Stanley's Fable Super Deluxe Edition: Let's get into a fight with the barrel!

"A bucket is an object that can be seen in games, comics, movies, and even novels. He did not have a specific form, nor did he have a general reference to understand the history of the barrel. But for many works, the bucket is also a very important item: it can save creators a lot of money, and clearly tell the audience or the world view and the background of the characters in the work with just a few words. ”

Except for the barrel this time

Game name

Stanley's Fable Super Deluxe Edition

Developers

Galactic Cafe/CROW CROW CROW

Game type

Adventure puzzle game

Well, I admit that the beginning was nothing more than a clumsy imitation of Stanley's fable. On April 27th, this super meta game that has jumped tickets many times due to the epidemic finally hit the Steam store. And the name THE STANLEY PARABLE ULTRA DELUXE itself is taunting a game with its own unique self-deprecating satire that plays a luxurious but flashy game.

But Stanley's Fables game itself

Did you make the same mistake?

The answer isn't obvious at the beginning of the game, because the author clearly wants you to relive the endings of those who have played with the mentality of countless players years later. So, aside from a few options when you first entered the game, the game itself is no different from the Fables of Stanley from 2012. The newly added elevator ending, tape recorder ending, and even the brain control center bug ending can only be regarded as some ingenious new design of the game itself, but they have brought me far less shock than the previous endings. There's no way to bite the lighter, but don't make a remaster gimmick, it's actually a remake version.

"If you add this little thing, it can also be called a super deluxe version, and it is recommended that the production team remake like the game", I have this idea, and I am a little dissatisfied with this super deluxe version.

And the punch in the face always comes so quickly. On the road leading to the two doors, a room with the words "the new content" appeared. Entering this door, the super deluxe version can be regarded as officially opening the door to us. And the game ending that can shock me the most in the new version of the game also appears at this time.

At first, the narrator itself dismissed the "upgraded" content of Stanley's Super Deluxe Edition of Fables, and proposed that even a little thing can make money, and the game is really a mocking remark that anyone can do. And our good narrator also moved at this time, the game has been released for so many years, what do you think of the game? Immediately after that, we were pulled into the "memories section" by the narrator, an area full of steam ratings.

This area is not only full of ridicule and sarcasm from the makers for the game industry, but also self-deprecatingly moves those bad reviews on Steam directly into the game for players to "appreciate". And a bad review about the narrator is even more suggested: the narrator has so many words, why is there no jump button to skip the narrator's dialogue? This thoroughly annoyed the narrator, who immediately made a jump button in the game and said that every time the player pressed the button, he could skip the dialogue. However, the jump time of the jump button continues to lengthen when the button is pressed again and again, minutes, hours, weeks, years, and finally the narrator disappears into time, only Stanley, the player, and the jump button. All the player can do is press that button until the end of time. In the end, even that button was broken, and above the endless desert, Stanley stood alone.

I can't say what the ending satirizes and what it reveals, but it does send me a shock from the inside. The quaint game art style and narration meta-style gameplay experience have long set the tone for Stanley's fables, but the eerie and real sense of desolation brought about by the ending of skipping the button, and the helplessness that you know is a meta game but still smile bitterly at the absurdity of the game's plot, are perfectly interpreted by the author.

But just when you're wondering what's left in this endless desert, the narrator pulls you back from the boundless desolation with a direct read: you're still in that broken office!

Well, you can't see the wilderness, so let's take a look at the office in the distance. With the end of the skip-button ending, the "the new content" room is once again transformed by the narrator, and this time it brings about a change, "Stanley's Fable 2". The narrator shows us the changes that Stanley's Fable 2 brings to life in a way that resembles an anime show: a button that calls names but only says JIM, a Stanley collection, a bucket, an achievement machine that you can't achieve, and a miscellaneous, but definitely not new, toy.

The funny thing is that after you've experienced the entire "new content", the narrator is at a loss for this "Stanley's Fable 2". But in the end, it occurred to him that if we refurbished Stanley's Fables and added these new elements to the game, wouldn't it be Stanley's Fables 2? Then, the narrator reboots the game in such a grand way.

Well, this passage is really full of irony, and even if I don't over-interpret it, the narrator's words reveal a mockery of many of the so-called sequels on the market: useless but hard-to-find collections, seemingly simple but disgusting player achievement systems, "buckets" that have no improved experience for new titles, and even the narrator's final practice of cramming these things into the game, as if mocking the industry's annual generation but not growing at all.

But what's even darker and more humorous is that Stanley's Fables isn't just a mockery of a wave of unenterprising routines, the game production team really added buckets to the game, and even made a funny, absurd, but also "Stanley" style game based on the bucket for each of the game's old endings. "We can make several different new episodes with even a broken bucket, what about you?" The experience of all the new endings of the bucket brings me this funny and proud sense of humor.

Let's take an example. In the original chaotic ending, Stanley gradually realizes the existence of one of his virtual worlds in the garage's ghost wall and goes crazy because of it. In the chaotic ending with the bucket, Stanley gradually realizes in the ghost wall of the garage that he is not his own virtual, but that the bucket he is holding tightly is not his original bucket. Under this "heavy pressure", Stanley gradually went crazy.

The screenwriter cleverly shifts the focus of this ending with a bucket while maintaining the absurdity of the original plot, transforming Stanley's perception of himself into his own bucket, and the recognition of his own bucket drives Stanley crazy.

This kind of playful humor

It is even more vivid in the Super Deluxe Edition

I have to say that the plot capacity and volume of the super deluxe version did not meet my expectations, but whether it was the "Stanley"-style black humor, or the endless desert hidden under the office, and the loneliness in that desert, they all brought me back to the time when I first came into contact with Stanley's Fables a few years ago.

It is no exaggeration to say that "Stanley's Fable Super Deluxe Edition" is definitely a "game tumor" that has erupted from the distant past in the game industry that is now in a state of collapse.

Epilogue

bucket

Stanley

gamer

Three in one

There is no way for us to attain happiness in our hearts at the same time

The happiness of one side must be based on the suffering of the other

Neither side can understand the other two

Because in our own shoes

We're all just chasing that hypocritical storeroom