Some areas include puzzle solving and conversation trees, but there is no way for the player-character to die, or the player to make a mistake or lose the game. The player hears details of the various scenes they explore via the game's narrator, Wreden himself, to describe what they see and make conclusions on the nature of the games' developer. The gameplay in The Beginner's Guide is presented in a first-person perspective allowing the player to move about and explore the environment and interact with some elements of it as they progress along the work's interactive storytelling. Many reviewers readily took to the narrative and the questions and ideas it raised on game development, while others felt the game forced some of Wreden's thoughts too hard and in a pretentious manner. Wreden has stated the game is open to interpretation: some have seen the game as general commentary on the nature of the relationship between game developers and players, while others have taken it as an allegory to Wreden's own personal struggles with success resulting from The Stanley Parable. Wreden challenges the player to try to come to understand the type of person Coda is from exploring these spaces in a first-person perspective. The game is narrated by Wreden and takes the user through a number of incomplete and abstract game creations made by a developer named Coda. The game is Wreden's follow-up to the critically praised The Stanley Parable, his previous interactive storytelling title that was initially released in 2013.

The game was released for Linux, OS X, and Windows on October 1, 2015. The Beginner's Guide is an interactive storytelling video game created by Davey Wreden under the studio name Everything Unlimited Ltd.

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