The first The Stanley Parable devblog has arrived, detailing an obsession with file cabinets, download sizes, and making the world's largest Google Doc.
The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe is an upcoming "expanded re-imagining" of the 2013 adventure game The Stanley Parable. After years of delays, the devs finally announced that it was launching later this month. Now, Crows Crows Crows has released a devblog that details some key insights into how they made this game a reality. And by that, I mean it goes completely off the rails.
The Stanley Parable Devblog is a Work of Art
The Stanley Parable devblog isn't your usual set of technical data and design insights, but it does make for a hilarious send-up of the traditional development blog. It even has charts. Charts!
The entire focus of the post is centered on a lesson of correlation versus causation. As the above chart shows, there is a clear trend with the file size of games going up along with the overall unit sales. Therefore, Crows Crows Crows has reached the somewhat questionable conclusion that the key to success is to jack up the file size of the game as large as possible.
First and foremost, the devs promise to deliver "the biggest texture on any 3D model in the history of video games" with a filing cabinet texture at the resolution of 200,000,000 x 100,000,000 pixels. The file cabinets themselves are filled with a thousand smaller filing cabinets, each of which will use this same texture. Finally, these cursed assets will be loaded up throughout the game, including outside of the map where they'll serve no gameplay purpose whatsoever.
The second effort to increase the game's file size is by creating the longest Google Doc possible through the power of crowdsourcing. You can submit your entry here, although you'll only have the option to select either "H" or "6" on the advice of the developer's lawyers.
Finally, Crows Crows Crows plans to further inflate the file size by including several "lossless, uncompressed WAV" files featuring a voice actor nonsensically mumbling into the microphone. This project -- dubbed "Mumbletown" -- is ultimately planned to take up half of the finished game's file size.
Suffice it to say, this is a delightful satire of the traditional developer blog. Or is it? No one can really predict what the devs will do with this kind of game, so maybe consider buying a new SSD before installing it later this month. You can add The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe to your wishlist on Steam ahead of its launch on April 27, 2022.
