Plot

This is a thorough description of the narrative presented in *The Beginner's Guide*. For a full transcription of Davey's narration and a more gameplay-focused explanation, see each chapter's article.

## Plot

### Intro

The game opens in Intro, a *Counter-Strike* map of a small area of a desert town, with Davey Wreden, the writer of *The Stanley Parable*, introducing himself to the player and explaining that he is going to show a couple of incomplete game projects created between November 2008 and June 2011 by Coda, a mysterious amateur game designer he met at a game jam. Davey says he will allow the player to interact with each of the games while stating his comments and interpretations about their nature and possible meaning and encourages the player to email him sharing their thoughts as well. The games are shown chronologically, according to the date Coda made them.

### Whisper

The first project shown is *Escape from Whisper*, a half-developed space game in which the protagonist ultimately sacrifices themselves for the rest of the spaceship's crew. It ends with a supposed glitch that makes the player float upwards. Davey says the glitch may be intentional and meant to represent something, possibly the afterlife. The player also has to solve a labyrinth in the middle, which Davey decides to skip.

### Backwards

Davey next shows Backwards, a minimalistic game in which the player can only walk backwards to read a short abstract narrative about a female person written on the walls. He comments that, while technically less advanced, this game is more "focused and unique".

### Entering

The following project is a very short game called Entering, in which the player walks on a path in a dark night and sees a sign reading "You are now entering". Davey says that the role of this game will become clear later.

### Stairs

The game Stairs starts with the title "Nonsense in nearly every direction", which Davey calls "bizarre". It contains a long staircase the player has to climb, with their speed being severely reduced halfway through it. Davey modifies the game to skip to the next part: a "nice, warm room" in which several ideas for games float in the air. At this point, Davey comments that the stairs may be a metaphor for "the little climb" required to see that Coda is a "vibrant and compassionate person" instead of "cold or distant".

### Puzzle

This game, set in a house's corridor, introduces the two-door puzzle. Davey says the puzzle is going to appear a lot in following games. Davey then tells the player he added a feature in which all walls are removed by pressing a key. This reveals the many inaccessible and (otherwise) invisible corridors around the player's own. Davey comments that this game conveys the idea of "a dull interior concealing a rich exterior", the opposite of the previous game.

### Exiting

This game is very similar to Entering, with the difference being that the sign says "You are now *exiting*" instead of "entering". Davey says that this must mean Stairs and Puzzle must be connected somehow and adds that all games form a bigger picture, which can only be identified and understood after all of them are played.

### Down

The player descends to a prison from a café on an empty surface. Davey explains that Coda makes his games with the engine Source, which is good in making "boxy, linear corridors", and that is because his games are mostly set in "large, flat, empty rooms". When the player reaches the part of the game in which they have to stay shut in a cell for one hour, Davey skips it. Davey comments that Coda and him used to argue a lot about the playability and actual purpose of Coda's games; David defended that, if a lot of effort is put into a game, it seems reasonable to make it playable and accessible, but Coda (apparently) didn't agree. The player then reaches the end of the level, a yard with a lamppost in the middle. Davey says a lamppost like this is going to appear at the end of every game from now on and that he believes it represents a destination (reference point) to more clear, developed and cohesive games.

### Notes

This is said to be an online game in which players can leave notes anywhere. Davey says the game is not connected to the internet and that all notes were written by Coda. He comments that it was the first Coda's game he played and that they met in a game jam when Coda was working on it. Davey says that, for him, Notes convey a sense of loneliness, but also adds that he enjoys it and that, along with the other games, it makes him feel personally connected to Coda. When the player reaches the two-door puzzle again, he says: *the puzzle is a way of closing the door on a previous chapter of his life before moving onto the next one.* He also comments that the dark space represents a short period of reflection between two chapters of Coda's life.

### Escape

In this game, the player is imprisoned in a room with modern furniture, with a well seen on the outside, behind iron bars. Davey says that this game does not communicate anything and is just weird. He then shows the different versions of it that Coda made, while commenting about the weird fixation Coda had on it at the time. Finally, Davey shows a last variation of the prison game in which the player uses a payphone to talk to themselves. Davey interprets this as Coda seeking relief with the idea of someone comforting him "after all the obsession and frustration".

### House

This game is set in a snowy environment between two doors, which, according to Davey, represents the two-door puzzle. In the middle of it, there is a house where the player meets a person and helps this person clean the house with a joyful chorus playing along.

Davey thinks this game means some kind of relief, peace and reflection after the intense prison games. In his own words: *It's the moment after a particularly difficult or traumatic experience where you just need to let it sit and digest inside of you, and eventually cohere into something meaningful*. After a while, the music ends, the other character disappears and Davey tells the player that they need to climb uphill for the game to end.

### Lecture

In a university classroom, the player first takes the role of a student and then of the teacher. The teacher is giving a lecture about perfection, but after the player starts controlling them, it is revealed that the teacher is also afraid and insecure.

Davey comments that it is "a very relateable experience" to think someone is perfect and miss the "little flaws that makes them painfully human", also adding that he had been thinking a lot about this game.

### Theater

The player is an actor who, after failing to do what the director asks them to, begins stepping back from the stage as iron bars enclose them. Davey interprets this as Coda's isolation due to social anxiety and fear of failing. He also comments that previous games also reflected the theme of withdrawing or retreating. According to him, Coda would avoid any possible connections with anyone else and this wasn't very healthy. He saw it as a contrast with previous games that seemed to *connect* the player with Coda and not the opposite.

### Mobius

In this game, which starts with a warning telling it is only properly played with eyes closed, the player is a crewmember of a spaceship that is about to crash against a door. It is beat by taking the elevator and confessing a weakness to another crewmember labeled "Truth".

Davey comments that Coda has never been as explicit about his thoughts as in this game and that it was like Coda couldn't think of new ideas anymore. As Coda was getting personally more distant, Davey started to wonder if Coda needed his help. He finishes saying that the next games will get even more desperate.

### Island

In this game, the player talks to an unseen character who, in exchange of being taught how to solve the two-door puzzle, leads the player to the machine that makes their games. After getting to the machine, several boxes with dialogues fall until the level ends and the unseen character says "I'm free".

Davey says that, when playing this game for the first time, he felt that it expressed Coda's persistence in making games while experiencing struggle, frustration, anxiety, and even depression. He deems Coda's isolation and tendency to talk to himself ("write both questions and answers") as unproductive and says that putting all their anxieties into their work will make them crash if the work fails. Davey confesses to hate seeing Coda so angry and frustrated.

### Machine

The player is a famous woman who goes talk to a machine and ask it to apologize for stopping working. After the machine says nothing, she starts to destroy the machine's creations with a gun. In a last encounter, she destroys the machine itself.

Davey begins saying that "the work is becoming self-destructive". He comments that, on his opinion, Coda should show his games to the world and stop being stuck in his head and, because he believed Coda wouldn't do this, he started doing so himself. Since the people he showed Coda's games to really liked it, he felt it was the right thing to do. Davey says that he feels very good when someone is connected to his work and he wanted to give that same feeling to Coda.

### Tower

In this dark game that Davey claims to be playing for the first time after just receiving it from Coda, the player climbs many stairs up a huge tower. The player passes through two challenges (an invisible maze and guessing a 6-digit number), both of which Davey skips for deeming extremely difficult, and then reaches an impossible challenge in which the lever to open a door is located on the other, inaccessible side. Davey modifies the game once again by opening the door. While the player climbs more stairs upwards, Davey reflects about his attitude of showing Coda's games to people, adding that Coda is not the same anymore.

At some point, the player reaches a series of rooms whose walls display messages from Coda to Davey. In their first message, Coda tells Davey that he doesn't need to speak to them anymore. Davey starts to think he is the reason Coda stopped making games. Davey says that, when he divulged Coda's games, he felt important, but that feeling was gone when Coda stopped. Davey says he never had bad intentions and apologizes to Coda, asking them to start making games again.

Finally, the player reaches a door with a lever on its side. But this time the two-door puzzle doesn't work and instead the two doors start crushing the player while Davey continues with his emotional monologue.

### Epilogue

This final game appears to simulate a trip through different places, while Davey continues stating considerations about Coda, their relationship, and Coda's games. It ends with the player floating up above a labyrinth (just like in Whisper).

Nothing objective is told about this final game, so we are given no verbal, direct information about who created it and what it means.