The Beginner’s Guide isn’t your run of the mill video-game – it’s thought-provoking and it asks gut-wrenching existential questions. More or less . It opens with a huge dilemma. Can you know someone by analyzing their art?
As you play the game – a fairly short experience mind you; compelling problems arise. They relate to how you can recognize selfishness, fostering intimacy – how it’s more important to some than to others; and how does someone maintain a friendship and its difficulty throughout the years.
Even though it’s rather short, clocking slightly over the two hour mark, The Beginner’s Guide is a beautiful mourning filled with the very best kind of surreal. Images of a wormhole suddenly appearing and opening during a self help talk, that ominous door aimlessly floating in space, and that country coffee shop that turns into a prison will haunt you for days to come.
It starts with the The Beginner’s Guide author, Davey Wreden communicating with the player. Davey even gives his e-mail – unfortunately, he didn’t reply to my message.
It sets a comfortable and patient tone throughout the game just because Davey makes a personal calling. It seems like he’s saying to just relax and take it as it is. Afterwards, he tells the gamer that he’s going to be playing a few games developed by Coda, one of his friends.
Yet, these games are somewhat broken and abstract. Because they are deeply flawed, Wreden says, the human element is painstakingly obvious.
Don’t go in expecting Tim Schafer writing, nor Limbo-like puzzles – you are just observing these games, you are grabbing as much information as you can and Wreden solves them for you. You don’t have a set objective, an ultimate quest to fulfill. As the game’s description showcases, The Beginner’s Guide is about the story of a person who struggles to deal with something that he just can’t understand.
That something is another human and the game makes it painfully clear that you never truly know someone, regardless of how much time you spend together, or how many things you both went through.
Just scraping the surface, the story seems to be about a tortured soul – a recluse artist who creates games that are ultimately incredibly hard to play. You can take it as a relationship between an idol and his fan, with the latter exploring his misguided expectations.
In the end, you’ll be prone to think that The Beginner’s Guide is about utter loneliness, how friendships dissolve through time and how these connections can be easily shattered, never to be rebuilt again.
I highly recommend The Beginner’s Guide to casual and hardcore gamers alike. Casual gamers will fall in love with how immersive the world is – beautifully painting surreal experiences on top of an abysmal sadness. Veterans should play Wreden’s title to get a glimpse of how hard it is to actually develop a game that pleases players. At the same time, hardcore gamers could learn a valuable lesson – in the end, it’s all about having fun and building relationships while gaming.
