Portal: Prelude available to download and keep for free right now

Portal: Prelude RTX, a remastering of the hugely-popular unofficial Portal prequel is now available to grab for free on Steam, no strings attached.

Portal is an iconic franchise. If you’re sitting there thinking, ‘I’ve never played a Portal game,’ I urge you to. The first-person puzzle-platform series was developed by Valve and kicked off in 2007 with Portal followed by Portal 2 in 2011. Just last year, Nvidia announced and released the newly updated Portal with RTX. Outside of the official line-up though, there’s Portal: Prelude - a fan-made mod that’s so popular, most people assume it’s a part of the franchise. Set before the time of GLaDOS, the prequel boasts an eight to 10 hour campaign with 19 test chambers and a fully voiced story. Now, in a team up with Nvidia, Portal: Prelude has been given the RTX treatment - and you can nab it for free.

Take a look at Portal: Prelude RTX in action below.

In a press release, Nvidia teased that the prequel “comes alive with full ray tracing, DLSS 3 and RTX IO technology, breathing life into the game with cutting-edge, AI-powered graphics.” Portal: Prelude was originally created by software engineer Nicolas ‘NykO18’ Grevent and modder David ‘Kralich’ Driver-Gomm who’ve now used the Nvidia RTX Remix to overhaul the popular prequel. Every level has been relit with path-traced lighting plus there are a number of gameplay improvements.

Valerios ‘Fearell_Val’ Tsoumpas assisted on the project, and there’s new voice acting by Jack ‘Amicus’ McDade and Colin ‘SordidSpectacle’ Zachariasen. It’s been described by Nvidia as the “definitive” way to play the mod.

The good news is, if you’re a PC owner, you can play for free. You’ll need Portal already installed, but then you can download the Portal: Prelude RTX mod for free on Steam, adding the prequel to your game. Happy puzzling.

Topics: Valve, Steam, PC, Mods