The Beginner's Guide

The Beginner's Guide

255 ratings
Feeling confused after finishing The Beginner's Guide?
By Afterglow
I can recommend nothing better than this video to make sense of what is honestly "meant" by this game. Please enjoy.
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Errant Signal video

Watch this video without delay. (spoilers)

I can recommend nothing better than this video to make sense of what is honestly "meant" by this game. Please enjoy.

Big thanks to Chris Franklin of Errant Signal.
Hollowtones stream VOD

Also a worthwhile watch is Hollowtones' stream VOD when she played through the game. The insights and commentary she made while experiencing it alongside chat were things that I've never considered before about this game.

If it's too long for you, perhaps watch just the endgame, 3:46:00 to 4:25:00

Big thanks to Hollowtones.
41 Comments
Afterglow  [author] 5 Jun, 2024 @ 4:32pm 
Haha yeah Fuzzy, I noticed the same thing going on in the second video I shared! :awswadine:
FuzzyWuzzy 5 Jun, 2024 @ 6:47am 
I will say this game had me screaming at the narrator being such a prick halfway through so if that was the intended effect then well done.
WiseKind 27 Apr, 2024 @ 2:56pm 
Of course this is a work of fiction! Now that you mention it, it's obvious! How could I have been so stupid? I actually thought this was real, but then again, I only played this after being roughly half-way into The Stanley Parable, so I didn't get enough of a feel for the same meta-narration that I would later find in The Stanley Parable, and you don't have to tell me that The Stanley Parable is indeed a work of fiction.
gummi62607 6 Apr, 2024 @ 3:25pm 
yass
BOH 9 Dec, 2023 @ 5:42pm 
lol very meta
Quazar 15 Jan, 2023 @ 9:11pm 
ha! made you think :steamhappy:
DarkGlobe 29 Aug, 2022 @ 12:21pm 
i do think he is talking to someone, and i do think the games may be inspired from this someone, at the end the game is dedicated to someone
GroveOfGraves 10 Dec, 2020 @ 10:02am 
Eh, it (the video) was OK. I feel like there's a less specific lesson you can get from this game as well, and it's to be careful to not let helping others become your source of self-worth, because, as shown in the game, it can be become destructive.
josh g. 12 Sep, 2020 @ 6:53am 
honestly hate this video from the start

dude realizes that this game might just be critiquing people like himself

dude then casually and somewhat sarcastically dismisses anyone whose empathy might have had them paralyzed by the emotional impact of reading the game as literal fact, even if they knew full-well that it was very unlikely

despite the whole f'ing point of this game being to let creators be human beings, not some abstract entity to dissect and overanalyze based on their work
batmoops 31 Aug, 2020 @ 3:55am 
really interesting video and one of the nicest and most thought provoking comment sections i've seen here on steam. thanks dude!