Publisher Crows Crows Crows has announced that the Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe will be arriving on PC, PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and Switch on April 27.
Originally released on PC in 2013, the thought-provoking meta-narrative game’s new edition was announced at the Game Awards in 2018 and was scheduled for release in 2019. Plans changed though, as the return of original creators Davey Wreden, William Pugh, and Kevan Brighting resulted in new content being developed for the game. The game also features creative input from Dominik Johann (MINIT) and Tom Schley (Accounting+).
With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and development shifting to a work-from-home arrangement, it wasn’t long before another delay hit the project. “Early in development, the plan was just to bring The Stanley Parable to consoles with a few small tweaks, but as time went on we kept getting more and more excited about what else we could do with the game,” the studio said in a press statement. “Since The Stanley Parable was a game about surprises, we’ve tried to implement new content in ways that players won’t be expecting.”
If you never played it when it first came out almost a decade ago, The Stanley Parable is a game that operates along surreal lines as it makes observations about the power of choice, work, and the end of all things. Or maybe it doesn’t, because The Stanley Parable runs on pure Schrodinger’s cat energy.
“The Stanley Parable is both a richly stimulating commentary on the nature of choice in games–and in other systems, too, like our workplaces and our families–and a game that offers some of the most enjoyable, surprising, and rewarding choices I’ve ever been confronted with in a game. Going the wrong way has never felt so right,” Carolyn Petit said in her Stanley Parable review back in 2013.