It’s taken 13 years, but we finally have a new Half-Life game. It may not be the long-awaited Half-Life 3, but as you’ve probably seen from our Half-Life: Alyx review, Valve’s first foray into virtual reality shows they’re a developer that are still very much at the top of their game. But Half-Life: Alyx isn’t just the work of a talented team of developers. It’s a game that’s ultimately been shaped by the people who have played it – the hundreds, if not thousands of playtesters who helped Valve turn their most famous FPS game into a VR sensation.

To find out more about how Half-Life: Alyx came into being, I sat down with Valve’s Robin Walker and Jim Hughes a week before the game’s big release day. We talk about everything from revisiting the Half-Life series and the challenges of bringing it to virtual reality, to what this means for Half-Life 3 as well as just whose idea was it to have headcrabs jumping directly at your face. Some of the answers you’ll have seen appear on the site over the past week, such as how playtesters became obsessed with collecting every last thing in sight to everyone assuming they were playing as Gordon Freeman until Alyx was finally given a voice, but there’s plenty more to discover here as we lay out our chat with Robin and Jim in full. Enjoy.

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It has come to my attention that some people have not played the Half-Life games, to which I can only say: mate, I think you might really like it. Valve will soon return to the series after thirteen years with Half-Life: Alyx in March, and ahead of that they’re inviting everyone to catch up on the story so far. From now until the launch of Alyx, the Half-Life games are free for everyone to play in full on Steam. You know, some of these really are quite good.

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Oof, imagine not blinking for half a decade. My eyes shiver at the thought. But this is what the NPCs of Half-Life 2 have been suffering. The dry eye epidemic was first reported to Valve’s GitHub repo back in 2014 and since then it turns out only a select few have felt the joy of smashing their eyelids shut. But after almost five long years, City 17’s tortured citizens can finally blink again, thanks to a small official update.

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Half-Life 2 is nearly fifteen years old now, and despite Valve’s sequel plans seemingly fizzling out, it doesn’t look a day over ten thanks to the efforts of modders. Chances are that Half-Life 2 and its expansions have been gathering dust on your Steam account for years now, so here’s a quick refresher — mostly focused on the past five years — on what’s available, single player-wise. Want to turbo-charge the original game, or send Gordon Freeman on a whole new adventure? We’ve got you covered both ways, plus a trio of Silent Hill-inspired spookfests. Below, a hand-picked basket of goodies, and a crowbar to open it.

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Hooting echoed across the virtual valleys and mesas of the Internet this week after those who pan the digital stream in search of anything ending with “3” got an inkling that former Valve writer Erik Wolpaw had returned to the Half-Life mob after leaving in 2017. And yep, Wolpaw has confirmed to me that he is doing work for Valve these days – because he never really stopped. Apparently he’s been contracting for them all along, working on this and that as needed, on top of working for his niece’s juice shop (which was not a joke). Looks like the digipanners found Fool’s Three.

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