Surprise! Valve is releasing a new game set in the Portal universe
No, it’s not Portal 3. Aperture Desk Job is a short game to teach you how the new Steam Deck works, out March 1.
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
What the heck? Valve is releasing a new game. No, it’s not Portal 3, but it is set in the same universe.
Aperture Desk Job is a free “short” game designed for theSteam Deckthat teaches you how to use the new device. Releasing March 1, it looks like even if you don’t have a Steam Deck you’ll still be able to try the game out on your desktop if you have a controller. (Mouse and keyboard is not supported.)
“Aperture Desk Job reimagines the been-there-done-that genre of walking simulators and puts them in the lightning-spanked, endorphin-gorged world of sitting still behind things,” saysthe game’s Steam page.
“You play as an entry-level nobody on their first day at work — your heart full of hope and your legs full of dreams, eager to climb that corporate ladder. But life’s got other plans, and they all involve chairs.”
Check out the trailer below, which is also pretty darn short. And unfortunately, there’s no sign of GLaDOS, but surely she’s in the somewhere, right?
Note: This story has been revised to reflect a March 1 release—when the game first appeared on Steam it had a ‘Play Game’ button that no longer appears.
The biggest gaming news, reviews and hardware deals
Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.
Chris started playing PC games in the 1980s, started writing about them in the early 2000s, and (finally) started getting paid to write about them in the late 2000s. Following a few years as a regular freelancer, PC Gamer hired him in 2014, probably so he’d stop emailing them asking for more work. Chris has a love-hate relationship with survival games and an unhealthy fascination with the inner lives of NPCs. He’s also a fan of offbeat simulation games, mods, and ignoring storylines in RPGs so he can make up his own.
The best Black Ops 6 map for XP grinding finally got a 24/7 playlist, so you know what to do
‘Please give it a chance’: Brighter Shores studio asks players to have patience with its unusual progression system, promises it’s actually a lot of fun ‘once you get used to it’
Palworld developer reports Nintendo’s suing over 3 Pokémon patents for only $66,000 in damages, but a videogame IP lawyer says fighting the lawsuit could mean ‘burning millions of dollars’
