Based on the award-winning 2011 Source mod of the same name, The Stanley Parable returns with new content, new ideas, a fresh coat of visual paint, and the stunning voicework of Kevan Brighting. For a more complete and in-depth understanding of what The Stanley Parable is, please try out the free demo. The narrator opens with the dialogue “Stanley found that all of his coworkers were gone, this was a common occurrence considering he worked the night shifts, I’m kidding of course, you’ve heard me explain it a thousand times let’s just go”.

• The Stanley Parable For Free
• The Stanley Parable Achievement

By TheJayJayTheJayJay. Last updated

Here's some quick things to do to get a really optimized time in TSPD

1. When you begin the run, since the timer starts on the first input, you want to start by walking backwards and then turn around and walk forwards (Or just run the entire game walking backwards lol)

2. Anytime that a wall is about to lift up, you want to be crouching and holding down the button to move forward. Once you start moving, let go of the crouch button and you'll get to the normal walking pace at the fastest possible time.

3. Spam click the mouse on the choice room buttons, best outcome is the narrator begins saying 'How fascinating' just before he can say '...you' in the previous dialogue.

4. When entering back into the green room after going through the facility, you want to lean against the wall on the stairs as you're going up them so that you can trigger the narrator's dialogue at the fastest possible time. It's a little risky since if you come at if from the wrong angle you will either slow down or just stop, refer to the the WR and Kevbot43's 12:01.61 run if you want to see it pulled off the most accurately.

5. The narrator's dialogue in the 8 game triggers once you press the button twice. So spam click while walking towards it and then the moment it gets pressed down, use your other hand to spam click. Refer to the WR to see what I mean.

6. Before you exit the Eight Game, lean up against the door (preferably on the right side of it since that's where it opens) and spam click while moving forwards into it. The door will open in about a second quicker than normal. This is the only door that is affected by this to my knowledge though I often still do the same thing on most other doors in the game that open outwards.

7. When exiting back into the car park, just as you're going out the door, strafe left while moving forward so you land on the ground slightly quicker. It should work while walking forward normally but I've never had it as fast personally. Just whatever you do, don't use the stairs.

8. The hardest part of the run is arguably the cup game, it makes or breaks your run. What I do is grab the cup, walk backwards, turn round and just before i reach the bin, I let go of the cup so that it gets thrown into the bin. It's fairly difficult to estimate when you're running so you'll just have to practise it until you start getting it consistently.

9. When coming to the black room with 'THE END' written at the top, I always wait a bit for the walls to move down before I lean up against them so I can more easily tell where the exit is. I recommend you do the same.

10. Finally, when making your way to the isolation chamber, it's slightly faster to drop into the room rather than walk down the slope. Again if you don't know what I mean, refer to the WR run.

Hope this helps, it's sorta hard to explain in words what I'm talking about, but basically the top 2 runs at the time of writing (Mine and Kevbot's) showcase most, if not all of these tricks in action.

But the important thing of all is to STAY CLOSE TO THE WALLS.

Cheers for reading and good luck with your own runs!

The Stanley Parable is a game about choice, a British narrator, and the lack of (or, alternatively, the inclusion of) free will in video games. It's...hard to explain, to say the least.

• 1Unused Graphics
• 5Unused Commands
• 8Unused Audio
  • 8.2Museum Narration
• 12Revisional Differences

Unused Graphics

This graphic (with the exception of the text 'LOADING DOCK ABCDE') is completely unused. It includes an early sign for the Mind Control Facility and an alternate paragraph of the intro text with Stanley's name replaced with 'Loading Dock A'.

A Minecraft version of the 'Nodraw' Hammer tool. Stored with the Minecraft graphics.

Text from a scrapped part of the Confusion Ending.

An unused (and very happy) screen for the monitor room.

Although this screen is used (it appears above employee 001 in the monitor room), it's almost impossible to see Clippy or what he's saying, even when standing right below it in the confusion ending.

A message from a developer taunting another developer.

There are also lots of leftover Portal 2 textures scattered around the materials folder, including chapter previews, co-op HUD icons, and GUI elements from the Robot Enrichment store.

Linux Screenshots

• 1441627579.tga

• 1441628287.vtf

• raphael0000.jpg

• raphael0001.jpg

The Linux version of the game (Tea Edition) adds four screenshots to the game's directory – specifically, one 512x384 TGA, one 512x384 VTF, and two 1920x1080 JPEGs. While the TGA and VTF files appear to be normal screenshots of the game (albeit in... unusual formats for screenshots), the two JPEG files are screenshots of The Raphael Parable, a fan-made mod for The Stanley Parable.

Hidden Developer Text

• In an extremely interesting feat of programming, the developers left a peculiar little file in thestanelyparable/bin – README.txt, which contains the word 'sup'. In the demo, this contains 'hi timmy!' instead.
  • client.dll which is also in the same directory contains a message:

• In the game's default configuration file, one of the last lines includes a comment:

• In the facepunch_brushbased.vmt material file, this message can be found:

• In the dev/cabinets.vmt material file, another secret message was included:

• In the coffee3.vmt materials/overlays file, yet another secret message was included:

Console Easter Eggs

Certain commands entered into the developer console will result in Easter eggs instead of actual development things:

• _430_disable: Presumably would disable the Click on door 430 five times achievement, but just outputs 'heck no!' into the console.
• _u: Based on its name, it would seem to give you the Unachievable achievement, but it instead outputs 'Hey don't you even try' to the console. Despite this, there are ways to get this command working.
• bark: Barks whenever you click on anything. The lower-right corner of the whiteboard in the Whiteboard Ending mentions this Easter egg.
• hideous: Opens a Steam Overlay web browser window pointing to the Official Team Fortress 2 Wiki, opened to a random hat that Hideous (one of the 3D artists who worked on The Stanley Parable) contributed to.
• imabird: Enables the 'flight' effect from the downstairs path/Mariella Ending during normal play.
• raphael: After entering this, every line of narration will be replaced with 'Stanley.', in reference to a gleefully caustic teaser trailer wherein the Narrator responded to an email from a chap named Raphael.
• sv_cheats 1: When entered into the full version, instead of enabling cheats, it will instead whisk you away to a secret map to get a stern talking-to from the Narrator, about why the player has forcibly entered the command, reasoning that the player will break the game. Repeat two more times for additional dialogue. In the demo, however, it simply outputs 'Why?', meaning that the command was unfinished.

Old-School Cheats

There are a couple of secret commands that can be entered during gameplay, instead of in a console, that enable Easter eggs:

• Typing facepunch during gameplay will replace most of the game's textures with a hand-drawn sketch of the Facepunch Studios logo. This is a shoutout to the Facepunch forums, where a lot of the development team originated.
• Typing secret on the title screen, then clicking the 'Credits' button will play a very silly kazoo song over the credits.
• Typing vinh during the Credits makes Kevin Macleod's Who Likes to Party play, along with pictures of the Employee of the Year to scroll across the screen.

Unused Commands

• tsp_enablemenunarrator: Judging by the Museum ending and the different iterations of the Zending, this command would have been activated upon getting to that specific ending. Its sound file 'narrator/zen_final_escape.wav' is missing, but there is a closed caption saying 'No please- Stanley, don't quit- I'm asking you, please- don't take this away from me!', in which the Narrator would plead Stanley not to quit the game and take his happiness away when pausing the game. Surprisingly, this console command also exists in the Demo.
• ent_create_portal_/paint_bomb_*: Portal 2 'ent_create' Developer commands. Sadly, the Gels were removed from The Stanley Parable's source code.
• +coop_ping: The ping tool which is also unused in Portal 2, this one sprays a red X on the wall temporarily and brings up no menu when used in the game which the mod used the engine from.
• portal_(insert argument here): Portal commands.
• mp_usehwmmodels/vcds: Team Fortress 2 console commands for Hardware Morph.
• tf_(Arena Mode and Escort): Team Fortress 2 Arena Mode commands. Mentions Escort commands as well.

*References the cubes. **The game used Portal 2 as the base engine and source code. Maybe the devs spotted the Gels and removed them from the game's source code.

Hidden/Unused Inputs

startbackwardswalking & allownormalwalking: These inputs for the player entity configures whether or not to only allow backwards movement. Why they're in The Stanley Parable is because two months before release, the development team was also working on Davey's next game called The Beginner's Guide, using the former as a base by running the maps in The Stanley Parable.^[1]

Player Model

The player model used for 'Stanley' is not actually the model for him, but instead is the model for the unused Portal-like Chell found in Portal 2, without proper textures and no functional animations other than the reference pose. This is because she was not properly set up for use with the animations, as they were made for Chell's Portal 2 model.

Leftover Entities from Portal 2 and Half-Life 2

• npc_personality_core: Hey, at least the personality cores are still here, including Wheatley! Materials and models required.
• npc_security_camera: Aperture Science's security cameras are also here, and they too still need their model and textures!
• npc_turret_floor: The Combine Turret (no, not the Portal one) works perfectly in this game, save for missing sounds including model and textures. It also lacks the AR2 tracer effect however, since it isn't precached, resulting in red X's being emitted where the gunfire should be.
• npc_wheatley_boss: 'WheatDOS', another variation of Wheatley, this time in GLaDOS' Central Core. Same with original Wheatley. When spawned, he creates rendering errors since a model isn't specified from spawning him in-game.
• prop_button: The Aperture Science Switch is in here... too. It still has programming for instructor hints, but it is missing in the localization files for The Stanley Parable.
• prop_floor_button, prop_floor_cube_button, and prop_floor_ball_button: The Super-Colliding Super Button, Cube Button, and the Ball Button all exist in The Stanley Parable's code.
• prop_weighted_cube: The Weighted Storage Cube from Portal 2. Its programming still has the instructor hint for picking it up, though that is missing from the localization files for The Stanley Parable. A related file called metal_box_fx_fizzler.mdl was also left over and unused. While the Games Ending does include a cube, it's implemented using a prop_physics like it was in the original Portal, leaving this entity unused. The Weighted Companion Cube and its other variants also exist, but they require their own models and textures.
• prop_portal: The portals. Gosh, the devs really need some learning how to remove Portal 2-esque entities.
• weapon_smg1: The SMG1 from Half-Life 2. Does not have the ammo entities. Like the player input for only allowing backwards movement, this weapon was intended for use in The Beginner's Guide. Same with the Paint Gun, but without gels, and references Half-Life 2 sound listings. Usable both in the demo and full game, as code was accidentally included in the 'bin' directory's DLLs.

Unused Audio

Unused Narration

There is unused narration that's meant to play in the Playtest Ending after dropping into the hole. However, these lines (with the exception of the third) and their soundscripts are called PlaytestFinale_1_00 and PlaytestFinale_2_00 respectively, whereas the actual map is looking for PlaytestFinale_1 and PlaytestFinale_2. Because these quotes are played from ambient_generic entities and the third quote has no inputs or outputs to ensure it too plays, it goes completely unused.

In turn, this unused dialog from the Museum ending hints at it originally being more similar to the mod. The standalone game instead has Stanley fall into the machine.

Museum Narration

In the Museum Ending, there is a large room dedicated to unused narration takes that are not otherwise heard in the game. The narration can be found in the 'echoroom' folder in the game's files.

Confusion Ending

Monitor Room

Games Ending

Zending

Unused Sound Effects

Located in the 'sound/ambient/levels/canals' directory are some unused sound files labelled headcrab_canister_ambient.

Unused Music

One piece of music (officially called Anticipating Stanley) goes unused in The Stanley Parable, though it is used in the demo.

Inaccessible Platform

• There is a normally inaccessible platform above the Countdown Room of the Mind Control Facility that can be reached with the console command 'ent_teleport player' (sv_cheats not needed). It has catwalks that lead to three locked doors that lead nowhere (as they are really just walls) and a computer that does nothing. This was likely a remnant from an earlier version that had the power control located above the main room rather than in a separate room, as is the case in the original mod. In fact, an early version of the room seen in the Museum ending shows an elevator.

Unused Baby Game Ending

The map for the Baby Game includes entities to implement an unused, simpler version of the ending obtained after playing the Baby Game for four hours. There is an env_fade entity that fades to white and a series of game_text entities that display text in the game's default font:

These entities are present in the map file, but they have no inputs or outputs, so the game never actually triggers them. The entity names are similar to the ones in the used ending: whitefade and finaltext[1-3] in the unused ending, whitecamera and finaltextb[1-7] in the used one.

Oddities

• Using the Sub-Machine Gun (Half-Life 2) or Paint Gun (scrapped Portal 2 entity), the E key and MOUSE1 button are both forced to fire and use. This results in very strange actions, taking over the game.

Revisional Differences

dump0.tmp

To prevent secrets from being discovered too quickly, many of the game's files were initially stored in an encrypted archive at platform/dump0.tmp. After a decryption tool was released by a third party, an update removed the archive and placed all the files into the game's content directory.

'Choice' Video

After a schoolteacher complained, the 'Choice' video was changed to show more wholesome values.

The Stanley Parable For Free

The next slide was similarly edited to show Steven considering setting fire to orphans rather than actually doing it.

Baby Game Ending Monolith

The Stanley Parable Achievement

The original version of the Baby Game ending has what the developers call a 'weird black monolith' obstructing the text. This is caused by the door for the puppy not closing, and has since been fixed.

1. ↑GranPC. (2018-04-01) '[…] we began working on the game around 2 months before shipping Stanley Parable, and in the beginning we just ran the maps inside Stanley. There's a chance there's a small amount of code from Beginner's Guide in Stanley too. Cheers'