I'm enjoying Portal: Prelude, which is a fan mod and unofficial prequel to Portal. I got to the end of Portal and was like, "that's it?" It was fun and novel, and the character GLaDOS was neat, but it was too easy and too short. After beating Portal I played through it with commentary enabled. A lot of the game had to be designed to train the user, due to the unfamiliar gameplay. I think they did that quite well. The commentary also revealed that the idea for the portal mechanic came from a student project called Narbacular Drop, whose authors were subsequently hired by Valve. I tried this out, but it was even shorter, and seemed to lead up to a boss fight that never happened.

So, looking for more of a challenge I went looking for mods and found Portal: Prelude. It's much more challenging than the original game. When you start it up, there's a warning that you have to be ready to think with portals. That's true, at least more so than in the original game. The puzzles are also a bit tougher. I'm on the 19th test chamber, and I had to wonder if if it was unsolvable (hint: it's not). You start in the Relaxation Vault like in the original, but instead of GLaDOS' disembodied voice, you have white-shirted men guiding you from the rooms behind frosted glass that were empty in the original game. Their voices are synthesized, but it's well-done enough that you don't worry about it.

The Companion Cube even makes an appearance. It's like looking at pictures of somebody when they were younger. Me and the cube are friends. I'm looking forward to exploring the rest of the game with it, and I will be sure to share my cake. One thing bothers me. They mentioned grief counseling...