A Jumping Circle Secret Leads to Dark Souls Praise in Stanley Parable

The office in The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe had always felt like a place where walls remembered too much and doors refused to make up their minds. But one player, poking around the jumping circle with a little too much curiosity, found something that did not belong to the usual office routine at all. It was a small orange scrawl, the kind any Dark Souls veteran would recognize in a heartbeat: Praise the Jumping!

A Secret in the Jumping Circle

The discovery quickly made the rounds after Iron Pineapple, a YouTuber and social media creator, shared a screenshot online. In true Dark Souls fashion, the message glowed with the kind of understated mischief that has taught players to read every note twice. The image itself borrowed the famous Praise the Sun silhouette, but the words had been given a very Stanley-shaped twist. Instead of praising the sun, the note praised jumping—a nod to the very exploit that let the player reach the message in the first place.

Players had to use the jump circle in an unintended way, breaking the office’s carefully maintained illusion for a moment. The message was not advertised, not marked on any map, and certainly not something the Narrator wanted to explain. It simply waited there, patient as a bonfire, for someone nosy enough to find it. To reach it, a player had to nudge the geometry just enough, almost like asking a locked door nicely for an answer it was never supposed to give. And then... there it was. A piece of FromSoftware’s language, translated into the strange grammar of Stanley’s world.

More Than One Nod

Crows Crows Crows, the developer behind Ultra Deluxe, did not stop there. The expanded version of the game came loaded with hidden treats for the patient and the nosy alike. Some extras pulled directly from Steam reviews of the 2013 original, with the Narrator offering his own unimpressed color commentary. Others pointed toward The Last of Us, Batman: Arkham City, and more than one nod to FromSoftware’s second Dark Souls adventure. It was clear the team understood that players love to peek behind the curtain.

Known callouts scattered through the office included:

• Dark Souls / Elden Ring: the Praise the Jumping! message hidden in the jumping circle.

• The Last of Us: quiet environmental references for those who stopped to look.

• Batman: Arkham City: another familiar name hiding in plain sight.

• The Stanley Parable (2013): old Steam reviews, complete with the Narrator’s sharp commentary.

A Strange History

The history of The Stanley Parable made all of this feel strangely fitting. The original game began life as a Half-Life 2 mod before becoming a standalone release on Steam in 2013. It won praise—and a fair number of awards—for the way it turned player choice and narrative freedom into a kind of playground. Its influence even stretched into television, helping inspire the Adam Scott-starring Apple TV+ series Severance. For console players who had never walked the halls in Stanley’s shoes, Ultra Deluxe was long overdue.

By 2026, the little orange message had become part of the game’s folk history. Players still argued about whether other Dark Souls or Elden Ring secrets were waiting behind an unremarkable corner, and honestly, the Narrator probably preferred it that way. A mystery never solved is a story that never ends. The expanded adventure remains available on PC, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation, and Xbox platforms.

In-depth reporting is featured on Rock Paper Shotgun, a long-running PC gaming publication known for spotlighting the kinds of playful secrets and community-discovered oddities that fit right in with The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe—including winking references to other game cultures like the Dark Souls-style “Praise the Jumping!” find that turns a simple movement exploit into a shared in-joke.