Chapter 271 - The Stanley Parable

There were more and more players visiting the experience store. The PC area in the first floor would reach ninety percent capacity during the weekends with ten or so PCs left unused.

The mobile and VR experience areas weren’t as packed, but were still around fifty percent capacity.

There were usually many players gathered around the holographic projection area as well. But just like with anything, the players would eventually get used to it.

-In the first floor of the experience store-

As it was a Thursday, there weren’t too many people in the experience store.

Chen Mo was on a sofa with a drink in one hand looking through the books that recently arrived.

There were two massive bookshelves on the sides of the halls filled with many gaming related books. Of course, a lot of them were novels, comics, or gaming albums. There were also some related to gaming design, but those were rarely touched.

“Manager,” a man in his late twenties in a suit swiped his ID at the front desk, greeting Chen Mo while he was doing that.

Chen Mo nodded in acknowledgement, “Isn’t it a Thursday? No work?”

They nodded, “Yeah, I took the day off.”

That was Zhao Lei, a regular at the experience store. They moved up north to find work and were currently working in a metals company. It was a high paying job and high stress to go with it.

Unlike other players, he didn’t visit the experience store to play games. He’d usually sit around in the main hall and chat with the others.

Zhao Lei didn’t have a big social circle, and mostly dealt with work related stuff in his work circle. But in the experience store, he found comfort.

Therefore, Zhao Lei frequented the experience store during the weekends. Overtime he familiarised himself with Chen Mo, Su Jinyu, and other regulars of the experience store.

Zhao Lei sat on the sofa next to him, ordered a cup of ice coffee and grabbed a comic book from the shelves.

Chen Mo looked at Zhao Lei’s tired face and asked, “What’s wrong, had a lot of stress lately?”

Zhao Lei nodded, “Yep. I don’t even know why, but I’ve been encountering idiots during work. I’ve had to entertain my clients quite a bit. I’ve had four of those drinking sessions last week, I’ve had to work overtime this weekend as well. I’ve decided I had enough for today so I took a day off.”

Chen Mo said sympathetically, “Yeah, take care of yourself. Do a health checkup when you can.”

Zhao Lei laughed, and said half jokingly, “Checkup? I’m afraid of finding out some serious disease that I can’t afford to fix.”

“Don’t be, health comes first.”

Zhao Lei nodded, “Yeah, I understand.

“Oh by the way manager, you haven’t released a new game in some time, is it because of the gaming platform?”

“That’s part of it, but then again, Minecraft has been out for less than two months. New games aren’t produced that quickly, you should enjoy the fruits of your labour anyways.”

“Oh, it’s only been two months? Geez, I’ve been losing track of time, it felt like it’s almost been half a year.”

Chen Mo laughed, “You’ve been too stressed, you should take it easy from time to time. If you stay highly stressed all the time like this, you’re bound to burn out eventually.”

“I don’t have any good way to destress. I don’t have many friends, nor do I have any hobbies. It feels like there’s not much I can do outside of working to provide for the family. I’d come over here to set around and relax a little.”

Chen Mo replied after some thought, “Actually, I have a game in the works that might suit you. Do you want to try it?”

Zhao Lei was surprised, “New game? Didn’t you say you haven’t had the time?”

Chen Mo stood up, “Aren’t you familiar with my work efficiency? Still in development means the game hasn’t been released but is already playable. Follow me.”

Zhao Lei quickly got on his feet and followed Chen Mo to the PC area of the experience store.

Zhao Lei sat down at a computer while Chen Mo got onto the management terminal and downloaded the game that was recently completed onto that computer.

“The Stanley Parable?”

Chen Mo nodded, “Yes.”

Zhao Lei was a bit confused, “You said this game suited me? What kind of game is this, a puzzle game?”

Chen Mo shook his head, “You’ll understand once you play it.

Zhao Lei doubtfully clicked on the icon to start the game.

There wasn’t a cool loading screen nor was there an epic cinematic. The game started right away.

The title of the game, The Stanley Parable was on the top left of the screen , the bottom left had eht options Start Game, Options, credits, and quit. The UI was abnormally simplistic.

However, Zhao Lei quickly noticed that something was out of place.

There was an office desk that had a phone and a computer on the screen. There was a filing cabinet on the left with a decorative painting on the wall, like something most companies would have. A meaningless, boring picture.

The strange thing was that the computer screen in the game looked identical to what he was seeing in the game. It also had the title of the game, options as well as a tiny cursor.

It felt like a picture in a picture. Everything the player did would be replicated on the computer in the game.

Zhao Lei clicked on Start Game, and the same thing happened to the computer in the game.

Zhao Lei was a bit weirded out but he didn’t think much of it. It was probably something odd Chen Mo included, an easter egg of sorts.

The loading screen was completely black, except for a line of english words in grey at the bottom: “THE END IS NEVER THE END IS NEVER THE END…”

It looped infinitely, starting from the left and ended on the right of the screen. If it was broken down into a complete sentence, it probably wrote “THE END IS NEVER THE END” probably meaning the game never ends.

But they stitched the “THE END” from the start and end together to form a never ending loop.

This made Zhao Lei even more confused, What kind of game is this?

The game finally started as he was filled with thoughts and questions.

Before anything appeared on the screen, Zhao Lei could hear a conversation going on.

It was a deep male voice who spoke concisely, of moderate speed, and good rhythm. It was hard to interpret any sort of emotion from his speech as though he was narrating an exceedingly normal story.

“This is the story of a man named “Stanley”.”

“Stanley worked for a company in a big building where he was Employee #427.”

There was a light soft background music, and the graphics started showing up. The camera went through a hallway into room number 427. In the room was a man sitting away from the camera, at a desk that looked like the one from the starting screen, including the computer, the phone, and the filing cabinet.

Orders came to him through a monitor on his desk telling him what buttons to push, how long to push them, and in what order

The camera switched to a top down view of the monitor, showing a close up of the character’s movements.

Stanley started at the screen pressing on buttons on the keyboard with his right hand. His head bobbed like a buoy in the sea as he look up and down.