New Portal Mod Puts Fresh Twist on Classic Gameplay

A new user-created mod for Valve-developed classic Portal promises to inject a new sense of freshness into the venerable puzzle adventure. First released in 2007, Portal is one of the best-known games Valve has ever produced, and an influential part of its legacy to this day.

Though it’s just shy of 19 years old, Valve’s Portal remains an incredibly influential game. Originally adapted from the student project Narbacular Drop, Valve seemingly turned the gaming world on its head with mind-bending puzzles involving the use of entry and exit portals shot by the now-iconic Aperture Science Portal Gun. Augmented by clever writing and the timeless antagonist GLaDOS, Portal became known not just for its puzzles but for its storytelling, embedding itself in the psyche of an entire generation of players. Nvidia even opted to give Portal a second life in the form of the Portal RTX remaster, an updated version of the game designed to take full advantage of ray tracing and graphics advances developed in the years since the original release.

If Portal RTX makes Portal look like new, a user mod called Portal Randomized promises to make the original Portal play like new. Created by Portal fan GamingDominari and hosted on ModDB, Portal Randomized changes the original Portal campaign to have any number of random effects, like turning the floor into lava or randomizing the gravity settings.

Portal Randomized Adds New Effects to the Default Campaign

As GamingDominari’s first Portal-based mod of a Source Engine game, Portal Randomized currently exists as a demo containing the game’s first map and two test chambers. It’s set to add a random gameplay effect to every test chamber, with gameplay settings allowing for more and more effects. The effects can be simple but completely transformative to the vanilla experience, such as turning the lights out completely, forcing players to solve puzzles in the dark, or turning the floor to lava and necessitating new movement solutions. Players can even try out an “impossible” challenge by turning on “Hardcore Mode,” which turns on every single effect at once.

GamingDominari hasn’t yet announced a firm release date for the full version of Portal Randomized, but it’s already winning praise from excited Portal fans. Some have already called it another legendary Portal mod in the making, high praise considering the activity of the Portal and Source Engine mod scene. A few players in the ModDB comments section did report bugs and issues. GamingDominari promised adjustments and fixes to be introduced into the next map.

The unexpected popularity of Portal Randomized shows the growing excitement surrounding “randomizer” mods. Created for games ranging from Doom to Pokemon, randomizer mods add unexpected factors and challenges to increase the sense of discovery in a game that might otherwise be a well-known quantity. Randomizers also provide content opportunities for streamers, who can entertain their audiences when they struggle to deal with unexpected challenges. Once released in full, Portal Randomized could help the legendary Valve game become even more popular.

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Portal is a new single player game from Valve. Set in the mysterious Aperture Science Laboratories, Portal has been called one of the most innovative new games on the horizon and will offer gamers hours of unique gameplay.

The game is designed to change the way players approach, manipulate, and surmise the possibilities in a given environment; similar to how Half-Life 2’s Gravity Gun innovated new ways to leverage an object in any given situation.

Players must solve physical puzzles and challenges by opening portals to maneuvering objects, and themselves, through space.

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Released

October 10, 2007

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Engine

Source Engine

ESRB

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t

How Long To Beat

3 Hours

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Steam Deck Compatibility

Verified

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