Half-Life 2 is a 2004 first-person shooter (FPS) game developed and published by Valve Corporation. It was published for Windows on Valve's digital distribution service, Steam. Like the original Half-Life (1998), Half-Life 2 combines shooting, puzzles and storytelling, and adds features such as vehicles and physics-based gameplay. The player controls Gordon Freeman, who joins a resistance to liberate Earth from the alien Combine empire.
Narbacular Drop is a 2005 puzzle-platform game developed by Nuclear Monkey Software. It was the senior game project of students attending DigiPen Institute of Technology. The gameplay consists of navigating a dungeon using an innovative portal system. The player controls two interconnected portals that can be placed on any non-metallic surface. Gabe Newell, managing director of Valve, took interest in the team's work and employed the whole staff at Valve. The developers went on to develop the critically acclaimed Portal using many of the same concepts.
Minerva is an episodic series of single-player modifications ("mods") for Valve's Half-Life 2. The mod was created by Adam Foster. Installments are released as each is finalized: the three releases for the Metastasis chapter have already been made, with the third installment released on October 1, 2007.
Antichamber is a first-person puzzle-platform game created by Australian developer Alexander "Demruth" Bruce. Many of the puzzles are based on phenomena that occur within impossible objects created by the game engine, such as passages that lead the player to different locations depending on which way they face, and structures that seem otherwise impossible within normal three-dimensional space. The game includes elements of psychological exploration through brief messages of advice to help the player figure out solutions to the puzzles as well as adages for real life. The game was released on Steam for Microsoft Windows on January 31, 2013. A version originally sold with the Humble Indie Bundle 11 in 2014 added support for Linux and OS X.
Half-Life 2: Episode Two is a 2007 first-person shooter game developed and published by Valve. Following Episode One (2006), it is the second of two shorter episodic games that continue the story of Half-Life 2 (2004). Players control Gordon Freeman, who travels through the mountains surrounding City 17 to a resistance base with his ally Alyx Vance. Like previous games in the series, Episode Two combines shooting, puzzle-solving and narrative elements, but adds expansive environments and less linear sequences.
Portal is a 2007 puzzle-platform game developed and published by Valve. It was released in a bundle, The Orange Box, for Windows, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, and has been since ported to other systems, including Mac OS X, Linux, Android, and Nintendo Switch.
A gravity gun is a type of device in video games, particularly first-person shooters using physics engines, whereby players can directly manipulate objects in the world, often allowing them to be used as projectiles against hostile characters. The concept was popularized by the gravity gun found in Valve's Half-Life 2, as well as the Temporal Uplink found in Free Radical Design's TimeSplitters: Future Perfect; although a similar concept was used by id Software during the production of the earlier game Doom 3, eventually leading to the introduction of a physics-based weapon in the expansion pack Resurrection of Evil. Later games, such as Portal, BioShock, Crysis, Dead Space, and Garry's Mod have been influenced by the success of these physics-based weapons, adopting their own styles of comparable abilities or weapons.
Portal 2 is a 2011 puzzle-platform game developed by Valve for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360. The digital PC version is distributed online by Valve's Steam service, while all retail editions were distributed by Electronic Arts. A port for the Nintendo Switch was included as part of Portal: Companion Collection.
Tag: The Power of Paint is a 2008 puzzle-platform game. The game was developed for Microsoft Windows by Tag Team, a group of students from the DigiPen Institute of Technology. The game's core mechanics is the use of a special paint sprayed from the player's paint gun to impart physical properties to surfaces, which, in turn, affect the user's movement. Tag won the Independent Games Festival Student Showcase award in the same year. The project team was hired by Valve, using the concepts of Tag as new puzzle elements in their game Portal 2.
Black Mesa is a 2020 first-person shooter game developed and published by Crowbar Collective. It is a third-party remake of Half-Life (1998) made in the Source game engine. Originally published as a free mod in September 2012, Black Mesa was approved for commercial release by Valve, the developers of Half-Life. The first commercial version was published as an early-access release in May 2015, followed by a full release in March 2020 for Linux and Windows.
Portal is a series of first-person puzzle-platform video games developed by Valve. Set in the Half-Life universe, the two main games in the series, Portal (2007) and Portal 2 (2011), center on a woman, Chell, forced to undergo a series of tests within the Aperture Science Enrichment Center by a malicious artificial intelligence, GLaDOS, that controls the facility. Most of the tests involve using the "Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device" – nicknamed the portal gun – that creates a human-sized wormhole-like connection between two flat surfaces. The player-character or objects in the game world may move through portals while conserving their momentum. This allows complex "flinging" maneuvers to be used to cross wide gaps or perform other feats to reach the exit for each test chamber. A number of other mechanics, such as lasers, light bridges, high energy pellets, buttons, cubes, tractor funnels and turrets, exist to aid or hinder the player's goal to reach the exit.
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) is a 2012 multiplayer tactical first-person shooter developed by Valve and Hidden Path Entertainment. It is the fourth game in the Counter-Strike series. Developed for over two years, Global Offensive was released for OS X, PlayStation 3, Windows, and Xbox 360 in August 2012, and for Linux in 2014.
Portal 2 is a physics-based puzzle-platform game created by Valve and released on Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Linux in April 2011, followed by a Nintendo Switch version in June 2022. The game, set in the desolate, labyrinthine Aperture Science facility, challenges the player to navigate test chambers created by the artificial intelligence GLaDOS, using a portal gun, a device able to create portals that link two points in space like a wormhole. The game expands on the original Portal by adding new puzzle elements, such as paint that imparts properties to surfaces, plates that can launch the player and objects over distances, tractor beams and bridges made of light.
Mari0 is a 2012 side-scrolling platform video game developed by German indie developer Maurice Guégan with creative input from Sašo Smolej and released onto their website Stabyourself.net. It combines gameplay elements from Nintendo's Super Mario series and Valve's Portal series. The game features Mario armed with a "portal gun", the main game mechanic in the Portal series, allowing him to create two inter-spatial portals on 2-dimensional surfaces which can transport himself, enemies and other objects through them. It was made with the LÖVE game framework.
Portal Stories: Mel is a 2015 single-player modification for Portal 2, developed by Prism Studios. Like the official Portal games, it is a puzzle-platform game that involves placing interconnected "portals" to solve puzzles. Set in the Portal universe, players control the test subject Mel, who has to escape an underground facility after she spends decades in artificial hibernation.
Thinking with Time Machine is a single-player mod for Portal 2 developed by Stridemann, and released by SignHead Studio. It was initially released to Steam in April 2014, for Microsoft Windows, and OS X systems, available freely to existing owners of Portal 2.
Bridge Constructor Portal is an engineering simulation and puzzle video game developed by ClockStone and published by Headup Games. The game is part of the Bridge Constructor series, and incorporates elements of Valve's Portal series, taking place in Aperture Laboratories. The game was released on Android, iOS, Linux, macOS and Windows in December 2017, and for the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One in February 2018. By August 2018, the game had sold over 500,000 copies.
Portal Reloaded is a 2021 free modification for Portal 2, created by German developer Jannis Brinkmann. As in the official Portal games, gameplay involves solving puzzles by manipulating portals which allow the player to move through space. Additionally, the mod allows players to shoot a third "time portal", allowing traversal across two versions of the puzzle chamber in different time periods.
