Portal Mod Gets Green Light

Portal 3 has not been announced, however a Portal mod may interest fans of the series. Portal Stories: Mel has been approved for release through Steam’s Greenlight program. This Portal 2 mod will allow players to experience Aperture Science in the early years. The free mod will feature a brand new 1970’s style portal gun, new textures, models and animations. There are over 20 new maps for players to test their logic and skills. All of that took a team of nine passionate fans three years to develop.

“Developing a Portal Mod is a very complex thing, 3 years ago we never thought we would still be working on it. Thousands and thousands of hours have went in to it so far.

Creating a mod consists of working with a diverse international team which we coordinate over skype, we have been incredibly lucky to get so many talented team members who are all helping out in their own free time.” – an excerpt from a Reddit AMA by the mod’s developers

Portal Stories: Mel features the mod’s titular protagonist and a new personality core with an all new dialogue and soundtrack. Mel was originally intended to be the protagonist in Portal 2, however she was replaced by Chell at some point. Now she is making a comeback in this fan-developed mod. Mel must escape the testing facility after a short-term sleep experiment goes horribly wrong. Discover the truth behind the testing facility and its missing staff. Who is this fake Cave Johnson? What happened to Mel? Players will be able to find answers to those questions on March 31.

Steam Greenlight is a program run by Valve that allows indie video game creators to show off their games to the Steam community. Members of the community are able to vote for or against games becoming available on the platform. The vote isn’t binding in any way, however it does offer Valve the opportunity to discover games that may be popular on its service. Greenlight has been criticized in the past, and rumours seem to indicate that it may be scrapped entirely in the future.