The Steve Parable

A narrator watches everything you do.

This is the story of a player named Steve. Steve punched a tree, because that is what players do. Steve did not expect anyone to be watching. Steve was wrong.

A Stanley Parable–style narrator lives in your world now. He watches the whole run and comments on it — by name, out loud, in a real voice — and he is not impressed. He notices your first tree. He notices the death that was entirely your own fault. He notices when you stand still doing nothing for two minutes.

Over 550 lines. Fully offline. No API keys, no subscription, no server to phone home to.

What it does

The narrator reacts to what you actually do:

• First steps — your first tree, your first crafting table, your first night survived
• Mining — coal, iron, gold, diamonds, and whatever you were really hoping for
• Deaths — every one of them, individually, with commentary you have earned
• Combat — mobs killed, mobs that killed you, the creeper you definitely heard coming
• Exploration — new biomes, the Nether, the End, and the questionable choices that got you there
• Idling — stand still long enough and he will fill the silence
• Ambient — background observations, because the silence was never the plan

He uses your actual Minecraft username, so the commentary lands a little too personally.

Features

Real neural voice, running on your machine

The narration is genuine neural text-to-speech synthesized locally with sherpa-onnx — not canned audio clips, not a cloud API. Download the voice model once and it works on a plane.

Lines are cached as WAV after first synthesis, so you're not re-generating the same quip every time you punch a tree.

Alan is the default because the narrator is reactive. A punchline that lands six seconds after you die isn't a punchline. Switch to Kokoro if you'd rather have the nicer voice and don't mind the wait — cached lines play instantly either way.

Captions

On-screen subtitles synced to the audio, so you catch every line with the volume down.

Custom title screen

A Stanley Parable–themed main menu — the office, the desk, the lot — plus an intro cutscene when you start a new world.

Permadeath is on by default

Die once and the world deletes itself. Not a hardcore mode you opt into — it's how the mod ships. The screen goes black, the narrator sees you off, and the save is gone.

There is no in-game toggle for this. If you want to live, set deleteWorldOnDeath to false in the config file before you start.

Settings

Press N in game (or open the pause menu) for Narrator Settings:

• Voice — Alan or Kokoro (Kokoro offers bm_george / bm_lewis)
• Speed — 0.5× to 2.0×
• Volume
• Play example — hear the voice before committing
• Apply & pre-generate all — warm the whole cache up front so nothing stutters later
• Clear voice cache

Everything else lives in the config file: numThreads, captions, customTitleScreen, introOnSingleplayer, autoDownloadModel, modelDir, and deleteWorldOnDeath.

Requirements

⚠️ Windows x64 only for now. The native TTS libraries are currently bundled for Windows 64-bit. Other platforms aren't supported yet.

Installation

1. Install Fabric Loader 0.16.5 or newer for 1.21.1
2. Drop Fabric API into your mods folder
3. Drop The Steve Parable .jar into your mods folder
4. Launch the game — the voice model downloads on first run
5. Punch a tree. Wait.

Controls

FAQ

Does this need internet? Only once, to fetch the voice model. After that it's fully offline.

Does it cost anything to run? No. Everything is synthesized locally — no API keys, no per-line billing.

Will it lag my game? Synthesis runs off the main thread and cached lines play instantly. Use Apply & pre-generate all to build the cache up front, or lower numThreads in the config if you're tight on CPU.

Wait, my world actually deletes itself? Yes. Permadeath is on by default and there's no in-game switch. Set deleteWorldOnDeath to false in the config if that's not the run you signed up for.

Can I turn off the title screen or captions? Yes — customTitleScreen and captions in the config file.

Is it client-side? Does it work on servers? Client-side only — nothing to install on the server, and it won't load on a dedicated one. The narration follows you onto multiplayer servers. The permadeath and intro-cutscene bits are built around your own singleplayer worlds.

Links

• Source on GitHub — open, like everything we make
• Toaster Studios — crazy things in Minecraft that unbrain your brain
• YouTube

_{Built with sherpa-onnx · Piper & Kokoro voice models · Not affiliated with Crows Crows Crows or Galactic Cafe.}