The Beginner's Guide is an interactive storytelling video game created by Davey Wreden under the studio name Everything Unlimited Ltd.

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.

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.

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.

Once the player has completed a chapter, they can then return to any of them within the game, as well as disable the narration (and the help it provides) to explore the spaces on their own.

Coda is considered enigmatic, having created numerous strange game ideas which he has subsequently deleted or stored away and forgotten.

This game, its design in stark contrast to the others Coda had made, included puzzles that were intentionally designed to be almost impossible to solve, such as an invisible maze, a six-digit combination that the player must randomly guess, and an impossible-to-open door that cannot be opened from within the room the door leads out of.

As a result, Wreden felt terrible about what he had done, and thus reveals that the purpose of The Beginner's Guide is to try to reconnect to Coda by sharing his games with the public at large and to hope to apologize for his actions.

At the denouement, the player must jump into a beam from an earlier game, causing them to float up, to see an infinite maze.

[8] Christopher Byrd, writing for the Washington Post, points to blog posts[9] made by Wreden after he had received a great deal of attention following the re-release of The Stanley Parable, and that the game's version of Wreden is really a fictionalized version of himself acting as an unreliable narrator, building upon his own personal experiences from the sudden media spotlight in the relationship between the fictional Wreden and Coda.

[20] The game was developed by Wreden himself; his co-creator for The Stanley Parable, William Pugh, had been engaged in creating a new studio, Crows Crows Crows, and working on projects with Justin Roiland, the co-creator of Rick and Morty, with one title being a similar exploration game, Dr. Langeskov, The Tiger, and The Terribly Cursed Emerald: A Whirlwind Heist.

Jeffrey Matulef of Eurogamer considered The Beginner's Guide to be one of the site's "Essential" titles, calling the game a novel approach to providing story without relying on non-player characters or collectible diaries, and also an insight into Wreden's own psyche.

"[10] The Boston Globe's Jesse Singal stated that with The Beginner's Guide, "Wreden is pushing the boundaries of storytelling in video games", including using narrative tricks that went beyond those that were already used in The Stanley Parable.

[30] Tyler Wilde of PC Gamer gave the game a 69 out of 100 rating, feeling that some of Wreden's messages were delivered a bit heavy-handedly through the narration but still positively critiquing some of the experimental approaches that were used for narration and player experience.