разработкой. Очень рекомендую: редкий случай, когда можно применить фразу: “я ничего не понял, но почувствовал себя умнее”. 10/10 дверей с рычагами

There are very few games that made me ugly cry, this is one of them, for that alone it deserves incredible praise. One of the most powerful instrospective games there is.

круто только не хватает динозавров

I hate this game and when I first played it I quit it early, then when I watched my wife play it I got to see the end of it. I hate this game, very gross, I highly recommend it, good art doesn't have to feel cozy, and this feels viscerally disgusting. [h1]It's best to play this game without spoilers. So go play it.[/h1] Why you should play it, what it's about, and who it can target (at least in my opinion) [list][*]As a woman it really seems to speak a different message than a lot of people pick up from this and I think you'd get a lot from this if you are a woman or deal with people who are obsessed about [b][u]their[/u][/b] place in [b][u]your[/u][/b] life, [spoiler]Coda[/spoiler](name) [spoiler]feels like a woman the entire time and the game leans into this with audio and visuals, and it really cements it at the very end of the game. To me this game feels like the r*pe of [spoiler]coda's boundaries[/spoiler] by [spoiler]davey[/spoiler].[/spoiler] [*]If you're a person who feels like you're there to help other people, and you're always doing your best, I think this game is also great for you. [*]If you're a game dev [spoiler]who has two sides of their brain fighting over purpose versus art[/spoiler], I also think this game can speak to you. [*]If you're a person with multiple personalities or schizophrenia I also believe that this game will speak to you on a different level, one of my friends took a lot of meaning from this and she saw it as a showcase of fragmenting. [/list] However you read this game its well worth the time you spend on it, and it's great to reflect on why you think the way you do about it. All interpretations are probably correct because it feels like this game is meant to be about [spoiler]the absence of the author, and the retelling by an unreliable narrator[/spoiler] regardless of what the creator says this game is about, it's up to you the player to figure it out for yourself. [h1]It's best to play this game without spoilers. So go play it.[/h1]

Honestly? Didn't enjoy it. I was going into this game with such high hopes. The screenshots on the store page seemed so interesting, it was made by the same person who made The Stanley Parable, it was a short and sweet hour and a half, how could I not enjoy it? But then I played it, and... I just wasn't liking what I was seeing or hearing. I kept toughing through it, constantly telling myself, "SOMEWHERE! Somewhere at some point, this game will be good! It will be fantastic, and I'll love it, and I'll think all this walking and listening to someone blabber on about nonsense that sounds deep and poetic just for the sake of being deep and poetic with no real substance to it will ALL be worth it!" And that time just never came. Spoilers I guess for the next sentence, in case you care about stuff like that. Though TBH a good spoiler might scare you away and save you the hour and a half I wasted playing this game. The whole thing is just a walking simulator where you listen to one random guy spout nonsense about how great this other guy is and makes up a bunch of nonsense metaphorical garbage about several unfinished games. Most of the games are just random landscapes, sometimes with a few trippy visuals, but usually not trippy in any kind of interesting way, just sorta like Anish Kapoor-style abstract art that's just blobs that are supposed to be deep and meaningful but they're really not unless someone picks it apart and explains it to you which at that point ruins any symbolism it was trying to convey in the first place. Very few of the games really are all that interesting overall and just feel like they're trying to be deep and philosophical for the sake of being deep and philosophical. Then there's this whole other part of the plot where all the rambling is supposed to be a retelling about how some overly clingy content-stealing freak screwed up his parasocial relationship with some artsy fartsy loner who believes never talking to anyone and bottling up all your emotions is the healthiest possible way to live life. I feel like maybe I'm the idiot. That there's some big thing that I'm missing that just makes this the greatest game of all time. But beyond what I already mentioned I just can't see anything but shallow attempts at being emotional and meaningful but being both too obvious and too vague at the same time. I legitimately can't think of anything in this game that can make me truthfully say that I'm glad I got to experience it in full. 3/10