My wife and I have been spending some time together playing through some shorter independently developed games. For me, these games are a lot of fun because they are the short-story equivalent in the game world – they have a neat idea and spend enough time exploring it to be interesting and still leave some aspects open. Most recently, we played “The Beginner’s Guide”.

I heard about this game first on the Diecast, which is the primary reason I picked it up. I really enjoyed “The Stanley Parable” by the same developer (Davey Wreden), and the idea of a learning about someone by the games they designed was an interesting concept (especially with narration). Ok, it could just be that I’m a sucker for good narration.

The first thing that I noticed about The Beginner’s guide was that the look and feel was pretty similar to The Stanley Parable. While the environs and the tone are clearly different (in fact, The Beginner’s Guide plays around with different environs a lot), I quickly caught on to the fact that this was mostly going to be a game about walking around and listening to narration. This is not at all an insult to the game, and, in fact, was a big draw to me. I’m typically not a big fan of first person games where I’m expected to do anything aside from walking around (including solving puzzles or mazes).

Unfortunately, something else that I noticed quickly was that The Beginner’s Guide was making me nauseous. This is the first game that I have felt this way, which was a little odd to me for two reasons: (1) I’ve never felt motion sick in my life, including sitting sideways, reading/writing on a bus or playing The Stanley Parable, and (2) I have a pretty steady gullet – I’ve only ever been sick to my stomach when I’ve actually been really sick, and that’s been over 15 years ago. As a result, I’m very glad that this game is as short as it is, because we were only able to play in 15-20 minute chunks.

Overall, I was quite impressed with The Beginner’s Guide. It tells and interesting story of someone exploring/presenting someone else through their games. The interesting thing is that the narrator ends up saying more about himself than his subject – a theme that becomes more obvious by the end. The Beginner’s Guide also says something interesting about “games as art” – is trying to understand someone through the games they make the same as trying to understand someone based solely on a series of paintings? I think the game presents this question very well, and the exploration of it is quite fun.