Sharp-eared music fans will have already found the haunting track "Exile Vilify" by The National in Portal 2. Clearly Rat Man is a big fan of of the song, based on some of the art decorating the walls of his dens. But as any museum fan can tell you, there's nothing a fancypants painting can say that a YouTube video can't say a hundred times better.


Visit the video contest site

With Aperture-brand turrets, boots, bots and panels flooding the applied science aisle of your local department store, you could forgive the up-and-coming test lab for taking a breather. Judging from their latest press release, though, their laurels remain untouched by backsides. Bolstered by recent breakthroughs in the field of jazz smoothing, Aperture announced today the first of three downloadable aural stimulus packages.

Whether you're a mega-science corporation with decades of test experience, or a young start-up liberating your first test subject from non-testing with a chloroform-soaked rag, Aperture guarantees results. Wake up your test subject, open the chamber door, and press play--let Aperture's patent-pending rhythmic compliance enhancers do the rest.



Visit the music site

If entertainment has taught us anything—be it films; TV shows; or films for people who hate fights and explosions, books—it's that at some point in every story, the villain will tell the hero, "You know, we're a lot alike, you and I." It always sounds like a really smart thing to say to somebody, even though it's never actually true.

But now, for the first time, thinkingwithportals.com is giving you the opportunity to make it true. Show them that not only are you like GLaDOS, you're better than GLaDOS, by designing your own diabolical test chamber.

From now until June 6th, thinkingwithportals.com is accepting entries for their Summer Mapping Initiative. Test chambers will be judged on their puzzle complexity, visual appeal and tonal fidelity (50s design, contemporary design, etc.), so steeple those scheming-fingers, write some nasty passive-aggressive insults on index cards for easy reference, and show GLaDOS how it's done.

If you don't own Apple's dedicated "Portal 2 - The Final Hours" reading device, you're in luck. It's now available on the PC and Kindle. The PC version features interactive elements, exclusive photos, insider movies, timelines, and more. The Kindle version, on the other hand, is handsomely bound, assuming you bought a leather carrying case for it. You read that right - the PC version is now available on Steam.

PC Version
iPad Version
Kindle Version

Today we're opening up the beta of the Portal 2 Authoring Tools to everyone! It's available as a free download for all owners of the PC version of Portal 2 and can be found under the "Tools" tab in Steam.

The Portal 2 Authoring Tools include versions of the same tools we used to make Portal 2. They'll allow you to create your own singleplayer and co-op maps, new character skins, 3D models, sound effects, and music.

Here's what's included:
- Updated version of Hammer, the Source level editor
- Updated Faceposer
- Example maps and instances to help build new maps
- Updated suite of command-line compiling utilities

If you want to get started on the beta, we suggest joining two mailing lists:
Portal 2 List
General Source List

This is beta software, so if you have any problems or issues, please send them to the p2mapper email list.

Get out there and show us what devious puzzles you've all been brainstorming!

We feel like we've talked enough about Portal 2 the last few months. Luckily, now that it's been released, other people have started talking about it, including the people who pick Time Magazine's Person of the Year, Time Magazine, which gave Portal 2 "our first perfect 10."

It's also being called "one of the best games of this generation" by 1up.com, "one of the best games ever made" by Destructoid, and "as good as entertainment gets" by the Boston Herald. Still not convinced? What if we said all that stuff again, but with a pumping soundtrack?

The following personality test was developed by Aperture scientists in the late seventies as a way to determine test subject compatibility for cooperative testing initiatives. The test was categorized UNSAFE by Aperture Laboratories in 1977, after every test subject who took the test became immediately insane from having so many unassailable truths and gut-wrenching personal secrets about themselves revealed at once. The test was placed in a locked strong box and secured in an abandoned sub-basement. This sub-basement was then filled with cement, and the doorway bricked over.

Upon rediscovery of the document last month, Aperture scientists felt the results were "inconclusive." A further round of testing has been requested. And you can help!

Well, the end is definitely near. Thanks to the efforts of a dedicated group of ingenious test subjects, we've located enough potatoes to generate the required power to start the GLaDOS reboot process. It's not too late to participate, though. The more CPU power dedicated to the process, the faster it will finish. What does that mean? From now until release, play any or all of the Potato Sack games to expedite the launch of Portal 2. Your efforts will be tracked on the official GLaDOS@home page.

The Potato Sack games are all great, and each one has also received a massive Portal-themed update. So why not get a taste of Portal 2 now while you help launch it?


There's also still time to collect all 36 potatoes. Anyone accomplishing this feat by the time Portal 2 launches will receive a very special, non-hat-based reward.

We're closing in on an exciting time here at the Portal blog. At 7AM PST, April 19th, we will officially stop being the people chummily reminding you to pre-order Portal 2, transforming phoenix-like before your eyes into the people cheerfully suggesting you regular-order Portal 2. Here's hoping the transformation is instantaneous and doesn't involve gestation or fluids.

At any rate, with the big release almost upon us, we thought it'd be fitting to take a look back at all the amazing community content that's cropped up around the original Portal in the last three years. (Just a few weeks ago, for example, a Danish group named Basix released an a capella version of Still Alive.)



Our Facebook page is filled with images, and YouTube's bursting with all of your inventive covers and videos. Heck, we're not even sure we've seen them all. Post your favorites on our Facebook page so we can all check them out.

The calendar experts at Valve were pretty "steamed" at us this morning, even after we broke out that great pun you just read. According to them, Portal 2 is actually getting unlocked on Steam at 7AM PST, not EST. According to us, they told us 7AM EST and are now backtracking to cover their butts. Either way, there's a chance the game might be delayed by three hours while we work this out.