Stanley Parable’s Ultra Deluxe Edition was first announced back in 2018, with an anticipated launch of 2019. That, obviously, never came to pass, nor did it do so the following year or, as developers Galactic Cafe and Crows Crows Crows have now revealed, will it do so the year after that. “Hopefully when we all reconvene this time next year for our latest Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe Edition update,” I wrote after the game’s 2020 delay, “it’ll be to discuss how awesome this fully released thing is, and not to bow our heads as it’s jettisoned into the following year.” So, uh, sorry for jinxing it, I guess. Announcing Ultra Deluxe’s new launch window of “early” 2022 in typically convoluted fashion, Galactic Cafe and Crows Crows Crows (the respective studios of original Stanley Parable creator Davey Wreden and William Pugh, who co-designed Stanley’s 2013 remake) confirmed the game is now “content-complete and preparing for release on PC and consoles”. Stanley Parable’s Ultra Deluxe Edition is described as a “significantly expanded re-imagining” of the 2013 remake, promising new endings and choices, as well as the return of Kevan Brighting in the role of The Narrator, Stanley’s constant, disembodied companion. And in case you’ve not experienced The Stanley Parable in any of its previous guises, here’s what Eurogamer’s Christian Donlan had to say of its second outing (and its Adventure Line) back in 2013: “Familiar but consistently surprising, this new Parable even fits beautifully into the existing game - a game that took its power not from a single narrative but the interaction of all its possible narratives, super-positioned and entangled. Here is another suite of variations, another arrangement of false choices to consider.”
